T-Mobile just spent a massive $8 billion as part of the FCC’s latest auction

Why it matters to you

Your wireless coverage may soon get a lot better thanks to the FCC’s latest spectrum auction.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Broadcast Incentive Auction has come to a close, with a hefty 175 TV stations getting payouts for giving up spectrum — spectrum that was in turn sold to the likes of T-Mobile, Comcast, NBCU, and Dish. The result? One of the highest grossing auctions ever conducted by the FCC, with a total gross revenue coming in at a whopping $19.8 billion.

Following the auction, there will be some big changes to many TV stations. The FCC will now enter into a 39-month transition period in moving broadcast stations to newly assigned channels. A total of 957 stations will now change channels during the period, with the first group scheduled to move starting on November 30, 2018.

“The conclusion of the world’s first incentive auction is a major milestone in the FCC’s long history as steward of the nation’s airwaves,” said FCC chairman Ajit Pai in a statement. “Consumers are the real beneficiaries, as broadcasters invest new resources in programming and service, and additional wireless spectrum opens the way to greater competition and innovation in the mobile broadband marketplace.”

There were a number of big winners in the auction — namely T-Mobile. The “un-carrier” spent a massive $8 billion in the auction, and as a result it won the biggest number of licenses. Dish came in second, spending $6.2 billion, while Comcast came in third with $1.7 billion.

The new spectrum (which refers to the range of frequencies used to wirelessly transmit data) will be very helpful to those companies, as they will use them to build out their wireless networks. Having access to a broader spectrum means faster and wider coverage. The 600MHz band is largely what was up for grabs in this particular auction, and traditionally it has been used for TV signals. It works particularly well across large distances, which will help companies keep up with expanding coverage.

You can see a list of all 175 TV stations that got payouts and the winning wireless bidders here.

T-Mobile just spent a massive $8 billion as part of the FCC’s latest auction

Why it matters to you

Your wireless coverage may soon get a lot better thanks to the FCC’s latest spectrum auction.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Broadcast Incentive Auction has come to a close, with a hefty 175 TV stations getting payouts for giving up spectrum — spectrum that was in turn sold to the likes of T-Mobile, Comcast, NBCU, and Dish. The result? One of the highest grossing auctions ever conducted by the FCC, with a total gross revenue coming in at a whopping $19.8 billion.

Following the auction, there will be some big changes to many TV stations. The FCC will now enter into a 39-month transition period in moving broadcast stations to newly assigned channels. A total of 957 stations will now change channels during the period, with the first group scheduled to move starting on November 30, 2018.

“The conclusion of the world’s first incentive auction is a major milestone in the FCC’s long history as steward of the nation’s airwaves,” said FCC chairman Ajit Pai in a statement. “Consumers are the real beneficiaries, as broadcasters invest new resources in programming and service, and additional wireless spectrum opens the way to greater competition and innovation in the mobile broadband marketplace.”

There were a number of big winners in the auction — namely T-Mobile. The “un-carrier” spent a massive $8 billion in the auction, and as a result it won the biggest number of licenses. Dish came in second, spending $6.2 billion, while Comcast came in third with $1.7 billion.

The new spectrum (which refers to the range of frequencies used to wirelessly transmit data) will be very helpful to those companies, as they will use them to build out their wireless networks. Having access to a broader spectrum means faster and wider coverage. The 600MHz band is largely what was up for grabs in this particular auction, and traditionally it has been used for TV signals. It works particularly well across large distances, which will help companies keep up with expanding coverage.

You can see a list of all 175 TV stations that got payouts and the winning wireless bidders here.

Cambodian startup is 3D-printing prosthetic hands for land mine victims

Why it matters to you

This partnership is transforming the lives of land mine victims who have lost limbs by 3D-printed prostheses.

Cambodia’s only 3D-printing company teamed up with a Canadian prosthetics non-governmental organization to create 3D-printed artificial hands for Cambodian victims of land mine explosions.

The pairing of ARC Hub PNH and the Victoria Hand Project is intended to make a difference in a country which has among the highest casualty rates of land mines in the world. To date, an estimated 40,000 people in Cambodia have had limbs amputated as the result of land mine explosions.

At present, only a fraction of those people have been helped by the new initiative but the proof-of-concept study hints at greater things. As part of the pairing, a total of 25 3D-printed prosthetics were built. These were designed by the Victoria Hand Project and printed at ARC Hub PNH’s headquarters. Each hand prosthesis reportedly took around 40 hours to print and carried a cost of $320.

