LG Electronics strikes down blogger's claim that G5 smartphone isn't all metal but plastic

South Korean tech giant LG Electronics Inc. found itself in a hot seat, charged of exaggeration about its ambitious new G5 flagship smartphone after the phone was humiliatingly dissected and challenged in a YouTube test on durability following its market release last week.

YouTuber Jerry Rig famous of testing out latest IT devices in various bizarre forms took on LG’s new phone in what the company claimed to be in full metal body to show that much of it was actually plastic under metallic-looking paint.

Rig, followed by 153,000 subscribers, on Saturday uploaded a short video on YouTube of him completely tearing down the LG G5. Rig is well known in the industry as a unique blogger that disassembles newly released IT products and carries out unusual tests - such as putting a device inside a Coke and freezing it to see if it operates or not. All of Rig’s experiments are posted on YouTube.

While ripping down the LG G5, Rig said “there seems to be an issue with the build quality of this phone.” He also scratched the back of the handset with a box cutter, saying that it is “hard to claim metal phone when it looks and feels like plastic” and that “it’s even harder to claim metal phone when the top millimeter of material is plastic.” He said the device has a layer of plastic on top of aluminum chassis, classic engineering design for many plastic phones over the years.

LG Electronics strongly refuted the claims. Ken Hong, the company’s director for global communications, posted a response on YouTube explaining that what Rig is claiming “is primer, not a plastic cover” and that a primer is used “to get paint to bond to aluminum, which is what we used for the G5’s body.” The aluminum alloy the company sourced is patent pending and was developed at the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology for use in automobiles and aircraft, he said.

According to LG Electronics, the aluminum alloy was jointly developed by the company and the institute and was commercialized for the first time with the G5. LG Electronics has applied for a patent of the aluminum alloy in February.

A company official who asked to be unnamed said that the process in which LG Electronics chose to use to enhance metal is different from that of other rivals. The official said that Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. go through an anodizing process to dye aluminum by sealing aluminum porous with color while the G5 uses microdizing process “where pigment containing tiny metal particles is applied directly to the primer to provide a smooth and durable finish.”

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