Brevity is not my strong suit. No one is going to read this whole thing, but as long as one person reads at least one section of this, I'll be happy. Feel free to skip ahead to a section you specifically want to read a comparison about, if you don't want to read the whole thing. I recommend the Performance and Gaming sections.
Firstly, here is a Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, gameplay footage, (no camera videos yet) for the things I will be referring to.
Secondly, I am no phone reviewer. I buy phones once every 3-4 years, until this time where I jumped the gun to switch to a Pixel, so I have only used 5 phones in my life (mostly midrange) and don't have too much to compare to.
Thirdly, this is long enough to have an outline, so feel free to jump to read something that interests you if you don't want to read the whole thing:

1. Introduction
2. Dimensions
3. Haptics
4. Display
5. Fingerprint sensor
6. Speakers
7. Microphone
8. Battery
9. General software and features
10. Default Launcher
11. Always On Display
12. Performance
13. Gaming
14. Camera
15. Dual Screen
16. Conclusion
17. tl;dr

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Introduction

Hi /GooglePixel I picked up a LG G8X as about 4 months ago when my Moto Z Play died on me, and the LG G8X seemed to have everything I wanted in a phone at the great price of $500 CAD (at the time – the phone’s even cheaper now!). Snapdragon 855, 4000 mAh battery with positive battery reviews, AMOLED display, wide angle camera, 128gb storage + expandable, headphone jack, front-facing fingerprint scanner (in this case, in-screen). I also could have bought a separate dual screen if I wanted.
Unfortunately, after having used it for 4 months, I started feeling wary of the phone. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but I felt the performance felt faster than the MZP definitely, but not… remarkably faster than this 4 year old midrange phone with a Snapdragon 625? The phone was heavier than I’d like and was actually straining my wrist with prolonged usage (weak wrists I guess), the standby time at my home was draining about 2%/hour, recently opened apps and websites seemed to require refreshes frequently, and most frustratingly of all, the “previous app” gesture was completely busted to the point I just use the Recent Apps page to go to my previously used apps.
For Boxing Week in Canada, lots of carriers had the Pixel 4a 5G for $260. This is the phone I would have bought if it had been out when my MZP died, so I decided to pick it up. If I didn’t like it, I’d have 15 days to return it. If I did like it more than the LG G8X, I’d try to sell my LG G8X. My fears were that the Pixel would have worse performance with its midrange SD765 (especially compared to the LG G8X's SD 855, 2019's fastest Android processor), possibly worse battery, I’d miss the expandable storage, and most importantly… that I wouldn’t be able to sell the LG G8X at a reasonable price to recoup the costs.
So here is an ludicrously in-depth, very long-winded comparison between the two phones, based on my personal experiences with them. Keep in mind the LG G8X is a 4 month old phone so in some ways may have deteriorated in terms of performance and battery. I guess you could say it’s a bit unfair to compare a brand new days-old phone with a 4 month old phone, but I guess it could also be said that it’s a bit unfair to compare a SD 855 phone with a SD 765 phone. That being said, I haven’t noticed an appreciable decline in performance or battery on the LG.
So, which came out on top? (Spoiler: surprisingly, despite its “worse specs” on paper, the Pixel won out in nearly every regard, completely creamed the LG in memory management, is basically the same in terms of app and website opening speeds, even games better.)
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Dimensions

Perhaps a dumb reason, but one of the main reasons I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X is the weight. I didn’t realize how much of a difference 27g would make, but my wrist gets tired using the LG G8X after a while, whereas my wrist does not with the Pixel nearly as much. In terms of the length and width, though the LG is bigger, it doesn’t feel much bigger to use (outside of the weight).
Some people like huge phones, and good for them! For me, the Pixel’s lighter profile wins out by far.
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Hardware

Power buttons for both phones are on the right side. Pixel has volume also on the right, which makes taking screenshots a pain. LG has the volume buttons on the left, much more convenient for screenshots. LG also has a useful Google Assistant physical button on the right below the volume buttons, which is not remappable. Pixel has a matte plastic back with a camera bump, the LG G8X has a glass back that is completely flush with the camera. In theory this sounds nice for the LG G8X, but I suspect the glass contributes to the weight of the phone. This is an incredibly slippery phone! The weight of the charging cord is often enough to pull this slippery guy off a tabletop. Can be solved with a case.
LG wins here. The glass feels more premium, and the buttons are a lot nicer. The flush nature of the device is really nice.
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Haptics

Not something I care too much about honestly. I had read some review somewhere saying the LG haptics were bad, but I didn’t mind it at all at the time. Similar to the MZP. Now that I have the Pixel though, I think I see what they mean. The LG feels …tinnier? than the Pixel. The first time I received a notification on the Pixel I almost jumped out of my seat at how full and robust the vibration was.
Pixel wins here, I think. Maybe. But I don’t really care much for haptics so it’s a non-issue for me.
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Display

LG G8X has a slightly bigger screen at 6.4” vs 6.2”. In practice I can’t really tell the difference. In terms of image quality, I am no expert at distinguishing this. Pixel appears a bit brighter than the LG G8X at max brightness. Pixel appears a bit darker than the LG G8X at minimum brightness. Honestly not a huge difference either way. At low brightness, the LG has a bit of a “black smear” effect that I notice while scrolling that isn’t as evident on the Pixel. Colours, I don’t know. Reds and whites look more natural on the Pixel otherwise hard for me to tell much of a difference. However, LG gives you a lot of flexibility in playing around with the colours of the display and stuff and I’m sure you could get it to look the way you want. The Pixel only offers 3 colour options. Finally, the status bar on the Pixel is HUGE and feels like they could’ve saved a lot of space if they cut it down. Thus for many apps the LG G8X feels significantly more spacious because of the status bar – the Pixel’s status bar is, from what I can visually estimate, literally twice as tall as the LG’s. Auto brightness: LG G8X is way better. Smooth gradation, whereas Pixel is abrupt.
Overall I think the Pixel is maybe a tad nicer on default settings, but I’ll give it to LG G8X for the flexibility with adjusting the screen colours however you want, as well as the extra real estate afforded by the much smaller status bar (and of course bigger screen).
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Fingerprint sensor

LG G8X fingerprint is frustratingly inaccurate. I am only successfully like 60-70% of the time with my thumbs. Sometimes it’s fantastic, other times I cannot get it to work 5 times in a row and I need to enter the passcode manually. I can’t seem to recreate the conditions where it doesn’t work. That being said, I really like having front-facing fingerprint scanners: my phone is often sitting on my desk, and it’s really nice to be able to check things on my phone without having to lift up the phone or entering a passcode. Also, when my phone is on my desk, I unlock my phone with my index finger which is a lot more accurate than when I use my thumb, I guess because the index finger has such a smaller surface area. Thus that frustration with inaccuracy isn’t as big of an issue when my phone is on my desk, but it’s still generally much slower than a regular fingerprint reader.
The Pixel fingerprint reader on the other hand works ridiculously well (maybe because of the index finger thing? Though my old thumb Moto Z Play was also a lot quicker and more reliable than the LG G8X), and is much quicker in recognizing the fingerprint. There is also a “Swipe down on fingerprint reader” gesture to bring down notification panel. I constantly get false positives when I accidentally rest my finger on the sensor, so I’ve turned it off. The fingerprint reader is incredibly shallow to the point where I sometimes don’t know where it is because it’s hard to feel. As a result, sometimes I need to search for it a bit, and other times I accidentally turn it on without even noticing that I activated the fingerprint sensor. Both problems could be solved with a case (which I don’t have yet)
Overall it’s a tossup for me. I like the reliability and speed of the Pixel’s, but I like the front-facing sensor on the LG for when I have the phone laying on my desk (which is a lot of the time).
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Speakers

I can’t tell. They both sound different. The max volumes are very similar in volume. The Pixel has a much quieter, almost imperceptible min volume. The Pixel 4a 5G sounds more… spacious? Maybe echoey. The LG G8X’s speakers sound more… precise? There is an obvious difference in the two sounds, which sounds “better” might be an obvious difference to others but I can’t tell. I have to assume that the LG G8X’s headphone jack audio is much better than the Pixels with the HI-Fi Quad DAC thing, but I don’t have any high end headphones so I can’t test it really. The LG G8X has some fancy “DTS:X 3D Surround” effects, which all sound terrible always, so I never leave them on. LG G8X has an equalizer, Pixel does not. Audio for both come out of the bottom right “speaker grille” and the earpiece speaker grille. For both phone the bottom speaker is louder than the earpiece, but the Pixel’s speakers are closer in volume than the LG G8X’s: block the bottom speaker, and the audio is greatly diminished.
I think the LG wins this one with the audio options and flexibility? There’s probably something fundamentally different between the speakers on the two phones but I really I can’t tell which I prefer. People had a lot of complaints about the Pixel 5 speakers, I have no clue if the 4a 5G have the same problems.
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Microphone

Take a listen for yourself. I read a very relevant CBC report with both phones about 15 cm away from my face. I also recorded my laptop playing some music, about 30cm away from the phones. I think the Pixel maybe takes in more sound, but as a result also has more background noise than the LG. On the contrary the LG sounds tinnier to me.
Overall I still think I like the Pixel better, but again take a listen yourself!
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Battery

The Pixel has a 3800 mAh battery, the LG has a 4000 mAh battery. That being said, there are obviously many other factors contributing to battery life (processor, cell signal, etc). If I just use both phones nonstop, they both have great SOT. Both get about 8-9 hours for me of SOT uninterrupted. It’s the standby time that the Pixel excels at though. Overnight drain is <1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 1.5% on my LG. Standby drain while out and about is about 1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 2%/h on the LG. It’s unfortunately the standby drain that turns the LG G8X from a true 2 day phone to a not-quite-fully-2 day phone. (Also keep in mind cell signal plays a big role in battery drain – the signal in my area isn’t super great. I’m sure the drain for others isn’t as bad as the 2%/h I’m experiencing, but you might live in an area with better reception!)
Both phones have great battery life. I will give this one to the 4a 5G for the great standby time. I’ve included screenshots of my (very phone heavy) holiday break battery life, as per Accubattery. I may continue to add Pixel battery life screenshots as the days go by.
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General software and special features