One recipient of the 3D-printed hands was 51-year-old Bun Vibol, a man who had lost one of his hands during the Cambodian Civil War, which ran from 1967 until 1975. Able to pick up and grasp objects with “his” right hand for the first time in more than 40 years, Vibol said, “It’s the first time I’ve had a hand like this. I feel like I was born again.”

There is still an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to help everyone affected by land mines in Cambodia (most notably, focusing on eliminating the use of land mines altogether). However, as initiatives like this grab hold in new markets, which didn’t previously have access to transformative technologies such as 3D printing, progress is being made toward helping those in need.

“We have successfully completed the first pilot project to create 3D-printed prosthetic hands for land mine and UXO victims in Cambodia,” the ARC Hub PNH website notes. “We are currently working on developing other 3D-printed medical devices, and are open to collaborations with other organizations in the field.”

Instagram Stories overtakes Snapchat in active users, celebrates with stickers

Why it matters to you

Instagram may not have gotten there first but it appears to be growing faster than Snapchat and that will only draw more users.

Instagram only launched Stories last August and yet on Thursday, the company reported more than 200 million users of the feature, which was developed to take on Snapchat. Instagram subtly dropped the news in a blog post unveiling new features aimed specifically at Stories and Direct users.

The news of Stories’ success is not necessarily surprising, but it is impressive, considering Snapchat claimed around 150 million users when it filed for its initial public offering in February. It took the startup five years to get to that point and growth reportedly slowed over the fourth quarter of 2016 — one would imagine, in no small part, thanks to its Facebook-owned competitor.

Instagram commemorated the milestone by adding an assortment of new stickers and sticker-related features. Now selfies can be made into stickers, for example, and decorated with different frame styles. Stickers can also now be pinned to three-dimensional objects in videos — a feature the app has borrowed from Snapchat. It also works with text as well.

Another Snapchat-similar feature is Instagram’s ‘recent’ page, that puts your favorite stickers more easily within reach.

Finally, four new cities are receiving geostickers: Chicago, London, Tokyo, and Madrid, Spain. The company says they are all designed by local artists and you can find out more about them by tapping their user names, which appear above each sticker. Those four join New York City and Jakarta, Indonesia, which debuted alongside the feature in March.

None of these features are unique to Instagram; they have all been done before. Snapchat boasts a seemingly endless number of geostickers, for example, and allows you to make new stickers out of anything you can see (in addition to your face) through the use of its scizzors tool. The fact that Stories has been able to accomplish the reach that it has, and continues to grow despite being routinely late to the party speaks to the power of Instagram’s install base — which was estimated at 400 million back in February.

Have $2,800 to spare? You can buy the Samsung Galaxy S8 in 24-karat gold

Why it matters to you

Most people probably won’t see value in this but if you truly want the best of the best and happen to be rich, this is one way to flaunt your spending habits.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a pretty luxurious phone, but U.K.-based company Truly Exquisite is taking things to the next level by building the device with 24-karat gold, 24-karat platinum, or 18-karat rose gold colors.

The phones are exactly like any other Samsung Galaxy S8, only instead of a standard metal being used for the frame, you will find a decidedly more expensive metal. Of course, it won’t come cheap — to get it for yourself, you will need 2,250 pounds if you buy it from the U.K. or $2,800 if you live state-side.

Thankfully, you will get a few perks with the phone that you might not otherwise get. Each phone will ship with a collector’s box, a wireless charging stand, Samsung Gear VR, a plated portable charging pack, and a leather card holder. When it comes to the device itself, you get the 64GB model, and it is unlocked — so you can use it on any networks you choose.

It will take a while for your shiny device to arrive. The company says the phone will ship in late May, but you will get free worldwide shipping and a six-month warranty — which you will want considering how pricey the phone is in the first place.

Have an extra $3,000 to spare? You can buy the device from the Truly Exquisite website. While you are there, you might find it interesting to poke around and look at the other phones the company has on sale — like the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which are both available in the same luxurious color options. You can also get the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge — although if you are spending that much in the first place, why not go for the latest version?

If you prefer buying a decidedly less expensive Galaxy S8 (although it’s still pricey), check out our hands-on review of the device.

New ‘BrickerBot’ malware attack kills unsecured internet of things devices

Why it matters to you

If your smart home devices stop working, then you’ll want to change the default credentials to avoid the recently discovered BrickerBot malware attack.

