By Faryaab Sheikh
Smartphones Expert, about.com
It was back in October of 2013, when two Korean giants — LG and
Samsung — wanted to disrupt the mobile market with curved screen
smartphones. However, before releasing them to masses, they performed a
test in which they only launched the devices in their home country —
South Korea. After receiving initial feedback from customers, Samsung’s Galaxy Round never managed to cross the border, while LG did make the G Flex available in Asia, Europe, and North America, soon after the Korean launch.
The G Flex was more than just a curved screen smartphone; it featured LG’s self-healing technology,
which would help reduce minor scratches, and the device could literally
flex, after applying a bit of pressure on the back, without the glass
cracking or the battery exploding.
Nevertheless, it was a
first-generation product; it was destined to have problems, and it most
certainly did. Now, LG is back with the successor, the G Flex 2;
doubling-down on the new form factor.
Let’s check it out, and see if it’s worth your hard-earned cash.
DESIGN
Just
like its predecessor, the G Flex 2 features a curved form factor with
the curves ranging from 400-700 radius, which gives the device a unique
look, and makes it very ergonomic to hold, and talk on. The curve makes
the device much easier to use with one hand, especially after LG
decreased the screen size to 5.5-inches from 6-inches on the original G
Flex, making it super painless to access the top and bottom edges of the
display, without the actual grip needing to be adjusted. It also sits
naturally on the cheek while conversing with someone over a phone call.
And, as the curved design brings the microphone closer to the mouth, it
increases the sound pickup capabilities and prevents outside noise from
entering the microphone, resulting in an improved, noise-free calling
experience.
Ever since the release of the LG G2, I have been a big
fan of LG’s power and volume keys’ placement, which is on the back of
the device — underneath the camera sensor, and they are located at the
same place on the G Flex 2 as well. I don’t know why other manufacturers
don’t try this button placement; it’s really convenient to use.
Whenever you hold an LG device in the hand, your index finger will
naturally rest on top of the power/volume button at the back, which
gives you easy access to the entire key layout. By the way, remember the
notification LED on the G Flex, the one inside the power button? It’s
not there anymore on the G Flex 2, the company moved it to the front of
the smartphone instead.
In terms of build quality, we are dealing
with a complete plastic construction, that’s mainly because LG’s Self
Healing technology (and the device’s ability to flex) requires it. LG
claims, its improved Self Healing technology reduces the healing time
from three minutes to just 10 seconds at room temperature. And, it works
as advertised, just don’t expect it to make scratches and nicks
completely disappear, especially the deep ones. What it really does is,
it reduces the intensity of the scratch, it doesn’t actually remove/fix
it, and it works best on tiny, minor scratches. Plus, the plastic back
does give a cheap feeling to the flagship-class smartphone.
Unlike
the G Flex, LG’s latest curved smartphone doesn’t sport a unibody
design, you can actually remove the back cover, this time around.
Despite that, the battery is still sealed in and isn’t user-replaceable,
it’s curved and does flex though — just like the rest of the phone,
including the display. I have tried numerous times of actually breaking
the phone (for science, of course) by intentionally flexing it, but it
just doesn’t break. So, you shouldn’t worry about it much, if it’s in
your back pocket and you sit on it.
The hyper-glazed back cover
features a Spin Hairline Pattern, which gives the device a distinctive
look, and it looks really beautiful, mainly on the Flamenco Red colour
variant. It’s also a complete fingerprint magnet, which are more
noticeable on the Platinum Silver colour. The device itself is very thin
— the thickness isn’t constant throughout the device, due to the curved
form factor — and light. Dimension-wise, it comes in at 149.1 x 75.3 x
7.1-9.4mm and weighs 152 grams.
DISPLAY
The
LG G Flex 2 packs a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920x1080) Curved P-OLED display
panel — a major upgrade from 720p resolution on the G Flex — which
provides deep blacks, high contrast ratio, and punchy colours. Maybe a
bit too punchy for my liking, but I was quickly able to make the
colours, somewhat, less saturated by selecting the ‘Natural’ screen mode
under settings. There are three different display colour profiles to
choose from: Standard, Vivid, and Natural. By default, its shipped with
the standard preset from the factory.
