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With LG's new flagship G4 Android smartphone, life really is good. No, scratch that, life is great.

The best Android smartphones all have compromises. The Galaxy S6 has a fantastic camera, but dumped the removable battery and storage expansion Samsung so proudly trumpeted on the GS5. HTC's One M9 has great speakers and a sleek design, but it's camera is junk. The Nexus 6 runs unaltered Android and has a big screen, but it's too damn big.

The G4 cuts no corners. I dare say, it's the first no-compromise Android smartphone, and that's no joke.

The G4 is better everything. Better design, better cameras, better software, and a better display. It's not like last year's G3 wasn't great — it had the best smartphone display at the time — but LG's somehow improved it even more. The 5.5-inch QuadHD (2,560 x 1,440) IPS Quantum display has 20% better color reproduction and 50% greater contrast. It's also 25% brighter and 11% more power efficient.

The screen is just delicious enough to make you want to lick the pixels.

With no processors of its own, LG's always relied on Qualcomm's newest and fastest Snapdragon processors for its flagship smartphones. The G2 and G3 had then state-of-the-art Snapdragon 800 and 801 processors. The G4 eschews the top-of-the-line octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor for a special six-core Snapdragon 808 chip.

Pay no attention to the lower chipset number, though. The 808 CPU is faster than you'll probably ever need it to be. In fact, Android 5.1 "Lollipop" is smoother on the G4 than on the G Flex 2, which uses the faster 810 chip. Browsing the web in Chrome is snappy, 3D games load quickly and don't lag, and even "Dual window," LG's version of running two apps simultaneously is blazing fast.

Pop off the back cover and you'll get access to the removable battery and microSD card slot (supports up to 2TB). Interestingly enough, while the G4 ships with a 3,000 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery, I noticed the T-Mobile model has a smaller 2,900 mAh one. The battery lasts an entire day and then some if you enable the power-saving mode. Disappointingly, the G4 doesn't have any sort of rapid battery-charging feature.

Different kind of premium

The G4 is the lone flagship smartphone that's still made of plastic and not from more premium materials like metal and glass. But don't call it cheap. LG's put a great deal of effort into spiffying up the plastic. The edges have a glossy mirrored finish, which looks great — it's not metal, but it could fool you from afar.

There are two different back finishes: leather and plastic. Although LG showed off six different vegetable-tanned leathers and a variety of colored plastics at its launch event, it's unclear which regions will get what and if there will be any carrier exclusivity. (The brown leather model is a T-Mobile exclusive in the U.S.)

LG G4 review

I've been testing both the metallic gray and the brown leather models — and I've always been a fan of the latter. I have a leather case on my iPhone 6 and loved the second-gen Moto X's leather casing when I tested it last year.

The G4's brown leather is soft and feels great to the touch, but I'm personally not a fan of the stitched spine that runs down the middle. Don't get me wrong, the stitching detail is exquisite and way better than the fake stuff Samsung's used for years, but it just feels so uppity to me. It also hinders usability: The bulging spine makes the phone wobble more than the plastic model when it's laid flat on a table.

The metallic gray model sports a brushed metal look with a slightly textured cross hatch-like pattern. It's more slippery than the leather, but not as much as metal phones.

DSLR replacement?

Android users pining for a killer camera finally hit the jackpot this year with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.

Like the G3, the G4 has two outstanding cameras — a 16-megapixel back camera that autofocuses in 0.276 seconds and has an advanced optical image stabilization system for clearer shots, and an 8-megapixel selfie camera on the front.

That's the same resolution as the Galaxy S6's camera, but it goes one better: The G4 has a f/1.8 aperture lens versus the Galaxy S6's f/1.9. In non-geek speak, the G4's camera eats light for breakfast and takes incredible low-light photos.

LG says the G4's cameras chops are so great, it can replace your DSLR camera. But blah blah blah, let's see some pictures and comparisons.

First up is the color accuracy test. LG says the new color spectrum sensor (the little black pill-shaped sensor back) lets the camera reproduce accurate colors. The sensor can also discern the difference between objects and textures, allowing it to tell the camera what color temperature to shoot at.

From left to right: The G4 vs. Galaxy S6 vs. iPhone 6. The G4 photos are crisp, but the colors are oversaturated. Just look at how yellow the not-yet-bloomed lilies to the right of the sunflower are. Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable

As you can see in the G4 vs. Galaxy S6 vs. iPhone 6 shoot-out above, the G4's colors are quite saturated. The yellows and reds are deeper and blur together with little contrast. The Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 pics show more accurate colors — it's very clear in unbloomed lilies on the right of the sunflower. It's a small issue that can rectified with an image editor, but still annoying.