The internet of things (IoT) is at the heart of many modern technology devices, not the least of which are the increasingly popular smart home components that unlock our doors and control our heating and lighting. The security of IoT devices is, therefore, paramount if these increasingly ubiquitous devices are going to bring more benefit than cost.

Unfortunately, IoT has been the source of significant malware attacks in recent months, including the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down a large swatch of the internet in October 2016. Now, a new piece of malware, dubbed BrickerBot, is in the wild and targeting IoT device running the open-source Linux operating system, as Readwrite reports.

According to security firm Radware, whose honeypot was used to discover the malware, BrickerBot works in similar fashion to Mirai in that both programs attempt to leverage the tendency for users to neglect to change the factory default username and password combo that ships on IoT devices. The primary difference between the two is that while Mirai aims to take over and add them to botnets with the express purpose of conducting DDoS attacks, BrickerBot — as its name implies — simply wants to kill the devices instead. This kind of attack is called Permanent Denial of Service (PDoS), and it’s apparently becoming increasingly popular.

Because they both rely on remote access into unsecured devices, both BrickerBot and Mirai can most easily be combatted by simply changing the default username and password and by turning off Telnet remote access wherever possible. Radware notes a few other highly technical responses to BrickerBot that technology staff can use but that are likely beyond the means of the typical smart home customer.

While Mirai is of greater concern on a widespread basis given its ability impact the entire internet, BrickerBot can cause some serious inconvenience to casual users by leaving their devices dead and unusable. Of even greater concern, however, is the potential impact on commercial concerns, where losing hundreds of IoT devices that are used for critical infrastructure could be crippling. For those organizations, taking Radware’s more technical advice into consideration would be highly recommended.

Eyes on the road! Samsung’s latest app replies to messages when you’re driving

Why it matters to you

Remaining undistracted while driving won’t just save your life — it could save other lives, too.

Samsung wants to help keep drivers safe, and as such the company has created a new app called In-Traffic Reply, which is aimed at helping drivers reply to messages without taking their attention off the road.

The app was developed by Samsung Netherlands, and it automatically knows when the user is in a car or riding a bike, and will reply to incoming messages with a standard response that reads “I’m sitting in traffic, so I can not answer at this time.” The reply can be customized, too, so you don’t have to use such a boring response.

The app itself is currently in beta, and if you’re interested in using it, you can get it from the Google Play Store. The app will officially launch next month, according to Samsung, and while it will only launch in the Netherlands, if successful we can expect to see it get a much wider release.

It makes sense that a tool like this would be useful. In its press release, Samsung Netherlands said that one third of drivers in the country admitted to using their phone while driving, according to statistics from PanelWizard. According to the survey, the reason for that is social pressure. Specifically, users indicated that they felt like they needed to reply to calls or messages as soon as they appeared.

Samsung isn’t the only company trying to help users continue to use its services while keeping drivers safe. Google has launched a number of different products aimed specifically at in-car use, the most obvious of which is Android Auto, a simplified and basic version of Android that focuses on maps, as well as in-car entertainment like music playback. Android Auto makes buttons larger and easier to press, ensuring that drivers keep their eyes on the road as much as possible.

Tesla’s plans to show off its electric semi truck this fall

According to Telsa CEO Elon Musk, the automotive arm of his company will unveil a semi truck this coming September. Musk dropped the news via a tweet. The company is currently gearing up to start full production of the Model 3, set to start being delivered at the end of 2017. But now it looks like Musk is getting ready to dive into into long-haul trucking.

Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2017

Musk talked about the semi truck and a minibus last year during an earnings call. It’s actually not too surprising that Tesla would get into the semi-truck market. Mercedes and Otto (which was acquired by Uber) both demonstrated the need for autonomous and electric trucks. Tesla making its own model is the next logical step for the company.

Slack adds status messages, a feature it should have had on day one

After its meteoric rise to popularity, Slack has been slowly adding useful features to help keep fast-moving chatrooms from getting bogged down. Earlier this year, the company introduced much-needed threaded conversations and now Slack users can finally set an away message or status update so friends and coworkers no longer have to sit and wonder why it’s taking so long to reply.

Slack’s new feature — or old feature, if you used AOL Instant Messenger anytime since the late nineties — offers five default statuses for situations like “In a meeting” or “Out sick,” but of course you can also set a custom status with more personal detail and wit if that’s your thing. Every status also includes an emoji you can use to properly convey what’s taking your attention away from the chat itself, and if you don’t pick an emoji you’ll get defaulted to the speech ballon. In the chat window and the left sidebar, only the emoji will show up next to your name, but hovering or tapping it will bring up your full away message. In the browser or on the desktop, you simply click your name in the upper left corner to set a status. On the mobile app, statuses are tucked inside the “More items” menu at the top right.