Now, let me explain what P-OLED is, as it’s not a conventional OLED
panel found in smartphones these days. The ‘P’ in the name stands for
plastic, and that’s because, instead of a glass substrate, LG is using a
plastic substrate. In simple words, it’s just like an ordinary OLED
display with the glass components swapped for plastic. And, that’s what
allows the display to have such a unique shape and curvature, and be
flexible at the same time. (via OLED-Display.net)
Nonetheless,
the display isn’t completely flawless, there are three major problems
with it — brightness, colour shifting, and colour banding. When
performing highly CPU/GPU extensive tasks, the device won’t let you
increase the brightness of the display all the way up to 100% due to an
increase in the temperature of the phone. If you’re already at maximum
brightness and the phone heats up, the software will automatically
decrease the brightness down to 70%, and will not allow you to increase
it until the device cools down. Also, if you’re the kind of person who
views and reads content on your phone before going to bed, be prepared
to put some strain on your eyes, because even on the lowest brightness
setting, the display still emits a lot of light.
Then there’s
this issue with colour shifting, if you look at display straight up in
the centre, the colours look just fine. However, as soon as you look at
the display from a different angle — even a minor tilt, the whites start
shifting colour to a pink or blue tint. And, that’s mainly due to the
curvature of the display, which disturbs the viewing angles. Also, the
display suffers from colour banding, which basically means the colours
aren’t smooth throughout the panel, resulting in an unpleasing
experience.
SOFTWARE
Software-wise, the G
Flex 2 runs on Android 5.0.1 Lollipop with LG’s skin on top of it, out
of the box. And, LG’s skin isn’t that great. There’s just too much
bloatware, it looks nothing like stock Android, and there are too many
options in the settings. The first thing you should do, if you buy this
device, is to open settings, hit menu, and change from tab view to list
view — you will thank me soon after.
For all that, LG does bring
in a few quite useful features. For example, there’s multi-window, which
allows you to run two apps simultaneously at the same time, however,
there’s lack of applications on the Google Play Store who actually
support this feature, compared to Samsung’s offering. There’s also
extended volume settings, which allows you to control system, ringtone,
notification, and media volume through one press of a button. On stock
Android, you need to go deep into the settings app to do that. There’s
also double tap to wake, Knock Code, a built-in file manager with cloud
storage support, which, for now, only supports Dropbox — just to name a
few.
Then there’s Glance View, my favourite feature by far, it’s
exclusive to the G Flex2 and uses the curved display to enhance the user
experience. To access Glance view, simply slide downwards on the
screen, while the display is turned off, and the top portion of the
display will lit-up and show key information such as time, recent
messages or missed calls. This way I didn’t had to wake up the entire
display just to check the time, this helped in preserving battery life.
LG’s
skin is currently in the same state as Samsung’s TouchWiz UX from two
years ago. It’s bloated, it’s not optimised, it’s not beautiful, yet it
has potential, because of a few useful features which are non-existent
on stock Android. What LG really needs to do is, start developing its
software from scratch, while keeping Google’s latest design guidelines
in mind, and implement its flagship features to the new skin. That’s a
winning formula right there.
CAMERA
In
terms of camera capabilities, the G Flex2 is boasting a 13-megapixel
main camera sensor with Laser Auto Focus, OIS+ (Optical Image
Stabilisation), dual LED flash, and 4K video capture support. The camera
quality is actually really good, especially outdoors, the autofocus is
lighting fast, and there’s zero-shutter lag — which means, you tap the
shutter button and it instantly takes the picture with no delay. The
camera does fall short indoors under low-light with pictures having
quite a bit of noise.
For all you selfie takers out there, the
device is equipped with a 2.1 megapixel camera with Full HD (1080p)
video capture support. It’s not a wide-angle lens, so don’t expect to
take any groupies with it. The actual sensor quality is average, don’t
expect much from it.
Let’s talk about the stock camera app now. It
has a clean, simple, and easy to use interface with not too many
options or modes to confuse the user. It does have two special features:
Gesture Shot and Gesture View. Gesture Shot allows you to capture a
selfie with a simple hand gesture, while Gesture view makes it easy to
check your last shot after taking a picture; no need to open the
gallery.