Next is the sharpness test. The iPhone 6 was sidelined because its camera has fewer megapixels and it wouldn't have been a fair duel. Slide the slider in the 100% crops below and you'll see the G4 photo is sharper, but also has more image noise. The Galaxy S6's pics are softer and blurrier when viewed at full resolution.

Fact: People love taking pics in bars and in all sorts of dark places with few lights. While you might be tempted to switch on the flash, you really shouldn't. As I mentioned above, the G4 has a fast f/1.8 aperture lens. Cameras with a low f-stop number let more light in, resulting in better low-light photos and creamy bokeh (background blur).

Most smartphone camera lenses have an aperture somewhere between f/2.2 and f/2.0. Those are good, but the Galaxy S6's f/1.9 and G4's f/1.8 lens are even better. The G4's lens obliterates every other smartphone camera on the market, while retaining sharp details.

From left to right: LG G4 vs. Samsung GS6 vs. iPhone 6. Just like the G3, the G4 destroys the competition in low-light conditions. Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable

Stunning picture quality is only one reason to love the G4's camera. Although many high-end smartphones now come with a "pro" or "advanced" mode that lets you tweak settings like the exposure, white balance and ISO, none of them come close to the G4's manual mode.

The G4 camera's manual mode is great for pros who want to fiddle with shutter speed, ISO, white balance and shoot RAW files. Image: Screenshot/Raymond Wong

You can dial the ISO from 50 all the way up to 2700; slow the shutter speed down to 30 seconds or speed it up to 1/6,000th of a second; and even set the white balance to the exact color temperature — how warm (yellow) or cool (blue) you want a picture tinted — from 2,400K to 2,700K (Kelvin).

Not only that, but you can shoot RAW files in .dng format. RAW files, if you have no clue what I'm talking about, are the unprocessed and uncompressed versions of an image. They contain tons more data than JPEGs so you can process them in an image editor like Adobe's Photoshop or Lightroom without losing details.

With manual mode and RAW shooting, you can do slow exposure pics like this one. Pic in upper left is the RAW file, and this is the final pic after image processing in Photoshop. Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable

When shooting in RAW, the G4 also takes a JPEG of the same image. That's because RAW files can't be shared to Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter — they're not supported file types. The only downside to RAW files is that they're huge. The G4's RAW files clock in at 19.1MB each. You're definitely going to need to buy a larger capacity microSD card to expand the 32GB of internal storage if you're eyeing this feature.

The 8-megapixel selfie camera did a great job applying digital makeup to me and Christina's faces. Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable

Lastly, the G4 can record video at up to 4K ultra high definition (UHD) resolution. It can also take 8-megapixel selfies. I'm all for high-res selfies, but they're almost too sharp. Mashable fashion reporter David Yi took a couple of selfies and just couldn't stand how every single pore on his face was visible.

Essential UI

The G4 runs Android 5.1 "Lollipop" with LG's UX 4.0 user interface "skin" on top. Out of all the Android smartphones LG has ever produced, the software on the G4 is the least offensive.

As was the case going from the G2 to the G3, the G4 dials back many of the company's customizations in favor of design elements that are more in line with Google's "material" design language. Icons are flat, colorful and attractive — a big jump from the dull pastels on the G3. And LG's main apps all look great with material design.

Bloatware is also kept at a minimum. On the international G4 model, the McAfee Security app was the only one pre-installed. On the T-Mobile model, there's a whole folder of carrier app junk, but that's about it. As proof the G4's moving closer to an unaltered version of Android (a.k.a. "stock" Android), the U.S. models won't even ship with Android's generic Internet browser, only Chrome.

Android 5.1 "Lollipop" on the G4 is fast, smooth and attractive. Image: Luke Leonard/Mashable

That's not to say there aren't any LG software touches. KnockOn, the feature that lets you double-tap the screen to wake up the phone is still useful. Swiping down from the top bezel while the display is off brings down a small pane with the status bar, date and time — a feature designed to conserve battery life.

A new feature called "Smart Bulletin," which is a swipe in from the left of the main homescreen is also convenient — it displays bite-sized apps like LG Health, the calendar and the QuickRemote. I really dug this feature, but if you don't want it you can easily disable it.

The whole nine yards

It's no longer acceptable for a flagship smartphone to get a pass for not bringing its "A" game. There were many checkboxes the G4 needed to tick off to compete with the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 and it got them all.

The G4 may not be made of metal and glass, but the genuine leather still feels premium in its own way. It's lightning fast and the user interface is finally devoid of all the crap that made its predecessors unbearable.

It has a spectacular IPS Quantum display that I can't help but gush over all day long. The cameras are phenomenal and really push the limits of mobile photography to new heights. And serious power users will love the removable battery and microSD card slot.

It's great to see LG hasn't completely given up; the G4 is exactly what the company needs to escape Apple and Samsung's enormous shadows. I just hope there are still enough customers who haven't given up on LG.