Mostly just going to list features here, bear with me. Pixel has the huge advantage of having day 1 Android updates for 3 years. LG G8X has maybe 1 update left in it, if at all? Both phones have double tap to wake. LG has double tap the status bar to sleep, which is very nice. Pixel has call screening with the phone, Now Playing song recognition. Notifications are basically identical. LG G8X technically has a 1 handed/Reachability mode, but it has worked a grand total of 2 times for me despite trying it countless times. Would have been nice. The Pixel’s “Recent apps” screen has a Screenshot button and a Select (text) option. I don’t find the screenshot button very useful at all as I can just take a screenshot with the (admittedly uncomfortable) Power button + Volume Down combo. Select text I have not used yet but I could see being useful. The LG has an, in my opinion, much more useful set of frequently used icons on the bottom. Not customizable, but pretty true to what I use frequently. I use the feature very often. In addition to split screen apps, LG also gives you the option for a “pop up window”, Windows style, that you can drag around the screen, which could be useful for multitasking I guess but I’m still not sure in what use cases you’d have multiple windows-style windows open (they don’t work on the dual screen).
LG apps
LG has a bunch of bloatware that I never use and I disabled right away. I haven’t tested out the Whale browser at all. LG has its own LG Health app which I did not check out. It has an FM Radio which could be useful. There is a screenshot tool/app which could be useful, but I just use the regular screenshot shortcut. (Speaking about screenshots: Android 11 brought with it screenshots that are instantly taken as soon as you press Power + volume down, which is fantastic on the Pixel. On the LG, you still have to hold the buttons for a second or two. That being said, it is very annoying taking screenshots on the Pixel due to the volume and power buttons being on the same side. Android 11 also removed the ability to take a screenshot by holding the power button, which could have been great.) LG also has a pretty robust “HD Audio Recorder” app with lots of flexibility, but doesn’t do the transcribing that the Google audio recorder does (Which you can download though to the LG via apk). LG G8X has 2 apps you can assign to each bottom corner of the lock screen, which is where I put my GCam. Both phones have double tap power button to turn on camera shortcuts. LG also has a “Context Awareness” feature, which lets you adjust your sound profile, Bluetooth, wifi settings automatically based on your location. Also lets you find your parking spot. Neat in theory, but I didn’t use it much for concerns about battery drain (did not test to see if it really drained much). LG has a “Floating bar” you can turn on, which is a little tab which gives you shortcuts to apps that you can set, audio controls, screen capture, quick contacts. I could see this being really useful! I didn’t realize til just now writing this that we could set our own apps though, so I haven’t tested it to see if I’d actually use it. Finally, the G8X has a desktop mode, which I unfortunately don’t have access to. I can imagine this being useful in certain situations.
LG's previous app gesture
One big complaint that I have a big reason I was tempted to ditch the LG. The “previous app” gesture is completely busted on the LG. I won’t talk about it much here as I’ve already documented it elsewhere. In short, it’s completely unreliable and only works the way you’d expect it to work like 30% of the time. It is infuriating and makes me want to chuck out the windows at times. I’ve stopped using the gesture entirely and just open the Recent Tabs instead, which over time adds up a decent amount of time. The Pixel has no such problem. Generally the LG is also buggier than the Pixel, with jankier animations, turning off out of nowhere, sometimes getting stuck on the Recent Apps screen, completely going unresponsive at times – the latter three problems being quite rare, but they’ve happened.
Pixel power menus
Emergency info, power off, restart, Google Pay, Google Home devices. No longer has screenshot. LG power menu: Power off, power off and restart. Pixel definitely wins here.
Volume menus
Pixel has media volume slider, notifications toggle, Live Transcribe, and a shortcut to an audio settings overlay. LG has a context-sensitive volume slider (media volume slider when there’s audio playing, call volume during a call, notification volume otherwise), and a drop-down menu for individually controlling the different types of volumes. If you don’t want a context-sensitive slider, you can also set it to by default open just the one type. Pixel wins here for me: though the context sensitive slider can be useful, Live Transcribe is a pretty neat feature. Pixel also lets me control both notifications (Toggle) and media volume slider within one tap, whereas the LG only lets me change (in one tap) whichever context sensitive option is available at the time, otherwise I’d have to open the menu.
Overall, LG has a lot of features crammed in, but I rarely if ever use any of them. They are functionally bloatware for me. LG does have some genuinely useful software quirks like double tap status bar to sleep, the Floating Bar (I guess), and the lock screen shortcuts, but I have never been so aggravated with a phone before in my life with the previous app gesture and other bugs that I have to give Google the win here. (Also, reliable frequent software updates, less bloatware, and other useful features like Call Screening, Live Transcribe, Now Playing). The caveat is I haven’t used the Pixel long enough to see the bugs present in the Pixel.
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Default launchers

Google uses the Pixel Launcher. Very minimal flexibility, but it is pretty slick to use with great animations. Google search bar on the bottom, At A Glance (temperature, date, calendar events) at the top, Google feed to the left. You can’t adjust icon packs or grid size. App drawer showing frequently used apps at the top, and the rest of the apps in alphabetical order in a scrolling pile/list. LG has their own launcher with more flexibility (screen swipe effect, icon shape, grid size, option for left swipe to be Google feed or LG’s whatever feed). Unfortunately LG’s app drawer is truly horrendous, a horizontally moving multipaged mess that doesn’t automatically sort (if you add an app, you need to manually sort alphabetically to get them all alphabetical again). I never know which page I am on (there is an indicator at the bottom, but still) and thus it takes me far longer than it should to find an app I’m looking for. Just give me a scrolly bar!
Either way, both launchers aren’t great (except for animations -they’re both slick) and you should really use some 3rd party launcher instead. I use Microsoft Launcher personally, which has some janky animations but lots of great functionality. Nova of course is another popular option with even more customization.
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Always On Display

Pixel Always On Display displays 5 notification icons, time, date, weather, battery. No customization. LG G8X lets you customize the home screen quite a bit (you can add your own images, change aspects of the format, displays time, date, battery but only displays 3 notification icons. Has quick icons you can swipe to access to eg. turn on flashlight, change songs, etc. The Pixel’s is dimmer than the LG’s, which I think I prefer. The LG’s is very bright at night when I’m trying to sleep. Finally, picking up the Pixel will wake it up and bring it to the lock screen. Picking up the LG does nothing.
Kind of a toss up. At first I was leaning toward the LG for its flexibility, but the Pixel’s 5 notification icons are frankly more useful to me. I also like the dimmer AOD of the Pixel. If you’ve got the Dual Screen, you’re almost never even going to see the AOD on the LG.
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Performance

Okay, so I realize that “opening apps and web pages in quick succession” is not something anyone ever does in real life. That being said, I think there is a little bit of merit to it.
Another reason I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X was that this supposedly high end Snapdragon 855 didn’t feel nearly as quick or snappy as I thought it would. A definite improvement from my Moto Z Play, but also not quite the blazing fast speed I was expecting? So I did a ridiculously unscientific speed test between the two. Keep in mind the following caveats:
- MY LG G8X is 4 months old
- LG G8X has 111gb used of 128gb, Pixel has 75.14gb used of 128gb.
- Apps are close to parity but not quite
- I love reading about tech, but have not myself owned too many products. I am not a professional reviewer by any means, and have never really owned any high end phones (I had an iPhone 4 when it came out, the next “highest end” phone I’ve owned would be this LG G8X). So eg. with displays, I’m not the best at judging.
- I only got the dual screen a day before I got the Pixel, so most of my LG G8X impressions are from Dual Screen use. I’ve also used the Dual Screen for a bit since getting it, so I do have thoughts in its own section.
- I did comparisons in two different scenarios: 1st scenario, both phones were restarted, full battery. 2nd run, both phones had been on and used over a period of about 48 hours without turning them off. LG G8X was at 70% and Pixel was at 100%. Pixel was used generally much more than the LG phone was all day. The reason for doing it both after a fresh restart and after a few days on is that I had noticed that my LG seemed to perform worse after several days, and seemed to be better after a fresh restart.
1st run
With both phones freshly restarted and at the same battery percentage, geeeeeeeeeeeeeenerally the LG G8X was faster at opening apps than the Pixel. But honestly not as frequently as I was expecting. The LG G8X was generally able to open more intensive apps a bit faster than the Pixel. I’ve attached the “stats” here. In short, the LG was able to open 12 apps less than half a second faster than the Pixel, whereas the Pixel was able to open 9 apps less than half a second faster than the LG. The LG was able to open 8 apps more than half a second faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 6 apps more than half a second faster than the LG. The phones opened 7 websites equally quickly. In terms of websites, the LG was able to open 23 websites faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 9 websites slightly faster than the LG. They opened 3 websites at the same speed.
The most egregious thing here was the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of keeping app and websites in memory. It wasn’t even remotely close. Even before I got the Pixel I had noticed my LG seemed to be dropping apps quickly, but it wasn’t clear how quick it was until I directly compared these two phones. On my first run, after loading tons of Chrome tabs, both phones had to reload 80 days (the most recent app). After that, the LG continued to consistently reload apps, whereas the Pixel was able to load at least 7 apps without having to reload before I stopped testing.
2nd run
At this point I had both phones on for about 48 hours and had used my Pixel for about 3 hours that day (then charged to 100%) and then used my LG for about 2 hours right before testing it (battery about 70% when I started testing). I cleared all the apps from memory. I have no clue if the battery difference contributed or what, but the results completely flipped around, and quite dramatically. The Pixel was able to open apps slightly faster by <0.5s than the LG with 38 apps. The LG was slightly faster by >0.5s than the Pixel with 10 apps. The Pixel was noticeably >0.5s faster than the LG with 8 apps, and the LG was noticeably faster >0.5s than the Pixel with 6 apps. They were equally fast at opening 17 apps.
Really striking results. I rarely turn off my phone, which is maybe why I’ve been feeling my LG gets sluggish pretty easily? Clear something about keeping the LG on for periods of time causes… stuff… to build up, and the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of app opening on the second run. That being said, the <0.5s speed advantages really are quite miniscule, could very much be due to margin of error from my tapping, and of course there are always a million variables impacting how quickly an app opens up. But still, the Pixel is no slouch with its SD 765.
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Gaming

I also ran the Dolphin emulator on The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Both phones performed equally well, hitting 29-30 fps for Wind Waker and 59-60fps for Fire Emblem consistently. Genshin Impact ran a bit smoother on the LG than the LG (and the default setting for LG was “Medium” graphics, while for the Pixel was “Low”.) Both phones had lots of frame drops. I’ve included some screen recordings of Genshin Impact, both ran at medium settings, as well as the Dolphin games at default settings, using each respective phone’s default screen recorders. I’m not sure why the LG recording is such miserable quality (and muted), they both visually looked the same while actually playing the game. Similarly, I have no clue why the Pixel recording made the voices all echoey, they sound fine normally. Similarly, with the Dolphin emulator, normally Wind Waker is able to hold 29-30 pretty well, I suspect also running the screen recorder simultaneously caused it to drop frames. I repeated the Dolphin emulation after resetting the phone, and I still got frame rate drops. But uh, yeah, the Pixel also held its framerate better with the screen recorder than the LG did (normally they’re both good at holding the framerate).
Using Dolphin to emulate Xenoblade was a completely different story. Through the opening sequence, both phones (and my laptop) hiccupped at the same places. That being said, outside of those hiccup spots in cutscenes (and one area with a larger concentration of enemies), the Pixel 4a 5G was mostly able to maintain 30fps. Exploring Colony 9 was a smooth 30fps throughout the city. The LG G8X hiccupped in those cutscenes, but in other places where the Pixel was 30fps, the LG G8X was chugging along at 15-25fps. Most notably this occurred while exploring Colony 9. I have no clue what’s going on here, I didn’t actually expect the Pixel to perform so well here, or the LG G8X to perform so poorly. I tried walking around Colony 9 again when my phone cooled down a bit and it performed better, but quickly tanked back down to ~20fps within 15 seconds. I suspect LG throttles its phone pretty hard?
Overall, shockingly, I have to give the Pixel the win here. It’s no comparison. You can check out the gameplay vids yourself. I don’t know if I have a lemon of an LG G8X or what. If anyone else is able to emulate Xenoblade on their LG G8X, let me know how it performs for you. Is my phone a lemon? Or did LG just optimize their phone extremely poorly? (ALSO Apologies for the terrible resolution for the LG recorder, I didn’t realize you could change the resolution to full HD til my rerecording after the phone had cooled down).
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Camera