There’s no manual mode in the camera app, but LG has
fully implemented Lolipop’s Camera2 API into its operating system, so
you can use 3rd party applications — like Manual Camera — to gain more
control over your pictures, and shoot in RAW.
PERFORMANCE
The device features the infamous eight-core, 64-Bit Snapdragon 810 SoC
— it was actually the world’s first device to sport it, and that’s the
biggest drawback of this curved smartphone; more on that later — with
four high-performance cores clocked at 1.96GHz and four low-power cores
clocked at 1.56GHz, an Adreno 430 GPU with a clock speed of 600MHz, and
2GB / 3GB (depending on which storage configuration you go for: 16GB or
32GB, respectively) of RAM. I tested the 16GB variant with 2GB of LPDDR4
RAM. There’s a microSD card slot on-board as well, you can pop in a
memory card with up to 2TBs of capacity.
Now, let me tell you a
few things about the processor. Even before Qualcomm launched the
Snapdragon 810 earlier this year, there were reports of it overheating,
and that was one of the reasons Samsung decided not to ship any of its
2015 flagship devices with Qualcomm’s SoC; instead, opted to use its in-house developed Exynos processor.
When LG announced the G Flex2 with the S810 chip, there were many
concerns, however, the company assured us that with a little help from
Qualcomm they have optimised their software and drivers, and the device
won’t suffer from any overheating issues. But, after testing the product
for more than a month now, let me tell you one thing: it overheats.
Well,
you might say that every smartphone heats up when performing processor
extensive tasks, and you’re right. However, the G Flex2 starts getting
warm as soon as you have more than 3-4 applications running in the
background. Why is it such a bad thing? When the device overheats, the
CPU starts to throttle itself and clocks down to a very low frequency,
which makes everything laggy, and most of the time the entire phone just
freezes completely.
I regret to say this, but the performance is average to bad on this phone, and the company knows it. That’s why it released its LG G4 with a Snapdragon 808 processor,
instead of the 810. There is a slight possibility that LG might be able
to fix the overheating issue with a software patch in the future, as
the OnePlus 2 review sample I have, which has the same processor — Snapdragon 810 — runs just fine with optimal performance and no overheating issues.
CALL QUALITY AND SPEAKER
I
have tested the call quality under various environments on two
different networks here in the UK and have no complains about it. The
noise-cancellation works well in loud environments, with the recipient
of my call having no difficulties hearing me.
The G Flex2 has a
rear-facing mono speaker, which is loud enough. But, the sound does
start to crackle a bit at the highest volume.
BATTERY LIFE
Powering
everything is a curved, 3,000mAh battery, which will barely last you a
day, depending on your usage. Even though the battery itself is big in
capacity, when the CPU starts throttling, it starts draining the battery
at a much higher rate. Nonetheless, I was actually really impressed by
the standby time on the G Flex2, if you don’t use it, you’ll get great
battery life. If you use it, you’ll have to charge it at least two times
a day. The maximum screen-on time I was able to achieve on this
smartphone was of only two hours.
Technically, if you used the
power saving mode, you could probably get through an entire day.
However, by enabling the power saving mode, you limit the performance
even more and you really don’t want to do that.
Fortunately, it comes with Qualcomm’s Fast Charge technology,
which can charge the battery up to 50% in under 40 minutes. Just make
sure you use the charger supplied along with the device, inside its
box.
CONCLUSION
The LG G Flex2 is not a
great smartphone, especially at such a high price point. What it really
is, is an engineering marvel. It’s a huge accomplishment for LG, they
have product with no substitute. And, it’s highly likely that if you’re
interested in the G Flex2 in the first place, it’s because of its curved
display, Self Healing technology, and its ability to flex. No other OEM
can offer you that kind of a package in a smartphone. So, if you do
decide to buy a G Flex2, it’s purely for those three features. Sure,
Samsung has its Galaxy S6 edge with a dual-edge display, but it’s
something totally different from LG’s G Flex series.
After playing with the G Flex2, I’m excited to see what the Korean company does with its successor. I have high hopes.