Finally, since Slack likes to play nice with third-party apps, those can also set your status for you without any work on your part. If you’re on a voice or video call within Slack, your status will update accordingly and apps like Zenefits or Meekan’s scheduling assistant can even set your status when you’re taking time off or have a meeting blocked on your calendar.

According to Slack, status updates are rolling out to users over the next few days, but you’ll need to download the latest versions of the desktop and mobile apps to get it.

Source: Slack

LG G6 review: Finally back in the race

Let’s be real: Last year’s G5 was ambitious, but it never lived up to its potential. Even now, I have to give props to LG: It took guts to make that phone, and it took guts to admit at a Mobile World Congress press conference that it was a step in the wrong direction. “We get it,” the company seemed to say. “We were wrong, but we listened and did better.”

And you know what? It did. The props I offer to LG now are not only for moxie but also for surprisingly good execution. Apart from adding a surprisingly long screen, the company gave up on trying to redefine how smartphones work and built a more conservative machine that played to people’s desires instead. It’s a more sensible kind of flagship for LG. Too bad the competition this year is fiercer than ever.

Hardware and design

I wouldn’t be surprised if LG took almost everything it learned about industrial design with the G5 and set it on fire. That’s the sort of seismic shift we’re working with here. And honestly, it’s for the best. The G5’s modularity required sacrifices, and with that constraint gone the company’s engineers were able to design a sleek, sturdy frame that feels worthy of a flagship. You can tell just looking at the materials used. The G5’s light, plasticky metal is gone, replaced by Gorilla Glass 5 on the G6’s back (a pane of Gorilla Glass 3 covers the screen). Those glass panels eventually meet at a band of aluminum that encircles the phone. Even better, the G6 is IP68 dust- and water-resistant, a feat that was straight-up impossible last year because of the G5’s slide-out battery mechanism.

One of the few design decisions that remained was the dual camera on the back, only this time it sits flush with the phone’s body. Below that is the signature sleep/wake button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor. It’s been years since LG made this a mainstay of its high-end phones, and I appreciate the placement. The sensor was always within reach of my index fingers, but it occasionally needed a few clicks to unlock.

Meanwhile, you’ll find the volume keys on the left side, directly opposite the microSIM and microSD card slot (which takes up to 2TB of additional storage). You’ll probably need the latter too. In the US, the G6 comes with 32GB of storage, only 19GB of which are available once you crack open the box. There’s a USB-C port on the bottom, a headphone jack up top and that’s really it. Well, except for the G6’s claim to fame: the display.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

I challenge you to tear your eyes away from the G6’s screen, its rounded corners or the mere sliver of bezel running around it all. The phone is basically all screen, and it feels like a revelation. In fact, with a screen this prominent, the rest of the G6’s frame fades into the background (especially on our low-key black review unit). That’s fine by me; the G6 is a well-built machine, but it’s pretty plain-looking.

LG’s minimal design aside, the company squeezed a whole lot of screen into a modestly sized body. It’s remarkably comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time. Between the not-quite-finished model I received at Mobile World Congress and the consumer-ready, AT&T version LG later provided, I’ve been using this all-screen design for over a month. In a nutshell: I’m never going back. You’ll still shimmy your hand up the phone’s body to reach the top corners with your thumbs, but the G6 is surprisingly comfortable for one-handed use.

To top it all off, it’s surprisingly durable. One night, while perhaps a little tipsy at dinner, the G6 slipped from my grasp and fell about 15 feet from the restaurant’s upstairs table to the hard tile of the ground floor. I felt like a tremendous idiot, but the phone suffered only a few nicks around the edges. Seriously, LG: well done.

Display and sound

Since the screen is the single biggest change to LG’s G Series formula, let’s dig a little deeper. It’s a 5.7-inch IPS LCD running at 2,880 x 1,440 (that’s an 18:9 aspect ratio, for those keeping track). As far as LG is concerned, this super long FullVision display is the way of the future. After all, it seems well suited to multitasking, and filmmakers (like La La Land’s Damien Chazelle) have already embraced wider-than-widescreen formats. Even better, the G6 and its screen support standards like Dolby Vision and HDR10 for more vivid video. It’s just too bad that finding content that takes full advantage of this screen is still pretty difficult.