I thought the LG’s camera was fantastic coming from the Moto Z Play. Then I got the Pixel! GCam does help, but unfortunately you can’t set it to the double-tap-power button shortcut. The LG camera app does have some merits (lots of flexibility in image settings if you have the time to tweak settings to take a photo), but for a quick point and shoot it just doesn’t compare to the Pixel a lot of the time. That being said, I feel the LG actually sometimes takes more accurate photos? If I take a photo of something drab and dull, the LG captures it pretty accurately, whereas the Pixel takes a far nicer looking photo but doesn’t look like the drab reality. The Pixel though also takes much nicer, realistic photos of nice vibrant things, whereas the LG’s photos look more washed out. For day shots, or shots facing light, the… dynamic range? Is that what it’s called? For the Pixel is far better than the Pixel. The LG will blow out eg. the details in clouds (ie. Clouds will just appear white and uniform), while the Pixel will preserve the detail and colour of the clouds. For night shots, the LG actually takes better non-Night mode night shots than the Pixel. But the Pixel’s Night Mode absolutely smokes LG’s Night Mode, no questions asked. LG with GCam’s Night Sight helps a lot though. The LG’s selfie camera focuses off into the distance instead of your face so is functionally useless. Finally, I don’t take videos so won’t really comment on it. LG’s wide camera is a lot wider than the Pixel’s, which is a plus for LG.
Overall, the Pixel has a better camera but the LG isn’t too shabby, and sometimes takes nicer shots than the Pixel. Non-Night mode shots are actually better on the LG, but usually Pixel’s night mode turns out better looking. I’ll let the photos do the talking, where I have comparison shots between the LG (with the LG cam as well as the GCam), vs. the Pixel. I’m a lot more interested in shots with challenging lighting, thus the weird dark shots. Unfortunately the weather isn’t great here so no nice outdoor shots. Also unfortunately I have now noticed that a lot of them are blurrier than I’d like – I am too lazy to change them now! I may add more photos to the albums later.
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Dual screen

I just picked this up a day before the Pixel came in. I was pretty excited for it because there are definitely times where I want to multitask, or where I’ve got split screen open trying to copy some text from what window to the other but the keyboard pops up and blocks my view.
Unfortunately, the dual screen implementation feels far more half-hearted than that of what I’m hearing about the Surface Duo. The two screens feel more like two separate machines with a tenuous link, than like two parts of the same unit. At the same time, the 2nd screen doesn’t have the same functionality as the main screen: you can’t split screen it, you can’t change the launcher, the home screen is not continuous at all with the main screen’s home screen, and when you throw one screen’s contents over to the other screen, it often feels like a mystery what will occupy the screen whose contents you just threw over to the other screen.
Using one screen as a keyboard for the other screen in theory sounds really neat, but it only works with the LG keyboard, which has an embarrassingly tiny dictionary with terrible autocorrect suggestions. Even when it works with the LG keyboard, when you tap in a text field on the top screen, the phone does this janky animation where the keyboard first shows up on the top screen before jumping down to the bottom screen. If you tap on a text field on the bottom screen, it won’t by default push the bottom screen contents up and open the keyboard on the bottom screen (which could be what some people want, I guess).
Very, very, very few apps make good use of the dual screens, even with the 3rd party Wide Mode app which forces any app into Wide Mode (which just turns apps into Tablet Mode rather than giving unique content to each screen). The LG Whale browser seems to be the best app to make use of the dual screen (you can open links in one screen on the other screen) – that being said, I’d much rather use other browsers. Chrome does a reasonable job, and you can open taps from one screen in the other screen. I can’t find a way to get Youtube to open a video on one screen and me scrolling through comments/searching through other videos on the other screen.
Overall something I really wish they would have incorporated was, say, opening a link in one app and the internet browser automatically opening in the other screen, or at least giving me the option to open in the other screen! Say, a friend sends me a link to a website and then I open the website in the opposite screen automatically and then continue talking to my friend on the first screen. Not a feature that is currently implemented.
The LG Gamepad mode seems like a great idea: the top screen acts as the screen, the bottom screen acts as the gamepad. Supposedly the games will detect it as a native gamepad. Unfortunately, it was not compatible with Stadia, Xbox GamePass Streaming, or Dolphin Emulator. It was compatible with Final Fantasy V and PPSSPP. Games like Genshin Impact, a game without controller support absolutely begging for it, work really well with it as you can also create a custom gamepad with buttons that correspond to tapping areas on the game screen. I was most looking forward to it working with Stadia, Gamepass and the emulators though (I don’t play too many native Android games) so I definitely am pretty bummed.
My biggest complaint though is there just simply is no easy way to type with the dual screen vertical. Though I’d like to make use of the dual screen features sometimes for the occasional time I want to multitask, I sadly discovered the few times I would use the dual screen to its potential does not warrant having the carry this colossal phone around with its incredibly uncomfortable typing position. The obvious solution would be to have a “wide mode” split keyboard, which actually does appear if you Wide Mode an app and then use the keyboard. But from what I can tell, there is no way to “wide mode” a keyboard when you’re using the dual screens as, well, dual screens. On single screen phones I usually type with two hands, whereas I can’t type with one hand on this phone because the keyboard only shows up on one screen, and the other screen is in the way. On this phone, the only way to type is to hold the phone with one hand, and use a finger on the other hand to peck at or swipe the keys.
Overall, I think I like a dual screen in theory, but LG didn’t execute it very well at all. Instead of feeling like an extension of the main screen, it feels like its entirely own entity and doesn’t always flow well with the main screen. The absolute paucity of apps making use of the dual screen to its full potential is unfortunate. The biggest culprit is that typing in dual screen vertical mode (The way I use it most frequently) is extremely uncomfortable. All these drawbacks don’t make keeping the dual screen on worthwhile, as someone who only occasionally requires the dual screen.
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Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! This wound up being nearly 7000 words… wasn’t expecting it to be, like, even a quarter that long. I'll be happy if even one person reads through 50% of this.
I think the Pixel demonstrates that spec sheets really are not everything. Either that, or I got a lemon of an LG G8X (not outside the realm of possibility). With the caveat of the LG having much more fuller storage and being used for 4 more months, despite the LG’s supposedly better chip, performance is objectively pretty similar between the two phones in terms of app opening and opening websites. The Pixel was actually beating out the LG pretty consistently after both phones were used for 48 hours. Both phones run Genshin Impact kind of miserably, and run Gamecube games on Dolphin without a hitch. The Pixel was significantly better than the LG in emulating the Wii. The Pixel consistently destroyed the LG in terms of memory management. The Pixel’s smaller battery capacity of 3800 mAh outlasted the LG’s 4000 mAh battery, even when the LG was brand new. The camera in the Pixel is far better than the LG. The software experience of the Pixel is smoother and less buggy (and certainly less frustrating). The fingerprint sensor is a tossup for me. The audio is maybe better in the LG, but I can’t really tell. Screens are similar. The LG does “feel” more premium, but I do prefer the lightness of the Pixel. The one definitely advantage the LG has over the Pixel is the expandable storage.
Needless to say, I think I am going to keep the Pixel. I didn’t want to leave the LG G8X community behind though without giving a good reason to do so, and I hope this 6000+ word document with accompanying Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, and screen recordings explain why I did so, and also demonstrate that spec sheets aren’t everything. I’ll probably try to sell the LG G8X + Dual Screen, but taking a look at how long these phones stay on Facebook Marketplace/eBay, I’m not very hopeful I’ll be able to sell it at even a fraction of what I bought it for. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I spent way too much time on this.
Also I haven’t proofread this, so I’m sure there are mistakes abound.
Also I really need to get working on actually important stuff. Thanks for reading!
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Much needed tl;dr (Which is still long):

- Spec sheets are not everything.
- Was getting tired of LG G8X's weight, previous app gesture being busted, standby drain, general glitchiness, slower performance than expected, so I picked up a Pixel 4a 5G.
- Did lots of tests which you can check out in the Dropbox
- I subjectively like Pixel's camera, speakers, microphone, default screen colour balance, software cleanliness better.
- Really surprisingly, my specific days-old Pixel 4a 5G outperforms my 4 month old LG G8X in app opening and website opening (unless I freshly restart both phones). REALLY surprisingly, my Pixel ran circles around the LG in Wii emulation, and was equally competent at Gamecube emulation and Genshin Impact
- I will be keeping the Pixel. I will try to sell the LG G8X but am not hopeful. I will miss LG G8X's expandable storage but not much else.

