Should the LG G4 should be your next gaming phone?

LG has launched its latest flagship phone, the LG G4, and with its arrival we have an almost complete picture of the 2015 Android landscape.

So, should the LG G4 be your next phone, if gaming is a major deciding factor for you?

Possibly not.

We should say from the off that the LG G4 looks to be an excellent smartphone with a crisp display and a particularly impressive camera, and it's certainly capable of playing the latest Android games without a problem.

However, a couple of features might give the avid gamer pause for thought when contemplating which flagship phone to go with on a lengthy two year contract.

The LG G4's processor is at the centre of one 2015's biggest Android smartphone controversies. No, really.

You may remember that the Samsung Galaxy S6, one of the biggest smartphones of the year, launched with its own custom processor. This was seen as a sizeable snub for leading chip maker Qualcomm and its new Snapdragon 810 CPU.

Rumours surrounding this decision from Samsung suggested that the Snapdragon 810 itself was to blame, that it was unreliable and prone to overheating.

Qualcomm has rubbished these claims, but now the LG G4 has launched with the lesser-powered Snapdragon 808. It doesn't look good, particularly as LG launched a handset powered by the Snapdragon 810 earlier in the year with a number of performance issues.

Ultimately, this means that the LG G4 has shipped with a second tier processor. The company has been at pains to point out that the two chips are very similar, and that the 808 is simply more efficient and better suited to the kind of 2K displays that the LG G4 has.

But benchmarks show that it's not quite as fast as other high-end chips.

Don't get us wrong - it's fast enough to run anything on the Google Play store, with change to spare. But for avid gamers looking to spend top money to be on the bleeding edge of performance, "fast enough" may not be good enough.

The other issue that prospective LG G4 owners will need to consider is the same one Samsung Galaxy S6 and Nexus 6 owners have had to ponder.

Like those phones, the LG G4 comes with a QHD display. This means that it has a whopping 2560 x 1440 resolution. That's four times the number of pixels found in a 720p display such as the iPhone 5S or the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact.

2015's top processors are better suited to pushing so many pixels around than previous efforts like the LG G3, but it still takes a lot out of them. And as we've discussed, the LG G4's Snapdragon 808 isn't exactly the best of the best.

There are still legitimate questions over whether a QHD resolution is even worth this extra load on a device's processor and battery. Sony and HTC are among the voices to have raised doubts over the worth of such a resolution, and both have launched their latest flagship phones with 1920 x 1080 (1080p or Full HD) screens.

Admittedly neither company is exactly selling too many of its phones right now, so let's throw Apple's name into the mix. The iPhone 6 Plus has the same sized display as the LG G4, but sticks with a 1080p resolution - and it's still regarded as one of the best mobile screens in the business.

The LG G4's screen is great, and with its boosted brightness and contrast levels, games will look fantastic on it. But will its excessively pixel-dense display take its toll when playing the most advanced games in 18 months time?

We've already mentioned this, but it's worth restating: the LG G4 is by all accounts a great smartphone. It's fast, feature-packed, and it's got one of the best cameras of any smartphone to date.

But then at £600 SIM-free, it should be darned good. We're not saying that the LG G4 is overly expensive, no more than any other flagship smartphone, at least. But the point is that at this price, it's directly competing with the very best in the business.

At this price point you can buy the best gaming smartphone around in the iPhone 6. You can also buy arguably the best and fastest Android smartphone in the business, the Samsung Galaxy S6.

You pays your money, you takes your choice. If you're a committed mobile gamer, that choice might well be something other than the LG G4.