And don’t forget about those curves. The corners of the panel are actually round, which supposedly helps disperse the blunt force that comes with a careless drop. It’s equal parts clever and cool-looking, which I love. None of this would matter if the screen itself was lousy, but that’s thankfully not the case: Text and images are crisp and precise, colors are lively without veering into over-saturation. Viewing angles are excellent too, which is crucial: What good is a long screen if it’s hard to glance at?

So yeah, LG clearly paid a lot of attention to the G6’s display — too bad it didn’t spend as much time on the phone’s audio. There’s a single speaker wedged into the phone’s bottom, and its output is anemic at best. It’s a good thing LG kept the classic headphone jack around, but even that isn’t as good as it could be. See, despite the company’s commitment to high-quality audio with its V Series phones, the G6 lacks the Quad DAC that made devices like the V20 such great media players. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised: You had to buy a separate “Friend” to squeeze high-fidelity audio out of the G5, and it was never available in North America anyway. There’s still hope for you audiophiles: The Asian version of the phone has that DAC built-in if you don’t mind scouting for foreign devices online.

Software

Remember the days when LG’s custom interface was terrible? Yeah, so do I. These days LG is into restraint, and while it’s still a long way from stock Android 7.0, the company’s skin and apps add more value than headaches. Does that mean it’s for everyone? Hell no, but it’s progress.

That progress can be tougher to spot if you’ve used the G5 or the V20, since almost all the usual tricks are back. You can still turn on the screen with a double-tap, rearrange your navigation keys or ditch the traditional Android app launcher in favor of an iOS-style app free-for-all. The most noticeable changes are cosmetic — here’s looking at you, wallpapers and “squircle” icons — but the biggest ones are meant to take advantage of that super long screen.

Consider the calendar and the contact list: They look normal enough when launched, but rotating the phone reveals another view that displays extra information in two side-by-side square panels. Handy. Still another included app lets you change how other apps are scaled to fit on-screen. Fiddling around with it can get certain apps looking more natural on the G6’s 18:9 display, but in my experience, you could ignore this feature completely and not miss out on anything. Google’s also got your back: It’s been encouraging developers to build native support for 18:9 screens into its apps.

Speaking of Google, the G6 was — briefly — the only non-Pixel smartphone to come with Google’s virtual Assistant. Google kind of spoiled LG’s fun by rolling Assistant out to compatible devices shortly after the G6’s announcement, but hey, a good voice interface is a good voice interface. If you were expecting differences in performance between the Assistant here and the one running on Google’s first-party hardware, don’t worry. After a few initial moments of sluggishness, talking to the G6 was as pleasant as talking to the Pixels. That’s good news for those of you with burning curiosities and a fondness for chatting with inanimate objects.

The AT&T model we tested is loaded with bloatware. Maybe the strangest change is AT&T’s use of Firefox — not Chrome — as the default web browser. Some of you won’t mind, as Firefox is a perfectly good alternative. Beyond that, we’re left with 13 preloaded apps no one ever actually asked for and a persistent notification that keeps insisting I set up the DirecTV remote app. News flash, AT&T: I don’t use the service and wouldn’t use this app even if I did, so for the love of God, stop shoving this notification in my face.

Camera

Dual cameras have gone from gimmick to flagship feature, and LG was one of the first companies to make them feel valuable. The work began with last year’s G5, which combined an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera with a 16-megapixel main camera for more-flexible shooting. It was a solid first attempt, but this year’s approach feels much more elegant.

For one, this time the normal and wide-angle cameras shoot at the same 13-megapixel resolution. Now we have resolution parity, and they both turn out crisp, detailed images without much fiddling. There are still differences between the two though. The main camera has a f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization and phase-detection autofocus, all of which the wide-angle camera lacks. In other words, you should probably steer clear of those wide-angle shots at night: They too often come out fuzzy and improperly exposed.

In normal daylight conditions though, both cameras capture crisp images with lots of detail and bright colors. In fact, thanks to some aggressive image processing, colors can sometimes border on garish. For more-nuanced control over your photos, you can switch into a Pro mode with manual settings. It’s overkill for most, but in the right hands it leads to some killer shots. And fortunately, switching between the two cameras is mostly free of lag, a feat the company pulled off with some help from Qualcomm.

LG also threw in some square shooting modes that make use of the long screen. You can, for instance, instantly preview photos you took on one side of the screen while retaining a live view on the other or quickly build an animated, 4×4 grid of shots for Instagram or whatever. Exactly how valuable some of these modes are is debatable, but I’m willing to admit I might be short on imagination.