Brevity is not my strong suit.
Firstly, here is a Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, gameplay footage, (no camera videos yet) for the things I will be referring to.
Secondly, this is long enough to have an outline, so feel free to jump to read something that interests you if you don't want to read the whole thing:

1. Introduction
2. Dimensions
3. Haptics
4. Display
5. Fingerprint sensor
6. Speakers
7. Microphone
8. Battery
9. General software and features
10. Default Launcher
11. Always On Display
12. Performance
13. Gaming
14. Camera
15. Dual Screen
16. Conclusion
17. tl;dr

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Introduction

Hi /LGG8X. I picked up a LG G8X as about 4 months ago when my Moto Z Play died on me, and the LG G8X seemed to have everything I wanted in a phone at the great price of $500 CAD (at the time – the phone’s even cheaper now!). Snapdragon 855, 4000 mAh battery with positive battery reviews, AMOLED display, wide angle camera, 128gb storage + expandable, headphone jack, front-facing fingerprint scanner (in this case, in-screen). I also could have bought a separate dual screen if I wanted.
Unfortunately, after having used it for 4 months, I started feeling wary of the phone. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but I felt the performance felt faster than the MZP definitely, but not… remarkably faster than this 4 year old midrange phone with a Snapdragon 625? The phone was heavier than I’d like and was actually straining my wrist with prolonged usage (weak wrists I guess), the standby time at my home was draining about 2%/hour, recently opened apps and websites seemed to require refreshes frequently, and most frustratingly of all, the “previous app” gesture was completely busted to the point I just use the Recent Apps page to go to my previously used apps.
For Boxing Week in Canada, lots of carriers had the Pixel 4a 5G for $260. This is the phone I would have bought if it had been out when my MZP died, so I decided to pick it up. If I didn’t like it, I’d have 15 days to return it. If I did like it more than the LG G8X, I’d try to sell my LG G8X. My fears were that the Pixel would have worse performance with its SD765, possibly worse battery, I’d miss the expandable storage, and most importantly… that I wouldn’t be able to sell the LG G8X at a reasonable price to recoup the costs.
So here is an ludicrously in-depth, very long-winded comparison between the two phones, based on my personal experiences with them. Keep in mind the LG G8X is a 4 month old phone so in some ways may have deteriorated in terms of performance and battery. I guess you could say it’s a bit unfair to compare a brand new days-old phone with a 4 month old phone, but I guess it could also be said that it’s a bit unfair to compare a SD 855 phone with a SD 765 phone. That being said, I haven’t noticed an appreciable decline in performance or battery on the LG.
So, which came out on top? (Spoiler: surprisingly, despite its “worse specs” on paper, the Pixel won out in nearly every regard, completely creamed the LG in memory management, is basically the same in terms of app and website opening speeds, even games better.)
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Dimensions

Perhaps a dumb reason, but one of the main reasons I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X is the weight. I didn’t realize how much of a difference 27g would make, but my wrist gets tired using the LG G8X after a while, whereas my wrist does not with the Pixel nearly as much. In terms of the length and width, though the LG is bigger, it doesn’t feel much bigger to use (outside of the weight).
Some people like huge phones, and good for them! For me, the Pixel’s lighter profile wins out by far.
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Hardware

Power buttons for both phones are on the right side. Pixel has volume also on the right, which makes taking screenshots a pain. LG has the volume buttons on the left, much more convenient for screenshots. LG also has a useful Google Assistant physical button on the right below the volume buttons, which is not remappable. Pixel has a matte plastic back with a camera bump, the LG G8X has a glass back that is completely flush with the camera. In theory this sounds nice for the LG G8X, but I suspect the glass contributes to the weight of the phone. This is an incredibly slippery phone! The weight of the charging cord is often enough to pull this slippery guy off a tabletop. Can be solved with a case.
LG wins here. The glass feels more premium, and the buttons are a lot nicer. The flush nature of the device is really nice.
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Haptics

Not something I care too much about honestly. I had read some review somewhere saying the LG haptics were bad, but I didn’t mind it at all at the time. Similar to the MZP. Now that I have the Pixel though, I think I see what they mean. The LG feels …tinnier? than the Pixel. The first time I received a notification on the Pixel I almost jumped out of my seat at how full and robust the vibration was.
Pixel wins here, I think. Maybe. But I don’t really care much for haptics so it’s a non-issue for me.
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Display

LG G8X has a slightly bigger screen at 6.4” vs 6.2”. In practice I can’t really tell the difference. In terms of image quality, I am no expert at distinguishing this. Pixel appears a bit brighter than the LG G8X at max brightness. Pixel appears a bit darker than the LG G8X at minimum brightness. Honestly not a huge difference either way. At low brightness, the LG has a bit of a “black smear” effect that I notice while scrolling that isn’t as evident on the Pixel. Colours, I don’t know. Reds and whites look more natural on the Pixel otherwise hard for me to tell much of a difference. However, LG gives you a lot of flexibility in playing around with the colours of the display and stuff and I’m sure you could get it to look the way you want. The Pixel only offers 3 colour options. Finally, the status bar on the Pixel is HUGE and feels like they could’ve saved a lot of space if they cut it down. Thus for many apps the LG G8X feels significantly more spacious because of the status bar – the Pixel’s status bar is, from what I can visually estimate, literally twice as tall as the LG’s. Auto brightness: LG G8X is way better. Smooth gradation, whereas Pixel is abrupt.
Overall I think the Pixel is maybe a tad nicer on default settings, but I’ll give it to LG G8X for the flexibility with adjusting the screen colours however you want, as well as the extra real estate afforded by the much smaller status bar (and of course bigger screen).
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Fingerprint sensor

LG G8X fingerprint is frustratingly inaccurate. I am only successfully like 60-70% of the time with my thumbs. Sometimes it’s fantastic, other times I cannot get it to work 5 times in a row and I need to enter the passcode manually. I can’t seem to recreate the conditions where it doesn’t work. That being said, I really like having front-facing fingerprint scanners: my phone is often sitting on my desk, and it’s really nice to be able to check things on my phone without having to lift up the phone or entering a passcode. Also, when my phone is on my desk, I unlock my phone with my index finger which is a lot more accurate than when I use my thumb, I guess because the index finger has such a smaller surface area. Thus that frustration with inaccuracy isn’t as big of an issue when my phone is on my desk, but it’s still generally much slower than a regular fingerprint reader.
The Pixel fingerprint reader on the other hand works ridiculously well (maybe because of the index finger thing? Though my old thumb Moto Z Play was also a lot quicker and more reliable than the LG G8X), and is much quicker in recognizing the fingerprint. There is also a “Swipe down on fingerprint reader” gesture to bring down notification panel. I constantly get false positives when I accidentally rest my finger on the sensor, so I’ve turned it off. The fingerprint reader is incredibly shallow to the point where I sometimes don’t know where it is because it’s hard to feel. As a result, sometimes I need to search for it a bit, and other times I accidentally turn it on without even noticing that I activated the fingerprint sensor. Both problems could be solved with a case (which I don’t have yet)
Overall it’s a tossup for me. I like the reliability and speed of the Pixel’s, but I like the front-facing sensor on the LG for when I have the phone laying on my desk (which is a lot of the time).
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Speakers

I can’t tell. They both sound different. The max volumes are very similar in volume. The Pixel has a much quieter, almost imperceptible min volume. The Pixel 4a 5G sounds more… spacious? Maybe echoey. The LG G8X’s speakers sound more… precise? There is an obvious difference in the two sounds, which sounds “better” might be an obvious difference to others but I can’t tell. I have to assume that the LG G8X’s headphone jack audio is much better than the Pixels with the HI-Fi Quad DAC thing, but I don’t have any high end headphones so I can’t test it really. The LG G8X has some fancy “DTS:X 3D Surround” effects, which all sound terrible always, so I never leave them on. LG G8X has an equalizer, Pixel does not. Audio for both come out of the bottom right “speaker grille” and the earpiece speaker grille. For both phone the bottom speaker is louder than the earpiece, but the Pixel’s speakers are closer in volume than the LG G8X’s: block the bottom speaker, and the audio is greatly diminished.
I think the LG wins this one with the audio options and flexibility? There’s probably something fundamentally different between the speakers on the two phones but I really I can’t tell which I prefer. People had a lot of complaints about the Pixel 5 speakers, I have no clue if the 4a 5G have the same problems.
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Microphone

Take a listen for yourself. I read a very relevant CBC report with both phones about 15 cm away from my face. I also recorded my laptop playing some music, about 30cm away from the phones. I think the Pixel maybe takes in more sound, but as a result also has more background noise than the LG. On the contrary the LG sounds tinnier to me.
Overall I still think I like the Pixel better, but again take a listen yourself!
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Battery

The Pixel has a 3800 mAh battery, the LG has a 4000 mAh battery. That being said, there are obviously many other factors contributing to battery life (processor, cell signal, etc). If I just use both phones nonstop, they both have great SOT. Both get about 8-9 hours for me of SOT uninterrupted. It’s the standby time that the Pixel excels at though. Overnight drain is <1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 1.5% on my LG. Standby drain while out and about is about 1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 2%/h on the LG. It’s unfortunately the standby drain that turns the LG G8X from a true 2 day phone to a not-quite-fully-2 day phone. (Also keep in mind cell signal plays a big role in battery drain – the signal in my area isn’t super great. I’m sure the drain for others isn’t as bad as the 2%/h I’m experiencing, but you might live in an area with better reception!)
Both phones have great battery life. I will give this one to the 4a 5G for the great standby time. I’ve included screenshots of my (very phone heavy) holiday break battery life, as per Accubattery. I may continue to add Pixel battery life screenshots as the days go by.
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General software and special features

Mostly just going to list features here, bear with me. Pixel has the huge advantage of having day 1 Android updates for 3 years. LG G8X has maybe 1 update left in it, if at all? Both phones have double tap to wake. LG has double tap the status bar to sleep, which is very nice. Pixel has call screening with the phone, Now Playing song recognition. Notifications are basically identical. LG G8X technically has a 1 handed/Reachability mode, but it has worked a grand total of 2 times for me despite trying it countless times. Would have been nice. The Pixel’s “Recent apps” screen has a Screenshot button and a Select (text) option. I don’t find the screenshot button very useful at all as I can just take a screenshot with the (admittedly uncomfortable) Power button + Volume Down combo. Select text I have not used yet but I could see being useful. The LG has an, in my opinion, much more useful set of frequently used icons on the bottom. Not customizable, but pretty true to what I use frequently. I use the feature very often. In addition to split screen apps, LG also gives you the option for a “pop up window”, Windows style, that you can drag around the screen, which could be useful for multitasking I guess but I’m still not sure in what use cases you’d have multiple windows-style windows open (they don’t work on the dual screen).
LG apps
LG has a bunch of bloatware that I never use and I disabled right away. I haven’t tested out the Whale browser at all. LG has its own LG Health app which I did not check out. It has an FM Radio which could be useful. There is a screenshot tool/app which could be useful, but I just use the regular screenshot shortcut. (Speaking about screenshots: Android 11 brought with it screenshots that are instantly taken as soon as you press Power + volume down, which is fantastic on the Pixel. On the LG, you still have to hold the buttons for a second or two. That being said, it is very annoying taking screenshots on the Pixel due to the volume and power buttons being on the same side. Android 11 also removed the ability to take a screenshot by holding the power button, which could have been great.) LG also has a pretty robust “HD Audio Recorder” app with lots of flexibility, but doesn’t do the transcribing that the Google audio recorder does (Which you can download though to the LG via apk). LG G8X has 2 apps you can assign to each bottom corner of the lock screen, which is where I put my GCam. Both phones have double tap power button to turn on camera shortcuts. LG also has a “Context Awareness” feature, which lets you adjust your sound profile, Bluetooth, wifi settings automatically based on your location. Also lets you find your parking spot. Neat in theory, but I didn’t use it much for concerns about battery drain (did not test to see if it really drained much). LG has a “Floating bar” you can turn on, which is a little tab which gives you shortcuts to apps that you can set, audio controls, screen capture, quick contacts. I could see this being really useful! I didn’t realize til just now writing this that we could set our own apps though, so I haven’t tested it to see if I’d actually use it. Finally, the G8X has a desktop mode, which I unfortunately don’t have access to. I can imagine this being useful in certain situations.
LG's previous app gesture
One big complaint that I have a big reason I was tempted to ditch the LG. The “previous app” gesture is completely busted on the LG. I won’t talk about it much here as I’ve already documented it elsewhere. In short, it’s completely unreliable and only works the way you’d expect it to work like 30% of the time. It is infuriating and makes me want to chuck out the windows at times. I’ve stopped using the gesture entirely and just open the Recent Tabs instead, which over time adds up a decent amount of time. The Pixel has no such problem. Generally the LG is also buggier than the Pixel, with jankier animations, turning off out of nowhere, sometimes getting stuck on the Recent Apps screen, completely going unresponsive at times – the latter three problems being quite rare, but they’ve happened.
Pixel power menus
Emergency info, power off, restart, Google Pay, Google Home devices. No longer has screenshot. LG power menu: Power off, power off and restart. Pixel definitely wins here.
Volume menus
Pixel has media volume slider, notifications toggle, Live Transcribe, and a shortcut to an audio settings overlay. LG has a context-sensitive volume slider (media volume slider when there’s audio playing, call volume during a call, notification volume otherwise), and a drop-down menu for individually controlling the different types of volumes. If you don’t want a context-sensitive slider, you can also set it to by default open just the one type. Pixel wins here for me: though the context sensitive slider can be useful, Live Transcribe is a pretty neat feature. Pixel also lets me control both notifications (Toggle) and media volume slider within one tap, whereas the LG only lets me change (in one tap) whichever context sensitive option is available at the time, otherwise I’d have to open the menu.
Overall, LG has a lot of features crammed in, but I rarely if ever use any of them. They are functionally bloatware for me. LG does have some genuinely useful software quirks like double tap status bar to sleep, the Floating Bar (I guess), and the lock screen shortcuts, but I have never been so aggravated with a phone before in my life with the previous app gesture and other bugs that I have to give Google the win here. (Also, reliable frequent software updates, less bloatware, and other useful features like Call Screening, Live Transcribe, Now Playing). The caveat is I haven’t used the Pixel long enough to see the bugs present in the Pixel.
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Default launchers

