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LG G6 is the first phone to debut Dolby Vision HDR

LG's flagship phone delivers HDR-grade video content from Netflix and Amazon Video that Dolby promises will save on battery life and data consumption.

Claudia Cruz Reporter / CNET en Español
Claudia Cruz is a reporter for CNET en Español. Previously she served as the local editor and social media manager for Mountain View and Palo Alto, Patch.com. Prior to that, editor at El Correo de Queens and contributed as a staff reporter to The Queens Courier in New York City. She has a Masters degree from the City University of New York's (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism in business and entrepreneurial journalism, and a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Claudia's a native New Yorker, daughter of Dominican parents. She loves baseball, yoga and tasting the abundant microbrews in California.
Claudia Cruz
2 min read
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Dolby Vision promises to make your videos on the LG G6 look more like the image on the right.

Dolby

The LG G6 wants to bring the big screen experience to your phone.

Dolby, the audio and imaging quality developer, announced Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that the LG G6 will be the first phone to support its Dolby Vision high dynamic range video technology.

"The LG G6 is one of the most prominent smartphones with a very important position in the mobile market and it's an industry endorsement that Dolby Vision really works," Taeho Oh, vice president of consumer electronics for Dolby, told CNET.

With Dolby Vision on the LG G6 consumers will notice image quality that comes closer to what the human eye can see. This means videos will be brighter, with a better contrast between light and dark, and with a wider color gamut.

Conceived originally for the cinema and now available on televisions, including LG and Vizio models, the LG G6's 5.7-inch screen will be the smallest so far to host the Dolby Vision HDR. But the smaller screen size won't affect the image detail nor will the surrounding light environment that the viewer finds themselves in while watching, Oh explained.

However, consumers might really enjoy these other reasons even more. According to Oh, Dolby Vision will save the phone's battery power by about15 percent because the LG G6's LCD won't have to fully brighten to display the image in HDR. Further he added that consumers will spend less data when streaming because Dolby Vision content on a compatible device uses fewer bits per second during transmission without sacrificing quality. This is something the rival format, HDR 10, can not offer, added Oh. He said this could be independently verified.

LG G6 is tall, sleek and water resistant

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As for content, any Dolby Vision-compatible titles currently available on Netflix and Amazon Video will be available at launch on the LG G6. In total, 85 Hollywood titles and nearly 100 hours of TV programming is available across all streaming partners, including Vudu.

At its launch, the LG G6 will also be compatible with HDR 10, the rival format to Dolby Vision. Although the formats are similar, there are some differences. Devices compatible only with Dolby Vision can display content developed in HDR 10, but the opposite is not true: devices with only HDR 10 don't transmit Dolby Vision content. In addition, Dolby Vision offers more luminosity per square meter, but this is only noticeably in few devices. When it hit the market, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was the first phone with HDR 10.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, so when we have the LG G6 on hand we can see if Dolby Vision on will really be a revolutionary phone feature.

Editor's Note, February 27, 2017: This article was updated to clarify the approximation and reason for the battery savings, and to reflect independent verification of bit rate per second assertion.