Hands-on with the leather-backed LG G4 [Updated]

NEW YORK CITY—We're here in New York City checking out LG's freshly launched flagship device: the LG G4.

LG has a couple of issues to deal with this year—the first is the build quality of its devices. While Samsung has gotten most of the criticism for making devices out of cheap-feeling plastic, LG really hasn't been any better. The G-Flex 2 and G3 were both made of bottom-of-the-barrel glossy, greasy plastic.

With LG's Korean rival upping its materials game with the all-glass Galaxy S6, LG was left as the cheapest-feeling OEM, and the company has responded with a new back material for the G4: leather. A leather back has been done before as an option on the 2014 Moto X, but LG has gone the extra mile and added actual stitching on the back of the device.

There's a seam right up the center with stitches on either side, making the phone look a lot like a leather car seat. There are no tricks here; actual thread is pierced through the leather with a sewing machine. The leather is going to dent and scratch as you use the device, and whether you consider that a pro or a con is up to you. The leather comes in six different colors and is glued to a removable plastic back.

If leather isn't your thing, the G4 also comes in plastic with a diamond pattern on the back. The pattern has a bit of depth to it and feels slightly harder than the worst plastic out there, but for the most part it's normal glossy plastic.

No matter which back you pick, the buttons and sides of the device are plastic.

The second thing LG needs to address is the SoC. The cookie-cutter OEM move is usually "go with the fastest Qualcomm SoC," but this year, that's the Snapdragon 810, which isn't very good thanks to its heat problems. Despite LG publicly saying that the 810 didn't have any heat issues, it switched to the Snapdragon 808 for the G4.

The 810 is an eight-core chip with four speedy Cortex A57 cores and four low-power Cortex A53 cores. The 808 is a six-core chip, dropping two of the high-end A57 cores. Will this solve the 810's heat problems? Will what is essentially a dual-core chip with some low-power helpers be fast enough? How much battery life will this save? We'll have to wait until we have a unit in for testing to see. While casually using the G4, it seemed fast enough.

The G4 has 3GB of RAM and a base storage of 32GB, and it runs Android 5.1 with LG's skin slathered on top. Like the G3, there's GRAM onboard the video controller, allowing it to store the current screen state so the CPU/GPU can fall asleep and save power.

Like the G3, the G4 sports a 5.5-inch 1440p screen. Again, that's more pixels than are necessary, so it's a waste of power. The screen looks great, though. LG has equipped the G4 with something called an "IPS Quantum Display." The company says the new display tech has 20% better color reproduction, is 25% brighter, and has a 50% increase in contrast ratio. Unfortunately, the company doesn't say what these numbers are compared to.

The cameras have both seen upgrades. The front camera has jumped from 2.1MP to a more selfie-friendly 8MP. The rear camera has been upgraded from 13MP on the G3 to 16MP, and it keeps the optical image stabilization (OIS) and laser autofocus system. The OIS has been upgraded and now does stabilization in three axes instead of two; LG says the stabilization can handle more movement than any other camera. The company added a color spectrum sensor to the back of the phone right below the LED flash. The extra sensor should help the camera capture more accurate colors and get the white balance right. And thanks to Lollipop, there's a bunch of manual camera controls now, like aperture, ISO, and shutter speed.

Double-clicking on the volume key will take a picture regardless of whether the camera app is open or not. A "blind" shot without any viewfinder will take some practice, but it's a cool feature once you get the aim right.

The battery is 3000 mAh, the same as the G3. The battery is notable because it's also still removable, making the G4 and Galaxy Note the only major flagship devices that still have user-swappable batteries. LG said it had options of keeping the removable battery or shaving off a few tenths of a millimeter, and its research revealed that people didn't care that much about thinness.

The buttons are on the back again, just like the G3 and G Flex series. They're still plastic, and they seem like the exact same parts as past LG phones. Double-tap to wake is back, too, making the power button vestigial.

The front is all glass, and there's a nice cross hatch design on the bezel behind the glass. We've always liked the little textures LG embeds behind the glass in devices like the Nexus 4 and G3.

LG's skin looks much like it has in the past. It's a very flat redesign of Android with the occasional over-the-top animation, like a help popup that appears on a white sheet of liquid that rolls to a rest.

The phone will be available in late May or June in the US, and all five big carriers will have the device. LG said that pricing is up to the carriers.