Google uses the Pixel Launcher. Very minimal flexibility, but it is pretty slick to use with great animations. Google search bar on the bottom, At A Glance (temperature, date, calendar events) at the top, Google feed to the left. You can’t adjust icon packs or grid size. App drawer showing frequently used apps at the top, and the rest of the apps in alphabetical order in a scrolling pile/list. LG has their own launcher with more flexibility (screen swipe effect, icon shape, grid size, option for left swipe to be Google feed or LG’s whatever feed). Unfortunately LG’s app drawer is truly horrendous, a horizontally moving multipaged mess that doesn’t automatically sort (if you add an app, you need to manually sort alphabetically to get them all alphabetical again). I never know which page I am on (there is an indicator at the bottom, but still) and thus it takes me far longer than it should to find an app I’m looking for. Just give me a scrolly bar!
Either way, both launchers aren’t great (except for animations -they’re both slick) and you should really use some 3rd party launcher instead. I use Microsoft Launcher personally, which has some janky animations but lots of great functionality. Nova of course is another popular option with even more customization.
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Always On Display

Pixel Always On Display displays 5 notification icons, time, date, weather, battery. No customization. LG G8X lets you customize the home screen quite a bit (you can add your own images, change aspects of the format, displays time, date, battery but only displays 3 notification icons. Has quick icons you can swipe to access to eg. turn on flashlight, change songs, etc. The Pixel’s is dimmer than the LG’s, which I think I prefer. The LG’s is very bright at night when I’m trying to sleep. Finally, picking up the Pixel will wake it up and bring it to the lock screen. Picking up the LG does nothing.
Kind of a toss up. At first I was leaning toward the LG for its flexibility, but the Pixel’s 5 notification icons are frankly more useful to me. I also like the dimmer AOD of the Pixel. If you’ve got the Dual Screen, you’re almost never even going to see the AOD on the LG.
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Performance

Okay, so I realize that “opening apps and web pages in quick succession” is not something anyone ever does in real life. That being said, I think there is a little bit of merit to it.
Another reason I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X was that this supposedly high end Snapdragon 855 didn’t feel nearly as quick or snappy as I thought it would. A definite improvement from my Moto Z Play, but also not quite the blazing fast speed I was expecting? So I did a ridiculously unscientific speed test between the two. Keep in mind the following caveats:
- MY LG G8X is 4 months old
- LG G8X has 111gb used of 128gb, Pixel has 75.14gb used of 128gb.
- Apps are close to parity but not quite
- I love reading about tech, but have not myself owned too many products. I am not a professional reviewer by any means, and have never really owned any high end phones (I had an iPhone 4 when it came out, the next “highest end” phone I’ve owned would be this LG G8X). So eg. with displays, I’m not the best at judging.
- I only got the dual screen a day before I got the Pixel, so most of my LG G8X impressions are from Dual Screen use. I’ve also used the Dual Screen for a bit since getting it, so I do have thoughts in its own section.
- I did comparisons in two different scenarios: 1st scenario, both phones were restarted, full battery. 2nd run, both phones had been on and used over a period of about 48 hours without turning them off. LG G8X was at 70% and Pixel was at 100%. Pixel was used generally much more than the LG phone was all day. The reason for doing it both after a fresh restart and after a few days on is that I had noticed that my LG seemed to perform worse after several days, and seemed to be better after a fresh restart.
1st run
With both phones freshly restarted and at the same battery percentage, geeeeeeeeeeeeeenerally the LG G8X was faster at opening apps than the Pixel. But honestly not as frequently as I was expecting. The LG G8X was generally able to open more intensive apps a bit faster than the Pixel. I’ve attached the “stats” here. In short, the LG was able to open 12 apps less than half a second faster than the Pixel, whereas the Pixel was able to open 9 apps less than half a second faster than the LG. The LG was able to open 8 apps more than half a second faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 6 apps more than half a second faster than the LG. The phones opened 7 websites equally quickly. In terms of websites, the LG was able to open 23 websites faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 9 websites slightly faster than the LG. They opened 3 websites at the same speed.
The most egregious thing here was the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of keeping app and websites in memory. It wasn’t even remotely close. Even before I got the Pixel I had noticed my LG seemed to be dropping apps quickly, but it wasn’t clear how quick it was until I directly compared these two phones. On my first run, after loading tons of Chrome tabs, both phones had to reload 80 days (the most recent app). After that, the LG continued to consistently reload apps, whereas the Pixel was able to load at least 7 apps without having to reload before I stopped testing.
2nd run
At this point I had both phones on for about 48 hours and had used my Pixel for about 3 hours that day (then charged to 100%) and then used my LG for about 2 hours right before testing it (battery about 70% when I started testing). I cleared all the apps from memory. I have no clue if the battery difference contributed or what, but the results completely flipped around, and quite dramatically. The Pixel was able to open apps slightly faster by <0.5s than the LG with 38 apps. The LG was slightly faster by >0.5s than the Pixel with 10 apps. The Pixel was noticeably >0.5s faster than the LG with 8 apps, and the LG was noticeably faster >0.5s than the Pixel with 6 apps. They were equally fast at opening 17 apps.
Really striking results. I rarely turn off my phone, which is maybe why I’ve been feeling my LG gets sluggish pretty easily? Clear something about keeping the LG on for periods of time causes… stuff… to build up, and the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of app opening on the second run. That being said, the <0.5s speed advantages really are quite miniscule, could very much be due to margin of error from my tapping, and of course there are always a million variables impacting how quickly an app opens up. But still, the Pixel is no slouch with its SD 765.
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Gaming

I also ran the Dolphin emulator on The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Both phones performed equally well, hitting 29-30 fps for Wind Waker and 59-60fps for Fire Emblem consistently. Genshin Impact ran a bit smoother on the LG than the LG (and the default setting for LG was “Medium” graphics, while for the Pixel was “Low”.) Both phones had lots of frame drops. I’ve included some screen recordings of Genshin Impact, both ran at medium settings, as well as the Dolphin games at default settings, using each respective phone’s default screen recorders. I’m not sure why the LG recording is such miserable quality (and muted), they both visually looked the same while actually playing the game. Similarly, I have no clue why the Pixel recording made the voices all echoey, they sound fine normally. Similarly, with the Dolphin emulator, normally Wind Waker is able to hold 29-30 pretty well, I suspect also running the screen recorder simultaneously caused it to drop frames. I repeated the Dolphin emulation after resetting the phone, and I still got frame rate drops. But uh, yeah, the Pixel also held its framerate better with the screen recorder than the LG did (normally they’re both good at holding the framerate).
Using Dolphin to emulate Xenoblade was a completely different story. Through the opening sequence, both phones (and my laptop) hiccupped at the same places. That being said, outside of those hiccup spots in cutscenes (and one area with a larger concentration of enemies), the Pixel 4a 5G was mostly able to maintain 30fps. Exploring Colony 9 was a smooth 30fps throughout the city. The LG G8X hiccupped in those cutscenes, but in other places where the Pixel was 30fps, the LG G8X was chugging along at 15-25fps. Most notably this occurred while exploring Colony 9. I have no clue what’s going on here, I didn’t actually expect the Pixel to perform so well here, or the LG G8X to perform so poorly. I tried walking around Colony 9 again when my phone cooled down a bit and it performed better, but quickly tanked back down to ~20fps within 15 seconds. I suspect LG throttles its phone pretty hard?
Overall, shockingly, I have to give the Pixel the win here. It’s no comparison. You can check out the gameplay vids yourself. I don’t know if I have a lemon of an LG G8X or what. If anyone else is able to emulate Xenoblade on their LG G8X, let me know how it performs for you. Is my phone a lemon? Or did LG just optimize their phone extremely poorly? (ALSO Apologies for the terrible resolution for the LG recorder, I didn’t realize you could change the resolution to full HD til my rerecording after the phone had cooled down).
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Camera

I thought the LG’s camera was fantastic coming from the Moto Z Play. Then I got the Pixel! GCam does help, but unfortunately you can’t set it to the double-tap-power button shortcut. The LG camera app does have some merits (lots of flexibility in image settings if you have the time to tweak settings to take a photo), but for a quick point and shoot it just doesn’t compare to the Pixel a lot of the time. That being said, I feel the LG actually sometimes takes more accurate photos? If I take a photo of something drab and dull, the LG captures it pretty accurately, whereas the Pixel takes a far nicer looking photo but doesn’t look like the drab reality. The Pixel though also takes much nicer, realistic photos of nice vibrant things, whereas the LG’s photos look more washed out. For day shots, or shots facing light, the… dynamic range? Is that what it’s called? For the Pixel is far better than the Pixel. The LG will blow out eg. the details in clouds (ie. Clouds will just appear white and uniform), while the Pixel will preserve the detail and colour of the clouds. For night shots, the LG actually takes better non-Night mode night shots than the Pixel. But the Pixel’s Night Mode absolutely smokes LG’s Night Mode, no questions asked. LG with GCam’s Night Sight helps a lot though. The LG’s selfie camera focuses off into the distance instead of your face so is functionally useless. Finally, I don’t take videos so won’t really comment on it. LG’s wide camera is a lot wider than the Pixel’s, which is a plus for LG.
Overall, the Pixel has a better camera but the LG isn’t too shabby, and sometimes takes nicer shots than the Pixel. Non-Night mode shots are actually better on the LG, but usually Pixel’s night mode turns out better looking. I’ll let the photos do the talking, where I have comparison shots between the LG (with the LG cam as well as the GCam), vs. the Pixel. I’m a lot more interested in shots with challenging lighting, thus the weird dark shots. Unfortunately the weather isn’t great here so no nice outdoor shots. Also unfortunately I have now noticed that a lot of them are blurrier than I’d like – I am too lazy to change them now! I may add more photos to the albums later.
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Dual screen