The G6 also doubles as a respectable videographer’s tool. It packs full manual control, a first for LG, which also helps keep low-light videos looking good. What’s more, handy additional features like focus peaking and hi-res audio recording are must-haves for people who take their on-the-go shooting seriously. I still think Google’s Pixels are the best all-around smartphone cameras out there, but consider me impressed by the sheer flexibility on offer here.

Performance and battery life

The G6 felt plenty fast in day-to-day use, thanks to the Snapdragon 821 chipset, 4GB of RAM and the Adreno 530 GPU ticking away inside. I know what you’re thinking: This is a very familiar configuration that we’ve already seen in a handful of flagship phones. The Galaxy S8 and Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium might churn out more power thanks to their shiny new Snapdragon 835s, but performance rarely felt lacking.

My usual workday consists of a lot of Slack, Outlook and Spotify, with pretty frequent sessions of Hearthstone and Dirt Extreme. Multitasking — even in split-screen mode — yielded relatively few hiccups. And graphically intense gaming proved to be no problem either. Swiping around the interface and launching apps was snappy too, though spurts of slowness popped up from time to time. I’d put my money on LG’s interface dragging the system down, but it was never enough to cause more than momentary frustration.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
LG G5
AndEBench Pro
10,322
16,164
13,030
14,152
Vellamo 3.0
5,046
5,800
4,152
4,104
3DMark IS Unlimited
30,346
29,360
26,666
26,981
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
42
48
47
47
CF-Bench
29,748
39,918
46,290
36,488

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the greatest luck with the G6’s battery. It’s a 3,300mAh cell, which is larger than what you’ll find in some competitors — the HTC U Ultra and the regular Galaxy S8 spring to mind. Even so, I could only count on the G6 to last for one day. If I was lucky and didn’t use the phone too much, I might wake up the next morning to find it still clinging to life. The G6 didn’t fare much better in our video rundown test, where we loop HD videos with WiFi connected until it dies. It lasted just under 11 hours, which puts it a bit behind last year’s V20.

To put that in perspective, the G6 did worse than HTC’s U Ultra and the smaller Google Pixel, despite both of them having smaller batteries. At least the G6 is convenient and quick to charge: It supports Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 3.0 tech, and the US model comes with built-in wireless charging support. (In case you’ve been keeping track, that’s /another/ thing the G5 couldn’t do.)

The competition

I don’t mean to spoil the ending, but this is the best phone LG has built in years. The problem is, its biggest rivals haven’t exactly been sitting still. After a wave of strong first impressions, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is clearly the smartphone to beat: It too has a long, bezel-less display, and it’s clearly more of a looker. Beyond that, I’m cautiously optimistic about what the S8’s Bixby virtual assistant will develop into over time. The G6 could have the edge in photography though. I’m told the S8’s camera aren’t hugely improved over last year’s S7s, and that’s a hell of a niche to leave open for LG.

If you’re looking for a better music experience, you might want to check out the LG V20 ($599) as well. It packs the Quad DAC that our version of the G6 doesn’t have, and it packs a small, sometimes useful second screen above the big one. And for those of you looking for the peak of what the Snapdragon 821 can offer, I’d suggest Google’s Pixel XL ($769+). I already mentioned it had the best all-around smartphone camera out there; it also packs a completely clean version of Android. Sure, it might not be as attractive as the G6, but its sturdy build quality means it feels every bit as premium and it’ll get software updates from Google as soon as they’re available.

It’s also worth pointing out that buying a G6 can be lucrative in other ways. If you were fast enough on the draw, you could’ve nabbed a free TV and/or Google Home to go with that G6. That’s an uncannily good deal, though it feels a little desperate.

Wrap-up

There’s no doubt about it: The G6 represents some of LG’s best smartphone work ever. Sure, it’s not perfect: Audio is pretty weak, and so is the battery. None of that takes away from the fact that LG has built a phone that feels ready to compete with the best of the best for the first time in ages. Whether it has what it takes to beat those rivals, though, is a matter of opinion.

I’ve enjoyed my time with the G6 but you can’t underestimate the power of a visceral thrill, and that’s one thing the G6 never managed to deliver. Deep down, I can’t help but wonder if this year will go LG’s way. The Galaxy S8 and Apple’s 10th anniversary iPhone are poised to suck the air out of the room, and it’d be a shame to see LG’s effort overshadowed simply because other companies are better at generating hype. If you’re looking for a shiny new smartphone, the G6 definitely deserves a close look … but you might want to wait until we see what the full field of competitors looks like.