I just picked this up a day before the Pixel came in. I was pretty excited for it because there are definitely times where I want to multitask, or where I’ve got split screen open trying to copy some text from what window to the other but the keyboard pops up and blocks my view.
Unfortunately, the dual screen implementation feels far more half-hearted than that of what I’m hearing about the Surface Duo. The two screens feel more like two separate machines with a tenuous link, than like two parts of the same unit. At the same time, the 2nd screen doesn’t have the same functionality as the main screen: you can’t split screen it, you can’t change the launcher, the home screen is not continuous at all with the main screen’s home screen, and when you throw one screen’s contents over to the other screen, it often feels like a mystery what will occupy the screen whose contents you just threw over to the other screen.
Using one screen as a keyboard for the other screen in theory sounds really neat, but it only works with the LG keyboard, which has an embarrassingly tiny dictionary with terrible autocorrect suggestions. Even when it works with the LG keyboard, when you tap in a text field on the top screen, the phone does this janky animation where the keyboard first shows up on the top screen before jumping down to the bottom screen. If you tap on a text field on the bottom screen, it won’t by default push the bottom screen contents up and open the keyboard on the bottom screen (which could be what some people want, I guess).
Very, very, very few apps make good use of the dual screens, even with the 3rd party Wide Mode app which forces any app into Wide Mode (which just turns apps into Tablet Mode rather than giving unique content to each screen). The LG Whale browser seems to be the best app to make use of the dual screen (you can open links in one screen on the other screen) – that being said, I’d much rather use other browsers. Chrome does a reasonable job, and you can open taps from one screen in the other screen. I can’t find a way to get Youtube to open a video on one screen and me scrolling through comments/searching through other videos on the other screen.
Overall something I really wish they would have incorporated was, say, opening a link in one app and the internet browser automatically opening in the other screen, or at least giving me the option to open in the other screen! Say, a friend sends me a link to a website and then I open the website in the opposite screen automatically and then continue talking to my friend on the first screen. Not a feature that is currently implemented.
The LG Gamepad mode seems like a great idea: the top screen acts as the screen, the bottom screen acts as the gamepad. Supposedly the games will detect it as a native gamepad. Unfortunately, it was not compatible with Stadia, Xbox GamePass Streaming, or Dolphin Emulator. It was compatible with Final Fantasy V and PPSSPP. Games like Genshin Impact, a game without controller support absolutely begging for it, work really well with it as you can also create a custom gamepad with buttons that correspond to tapping areas on the game screen. I was most looking forward to it working with Stadia, Gamepass and the emulators though (I don’t play too many native Android games) so I definitely am pretty bummed.
My biggest complaint though is there just simply is no easy way to type with the dual screen vertical. Though I’d like to make use of the dual screen features sometimes for the occasional time I want to multitask, I sadly discovered the few times I would use the dual screen to its potential does not warrant having the carry this colossal phone around with its incredibly uncomfortable typing position. The obvious solution would be to have a “wide mode” split keyboard, which actually does appear if you Wide Mode an app and then use the keyboard. But from what I can tell, there is no way to “wide mode” a keyboard when you’re using the dual screens as, well, dual screens. On single screen phones I usually type with two hands, whereas I can’t type with one hand on this phone because the keyboard only shows up on one screen, and the other screen is in the way. On this phone, the only way to type is to hold the phone with one hand, and use a finger on the other hand to peck at or swipe the keys.
Overall, I think I like a dual screen in theory, but LG didn’t execute it very well at all. Instead of feeling like an extension of the main screen, it feels like its entirely own entity and doesn’t always flow well with the main screen. The absolute paucity of apps making use of the dual screen to its full potential is unfortunate. The biggest culprit is that typing in dual screen vertical mode (The way I use it most frequently) is extremely uncomfortable. All these drawbacks don’t make keeping the dual screen on worthwhile, as someone who only occasionally requires the dual screen.
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Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! This wound up being nearly 7000 words… wasn’t expecting it to be, like, even a quarter that long. I'll be happy if even one person reads through 50% of this.
I think the Pixel demonstrates that spec sheets really are not everything. Either that, or I got a lemon of an LG G8X (not outside the realm of possibility). With the caveat of the LG having much more fuller storage and being used for 4 more months, despite the LG’s supposedly better chip, performance is objectively pretty similar between the two phones in terms of app opening and opening websites. The Pixel was actually beating out the LG pretty consistently after both phones were used for 48 hours. Both phones run Genshin Impact kind of miserably, and run Gamecube games on Dolphin without a hitch. The Pixel was significantly better than the LG in emulating the Wii. The Pixel consistently destroyed the LG in terms of memory management. The Pixel’s smaller battery capacity of 3800 mAh outlasted the LG’s 4000 mAh battery, even when the LG was brand new. The camera in the Pixel is far better than the LG. The software experience of the Pixel is smoother and less buggy (and certainly less frustrating). The fingerprint sensor is a tossup for me. The audio is maybe better in the LG, but I can’t really tell. Screens are similar. The LG does “feel” more premium, but I do prefer the lightness of the Pixel. The one definitely advantage the LG has over the Pixel is the expandable storage.
Needless to say, I think I am going to keep the Pixel. I didn’t want to leave the LG G8X community behind though without giving a good reason to do so, and I hope this 6000+ word document with accompanying Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, and screen recordings explain why I did so, and also demonstrate that spec sheets aren’t everything. I’ll probably try to sell the LG G8X + Dual Screen, but taking a look at how long these phones stay on Facebook Marketplace/eBay, I’m not very hopeful I’ll be able to sell it at even a fraction of what I bought it for. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I spent way too much time on this.
Also I haven’t proofread this, so I’m sure there are mistakes abound.
Also I really need to get working on actually important stuff. Thanks for reading!
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Much needed tl;dr (Which is still long):

- Was getting tired of LG G8X's weight, previous app gesture being busted, standby drain, general glitchiness, slower performance than expected, so I picked up a Pixel 4a 5G.
- Did lots of tests which you can check out in the Dropbox
- I subjectively like Pixel's camera, speakers, microphone, default screen colour balance, software cleanliness better.
- Really surprisingly, my specific days-old Pixel 4a 5G outperforms my 4 month old LG G8X in app opening and website opening (unless I freshly restart both phones). REALLY surprisingly, my Pixel ran circles around the LG in Wii emulation, and was equally competent at Gamecube emulation and Genshin Impact
- I will be keeping the Pixel. I will try to sell the LG G8X but am not hopeful. I will miss LG G8X's expandable storage but not much else.

I don't know if this will be useful to anyone. So I write a line or two about every game I play, and decided to find all the incremental in my game journal and post them here. It starts with the latest games I've played and I think goes back to several years back. One thing I've realized is I have such a love-hate-hate relationship with this genre since I think I've hated 90% of the games and 100% of myself after each incremental phase. I usually angrily stop playing them for a while and restart them again, so this is more or less a journal of addiction, I suppose.
THE BEST GAMES I'VE PLAYED ARE THESE (no order):

1. Kittens Game
2. Antimatter Dimensions
3. Oil Tycoon

Honorable Mention: Eggs, Inc
The rest: more or less hated it
Additional comment if you decide to scan through it, I complain a lot, so it is perfectly reasonable and normal to think, "why the fuck are you even playing these games, idiot??".
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Time Idle RPG
This game was confusing. It tells me the game's resources is time, where you get 1 of it every second, but that's not really something as unique as I assumed. It would have been cool if time as resources meant you used it to deal with something related to time. Maybe time travel? Maybe slowing and speeding time?
Instead time as resource buys you stuff like a library. And then you buy a camp or something. Honestly, I wasn't really feeling it.
2
Path of Idling
The biggest cardinal sin for me when it comes to incremental is when a game has a lot of features and it just completely throws them all at you instantly. The joy of a great incremental is how things slowly open up and each new achievement feels progress.
The game is a RPG game and these are the things that opened up for me in the first few hours.
Combat which includes normal fighting, dungeon, raid, boss, PVP (locked, but it just needs an ascend, which I haven't done)
Skills
Hero upgrades which include Passive (strength, defence, stamina, intelligence), Train, and a huge Tree
Town which you can buy workers who get you various things like gold, orbs, knowledge, etc. You can upgrade stuff here.
Quest that also includes Perks and Skill quests.
Gear which 5 equipment slots, plus craft plus trade plus smelt
Also gear for your Pet, which is also another tab!
Now, here is the thing. Because I have all of this pretty much instantly, I don't really know which ones are helping me go past a well. How is adding 10 points in strength helping me? Should I have added five in strength instead and five in defence? I have already bought 20 or so upgrades in the Tree, but I have no idea if I am made the optimal choice. There is no real excitement with getting new gear. And so on.
The dev has added a lot of features, now it's time to rework the game, and have the features take their time.
2
Idle Slayer
The game is like a super simple platformer. Your character is running and any enemy it hits, it automatically slays it. There is no HP, and all enemies die in one shot. Your only active play is jumping occasionally to grab coins or hit the flying enemies. Also, you have a run skill that has a cool down.
With the coins, we get new weapons that give us more coins. Enemies give us souls which is used for the prestige system that provides us with an interesting skill tree which provides a lot of choices on the path you want to do in terms of upgrades.
So far excellent, however, the game has an extremely serious issue of pacing. The game initially progresses so fast that in the first hour or so, you get almost all the weapons aside from the last two, which then grinds down to a snail pace. You can upgrade your past weapons, but they never really get into play again. Reaching high levels of past weapons sometimes gave me upgrades of that weapon of 10,000% but they still did nothing to my overall coin per second. I think the pacing needs to be fully reworked. It would have been nice to get new weapons after certain prestige cycles, so that every new weapon feels like we have passed a significant wall. The best part of an incremental game for me is to face a wall, and when I finally break it, I feel powerful again for a while. This game feels like this though, powerful powerful powerful powerful WALL........break it....WALL. And so on. I'm still playing it as I want to get some of the skills, but I feel like it could have been so much better.
4
Exponential Idle
A very back to the foundation kind of incremental. The premise is that you are a student and working on a formula. There is a neat story where as you progress in the game, your character progresses through university. Each upgrade gives you more and more automation until I reached a stage where I would check back once every 2 or 3 days, click a 2nd layer prestige reset, and close it. Meaning the game was something like 5 seconds of game player every 2 days. I just opened it for this review and realized I had reached the end game. The story wraps up and it tells me "You can take a rest. Travel a bit. Go outside!" NO, DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO GAME.
3
Factoid
Factoid & Spark should have the same review as they are almost the same game with only small differences. The games are the most basic kind of incremental, where you buy something with resources, until you get the next thing which gives you more of the resources. Both give you upgrades to speed things up, and finally prestige and it's own prestige upgrades. That's it. It's nice little change of pace from all the recent incremental that sometimes do too much, but obviously due to the very simple nature of it, it does eventually feel pointless, specially after you more or less open up everything and the prestige upgrades just keep repeating.
3
Spark
Factoid & Spark should have the same review as they are almost the same game with only small differences. The games are the most basic kind of incremental, where you buy something with resources, until you get the next thing which gives you more of the resources. Both give you upgrades to speed things up, and finally prestige and it's own prestige upgrades. That's it. It's nice little change of pace from all the recent incremental that sometimes do too much, but obviously due to the very simple nature of it, it does eventually feel pointless, specially after you more or less open up everything and the prestige upgrades just keep repeating. 3
Antimatter Dimensions
Easily top 5 incremental on mobile. Does everything perfectly. You progress nicely, and when new features open it, not only is it rewarding but more importantly, it keeps adding new dimensions (lol) to the game. I'd at the end game as I write this, and I realize that there was no point in the game where it felt stale. Each new prestige layer made the game feel fresh and almost like a new incremental game.
5
Melvor Idle
It seems this game was mainly aimed at Runescape players, which is probably why it didn't click for me. It also run extremely slow on my phone which also played a part in me not really getting into.
2
A Girl Adrift
The animation is really pretty and is a nice change of pace for incrementals, but I didn't really like the too much active play. Really had to keep going back and forth to different areas to do the fishing which got too repetitive for me.
You travel to different areas of the map to catch fish, which you get points and then you upgrade stuff, but I didn't really find any real excitement about the upgrades because I kept having to go back to previous areas to fish similar creatures.
3
Archer: Danger Phone
I'm really annoyed how terrible of a game this was. Two things I like, the TV show "Archer" and incremental games, and it's done in the most lazy manner. The game is the worst aspect of idle games where it's just a straight path of clicking the next upgrade with absolutely zero decision making. Every once in a while there is a mini game where Archer gets to shoot others but it's done in the most basic form of early 2000s flash games, where the animation budget is probably 3 dollars. Same static background and both enemies and Archer have just two animation frames. The absolute laziness of it is almost insulting to the player, because it feels like we aren't even worth the effort.
There is an Archer story in the game which develops really fast, which is the only positive part, but no voice acting is again another evidence that the creators of the game weren't given any budget for this.
1
Home Quest
This game is way too slow. You have to collect materials to build your settlement but everything takes time, so you click for a few seconds, and then you have to leave the game. Which I'm fine with, but the problem isn't the idle part of it, it's how the idle part of it combines with constant checking of the game which annoys me. I like an idle game where you forget to start the game for a day, you come up to a lot of resources, but this is a game which needs you to check back in every 30 minutes or an hour to really get anywhere. I felt that the micromanagement was getting worse as I progressed (without any actual thing to do when I am active in the game) that made me give up.
2
Idle Industry
This is probably an interesting game, but I gave up because the one thing I really disliked was the amount of resources and manufacturing that very quickly opens to you. You can buy raw materials, and you can either sell these raw materials or turn them into finished goods and sell them either. And each of these has several upgrade options (increase selling price, increase production, etc). Without even really getting too deep into the game, I have around 20 raw materials and around 30 finished products. A satisfying part of this genre is to have things slow open up for you, which gives me a decent feeling of satisfaction. But the money I got would quickly open up new products, so I would just jump ahead and purchase more expensive ones, and after a while I had a lot of materials and products at zero, and was instead focusing on latter ones.
2
Masters of Madness
Somewhat neat atmosphere and visuals, but too much active clicking. Click, upgrade to get more per clicks, get minions to get you some points without clicking, typical clicker, but with the added benefit of almost no idling. I like idling incrementals but clickers is a hard no from me.
1
Soda Dungeon 2
Basically similar to the first one, as far as I could tell. I did "finish" it but maybe I shouldn't have, since it really is the same thing from early on, specially once you get all the heroes and you kind of sort out which characters work best, then it's just the same. But because it was somewhat short and no real wall, it was at least easy to stick to it to the end.
2
Bacterial Takeover
Played for a decent amount and was actually more interesting that I thought, given the buttload of ad incentives. You create and upgrade bacteria, attack planets, and eventually go into a blackhole to prestige. Most of the game was good, but the part that killed it for me was the prestige system. Once you prestige, planets get super easy to attack, which becomes a lot of active play. I realized that each prestige was taking me at least 30 minutes to get to where I was, and it was just meaningless clicking. It got to a point where I was putting off prestige because it seemed like it would be a hassle so I stopped.
2
LogRogue
Cute graphics. The hero sort of hopping to hit the tiny monsters is cute to look at, but how long can you look at it and do nothing before you realize that it's boring? I suppose this is a game where it's just not for me. I don't like to have my phone open on a game and just watch it like a crazy person and do nothing. My rule is simple for incrementals. While the app is open, be active, if there isn't any choices to make, close the app while resources build up or whatever. I don't like it being open while I do nothing.
3
A Kittens Game
Incremental games are so strange. I get in and out of the phases. I loved this for so long and so obsessively that I wanted to only play incremental games. And then, just like that, I was wondering why the fuck I was wasting my time with this. Has happened countless times before.
But still probably the best incremental ever.
5
A Dark Room
An incremental cult classic of sorts but I don't find it really matches the genre. There is a bit of incremental at the beginning with people huts and stuff but then its just a ascii exploring game, which wasn't interesting to me.
2
Little Healer
Saw it mentioned in the Reddit incremental forum in one of the posts and thought it was a healer themed incremental which sounded neat. But it's like being a healer in a raid in World of Warcraft without any if the extras. Just a couple of bars representing your team mates and you healing them while they fight the boss. I didn't even like playing the healer in WoW so no way would I play this game.
1
Clickie Zoo
Started playing for a few days until I realized there a beta released with the dev reworking the game completely from scratch and releasing it as "Idle Zoo Tycoon". So, played that instead but this seemed like a game I would enjoy anyway.
4
Idling to Rule the Gods
The UI and one drawing if your character is really ugly enough to be distracting to me. The game, seemed interesting and I eventually was into it, but seems like a game that has been constantly being updated, which is not always a good thing, because features are obviously updated regularly to it, making the whole thing a bit bloaty.
I guess, this is the problem with this game for me, it's too fat. Also, one main part of the game is that your character creates Shadow Clones up to a maximum limit. Which is fine except the clones can't be made in offline mode. This might not be a big deal in its original web browser game but that doesn't work as well in a mobile format.
2
Realm Grinder
This is one of the really popular incremental and it's fanbase seems to love it for it's depth, but to be honest, I don't play these games for the depth, I play it for the simple dopamine rush of doing the same thing over and over again. It relaxes.
Although, I didn't even get to the depth part because I dislike games where it rushes in the beginning. I constantly bought buildings, got spells, and got upgrades without even looking at the description. Apparently, later on, we can get complicated race upgades, which seems not what I'm looking for in such a genre.
2
Spaceplan
A short (!!) incremental with an actual story (!!!). That's two cool points for it but unfortunately, the game mechanics of increment genre isn't so good. It's a space game with nice visuals and a great ending (cool music set to cool graphics) but the game itself wasn't really that fun. This same exact game would have been better in a different genre (maybe something like "Out There"?)
3
Zombidle
Felt like idle games again and this is the kind of examples that kept me away. Too much clicking and seems like advancement will start to get irritating since it relies on IAPs
2
Eggs, Inc
While I was playing it, Eggs, Inc was probably my favorite Android game I had ever played. But like most incremental games, there comes a moment when I suddenly stop and think, what am I doing?
Because there is something fascinating about Incrementals. Their addictiveness is in a way the whole point. An incremental is less of a game and more an act of electronic addictiveness. What's the point?
Eggs, Inc is a very well made and fun incremental but even the best in its genre is still pointless.
4
Castle Clicker
Supposedly a mix of incremental and city building but didn't really find out since the clickings were way to much. I know this is supposed to be the genre but I like the incremental part more than the tapping part. This seemed to be a good way to hurt your fingers.
2
Endless Era
This RPG clicker game is like other such games but with horrible GUI and animations. Tap tap tap. It's my fault for downloading such games. Why would I ever think this would be fun???
1
Idle Quote
An incremental game with a unique twist. This time we get to make up quotes! The first negative about the game and this irritates me a lot is most of the quotes are fake. A quick search on Google and this proves it. Quotes are generally attributed to Buddha or Ghandi or shit like that and it's usually fake like most quotes on the internet. This kills the major possible advantage of the game because I thought coming up with arbitrary words would at least give me some quotes to learn. Aside from the this, the game isn't fun either because it slows down very quickly meaning you combine words very slowly at a certain stage of the game and then it becomes a boring grind.
2
Monster Miser
An incremental game with almost no graphics. We just see character portraits of monsters which we buy and then upgrade until we buy the next monster. Eventually we prestige which gives us multipliers. The only game choice is choosing between two monsters with each new monster with unique benefits. Annoyingly there is a max limit which I wish didn't exist because I wanted to prestige so much that I would be over powerful in upgrading like that "Idle Oil Tycoon". Still, pointless but reasonably fun.
3
Pocket Politics
An incremental take on politics sounds fun but it's so generic that it could have been about anything. A Capitalist idle game or a cooking idle game, it wouldn't matter. IAP was also the usual shitty kind.
1
Time Clickers
A shooter incremental sounds like a cool twist but it's not a FPS like I imagined it would be. I'm just stuck in a room and I was shooting blocks. Upgrades didn't give me any enjoyment since I was shooting fucking blocks.
1
Tap Tap Fish - Abyssrium
I thought this was going to be relaxing incremental but the ridiculous and generic IAPs and all the social integeration spoil it. Too much time is spent in them asking you to buy or share or tweet or post or give them a blowjob. And there is nothing relaxing about that.
2
Cartoon 999
Incremental game about comic book writers, but not the marvel DC kind, it seemed to be the webcomic one and I think it's a Korean developer so all the characters and injokes made no sense to me. The whole thing was just targeted to a very specific audience.
2
Dungeon Manager
Incremental games need to be simple but this is beyond simple, it's just upgrade a fighter to level 5, go to next dungeon character, do the same, and just continue without any of the delicious balancing of upgrades like other idle games.
2
Final Fortress
Incremental games are already pointless but when it's super heavy on IAP than its also annoying, but when it always has bugs that doesn't register my offline earnings, then it just needs a uninstall in its face.
The zombie skin was also crappy.
1
Mana Maker
Here is how I know this clicker isn't very good. It doesn't make me hate all clickers and my life and mobile gaming in general for being so addictive and pointless.
So fail, sorry.
2
Infinity Dungeon
The usual incremental RPG that I should probably never play again. Starts simple enough and then gets more or a chore as you play.
1
Another incremental game which I had promised myself not to play anymore because they are so pointless and repetitive and endless. Well, this wasn't infinite and had a goal at 999 level so I thought it was good but while the humor was cute, the game did become very repetitive. Every 10 levels the slimes changed but after every 100 levels the whole thing restarted and while the monsters got stronger, I seemed to get even stronger. So the game became easier as I progressed and there was no more challenge. By level 800, I gave up.
2
Tap Dungeon RPG
Okay, I'm running out of ways to complain about those incremental RPG games that all have similar problems. It starts off reasonably fast and fun but soon it seems like I am in a data entry job. Doing the same thing over and over again with little changes.
1
Dungeon 999 F: Secret of Slime Dungeon
Another incremental game which I had promised myself not to play anymore because they are so pointless and repetitive and endless. Well, this wasn't infinite and had a goal at 999 level so I thought it was good but while the humor was cute, the game did become very repetitive. Every 10 levels the slimes changed but after every 100 levels the whole thing restarted and while the monsters got stronger, I seemed to get even stronger. So the game became easier as I progressed and there was no more challenge. By level 800, I gave up.
2
Tap Dungeon RPG
Okay, I'm running out of ways to complain about those incremental RPG games that all have similar problems. It starts off reasonably fast and fun but soon it seems like I am in a data entry job. Doing the same thing over and over again with little changes.
1
Tower of Hero
You start on the first floor of the tower and keep fighting your way up by summoning your heroes (by clicking) and recruiting other fighters, get upgrades, level up, and then, ugh, here is the typical incremental RPG part, restart, get items, and do it ALL over again.
There is something fun about restarting and getting slowly stronger each time but it also feels so pointless after a while. Such a pointless genre now that I have played a billion of such titles, heh.
3
Pageboy
Yet another incremental RPG which I have no idea why I downloaded because I'm sick of the genre. I played a pageboy to a knight who does the fighting while I collect the lot. I collect the loot, buy stuff for the knight, and eventually I restart to do the same thing again and get better items but this game I didn't even RESTART! Because fuck it! Fuck it!
2
Idle Warriors
The story is cute. Human population is regressing while monster population is on the rise. So the humans start enslaving monsters to mine for them! The brave warriors beat the crap out of monsters, kidnap the bosses, and enslave them. The animation of monsters slaving away while speech balloons above them talk about their wife and children is funny.
But the game itself is another RPG incremental which I should start staying away from. These games are like a chore for me nowadays because I'm doing the same crap again and again. The blame is probably on me because it seems like a reasonably solid game. But hey, fuck it, I PERSONALLY didn't enjoy it.
2
Tap! Tap! Faraway!
Any game that is remotely like Tap Titan scares me. They are addictive at first and very fast moving but after every restart gets more and more annoying. It soon turns into a time eating activity with the player having to redo the initial levels to get relics to get better items to progress further to restart to get relics to and so on until the player realizes how much time he is putting in the game for a repetitive activity.
2
Auto RPG
Now that is a title the game developers didn't spend too much time on. RPG battles are automatic but I can help out by clicking like a mad man. I started with one hero but would get additional members in my party as the story progressed. Party members receive skills as as they level up and while all the skill usage is automatic, it did give me a sense of progression which is extremely important in a RPG and which I think is usually lacking in incremental games. It usually starts feeling useless but in this game at least there are new maps, new members, and an actual end sight!
There is an infinity stage once the last boss is defeated but I am glad the infinity stage happens AFTER the end and it's not the game itself.
4
Merchant
Hire a hero and send on to battle. The battles is done automatically and takes time, starts with something short like 10 seconds with each battle taking longer. The loot is raw materials which can be used to craft equipment which also takes real life time with better items taking longer. The crafted items can either be sold or equipped to the hero to make him be able to fight stronger monsters.
I was worried I would hate the longer crafting and fighting times because I hate games which I have to watch for a task to finish but even though the durations for longer, I had more to do. However, I don't know what would have happened in the end game because I gave up on it. New maps were exactly like the first map just with different heroes but the progression was similar in each level which felt that I was doing the exact same thing all over again but with longer task times.
2
Idle Oil Tycoon
This is the best idle game I played. It's graphics aren't just minor, they are none existent. It's just numbers, so basic that my sister thought I was on a stock market app.
It's such a simple concept. Invest, get oil, upgrade then like other idlers restart to get a bonus and do the full thing all over again. When I finished the game, I played the unlimited mode which I played until the unlimited mode couldn't handle the numbers anymore.
5
Soda Dungeon
This kind-of Idle Dungeon was great. I started with weak ass fighters who would fight on my behalf while I collected the loot. I then got to use the lot to upgrade the sofa bar to recruit more adventurers. Not sure why it was a sofa bar. Maybe they wanted to make it a family game and not have alcohol? Sounds weird but the sofa element in a RPG game sounds weirder.
The game only hit a brick for me when, like most other incremental games, there is no real closure. Once I thought I bet the big bad guy, it just goes on, harder but similar enough with no end in sight. Eventually, we have to stop playing right, but it always feels a bit like a let down when I don't feel like I have finished the game.
4
10 Billion Wives Kept Man Life
The two games from this company, 10 Billion Wives and Kept Man Life, have similar strengths and weaknesses.
I liked the silly premises from both. In 10BM, I had to get married as much as I could, using the loves I collect to marry more expensive wives! In KML, I'm a boyfriend who doesn't work and I have to please my career gf so she would take care of me.
Both start reasonably fast and I was willing to grind through difficult parts but the end game is like a brick wall. Passing through it to get all the achievements is pretty much impossible unless one puts in way too many hours. And it's a shame because I really wanted to get all the achievements to see all the tiny little extra stuff.
3
Adventure Capitalist
One of the better incremental games, but now that I am out of the short lived incremental fan phase, I realized how dumb the genre is. Tap, tap, tap, upgrade, do this a million times, reset, and do it all over again like a moron. The game does deserve credits for me acting like a moron and playing it for so long but I also cheated and got free cash and then if occupying became even more pointless.
3
The Monolith
A combination of an incremental and a civilization building game seemed like an excellent idea and in some ways, it was, specially how we get to upgrade through the ages from cavemen to futuristic. But no offline feature means that the resets aren't enticing.
2
USSR Simulator
An incremental game that has a great theme (USSR!) but absolutely horrible to enjoy, even though I did stick to it. After a certain upgrades, the game just turned into me popping in the game, clicking an upgrade and then forgetting about the game for a few days.
2
RPG Clicker
They should call these games tappers not clickers. We are not clicking anything on a touchscreen device. Anyway, tap tap tap level up buy weapons tap tap and uninstall.
1
Logging Quest Logging Quest 2
[Review is for the original and its sequel]
There is not much of a difference between the game. I actually played them both at the same time because the actual game is offline. You choose your hero, send them to a dungeon, and then come back to the game after a while to see how well they did. I thought an offline RPG like this might be interesting but then, if you don't really play a game, how much fun can it be?
1
Another pointless incremental. I was in an incremental phase and got so many incremental games that I know realize were absolutely pointless.
Hit a tree, buy upgrades, get a new hero, and continue hitting a tree. Not much offline it seems which is what I like about incrementals.
1
Galaxy Clicker
A space incremental that should have been a lot of fun. You get to upgrade your spaceship and buy new ones and explorer new planets. But first of all, the interface is so ugly that it makes playing the game less enjoyable. And a lot of things I didn't really get no matter how much I would play like the full exploring planets. The spaceships were nice, so it could have been fun.
2
Megatramp
A pretty pointless incremental kind of game. You are a tramp and then you can collect money to buy upgrades to make more money, with no strategy needed, nor any effort needs to be made to hurt your brain cells.
1
Inflation RPG
It supposed to be some kind of incremental RPG, I think, which has you resetting and getting more powerful and then fighting monsters to get insane levels. It is very unique but I couldn't get into it.
2
Widget RPG
Are you fucking with me? This is button bashing rpg in the most extreme manner. You get a widget, so you don't even have to open the game and distract yourself from the button bushing. Just click the button and the game plays behind the scenes and gets you experience, loot, and kills.
It's a ridiculous idea that is fun for a few minutes to see what they come up with but there is only so much button bashing you can do.
2
Capitalist Tycoon
I downloaded this game because I was in an incremental/idle game phase and really enjoyed AdVenture Capitalist. But this game is nothing like that. On the surface, it seems similar, buy small investments, make money, buy bigger investments, and so on.
But with this game, there is no offline mode, and you keep having to wake up managers, AND the goal is to see how much you make in one year. Bah. I prefer the incremental approach which makes you build and build and build, not try to rush it in just a year.
2
Clicking Bad
An incremental clicking game that is themed after Breaking Bad. It is a fun idea it's a very simple game with little to do aside from the obvious of upgrading and upgrading. The only twist might be to balance out making lots of money selling drugs and not attracting the law but even that is only a small challenge at the start. Eventually, you will get enough upgrades to bring the law risk so down that it makes no impact on the game play.
2
Zombie Tapper
A super basic incremental clicker game with a zombie team. Click click click to eat brains, use brains (?) to buy zombies to do the brain eating for you and then buy upgrades for your zombies, and buy new zombies and it all feels very pointless.
1
Bitcoin Billionaire
I started to enjoy incremental games, but it needs to have a good offline mode, because I don’t want to just play a game where I keep tapping. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t play. I played it, and I played a lot of it, because I could reset the game (like most incremental games) and it gives you a small benefit where you could finish the full game a bit faster (it gives you bonus income). So, I kept finishing and resetting, and each time the start to finish would shorten, so I thought I would reach a stage where I could finish each start-to-finish in an instant! It didn’t happen. I got bored first.
3
Tap Titan
An addictive tapping game. Just tap on the creatures, level up, get new skills, hire heroes, and then reset and to it all over again to progress further. It’s an incremental game where it depends on resets to progress, but no real offline bonus, so you have to be playing online. Which got boring, so I installed an app that does the tapping for me, which is actually a stupid way to play the game, but this isn’t an attempt to prove to anyone my intelligence. Anyway, thankfully something went wrong and my progress got deleted, WHICH WAS A GOOD THING, because the game was extremely addictive.
4
God Squad
I’ve realized most incremental games are stupid. Tap on monsters to kill, collect gold, buy Roman Gods, level them up, fight other monsters, and then get bored.
1

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