LG G FLEX REVIEW

LG breaks new ground with the G Flex , a handset with a curved form
factor and a backplate that can magically mend itself if it gets
scratched. This 6-inch 'phablet' certainly stands out thanks to its
innovative design, but it's not without its disappointments: at almost
the same price as Samsung's Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 tablet and more
expensive than almost every other smartphone, the G Flex should be
closer to perfection than it is.
The G Flex is a 6-inch phablet with a difference — it has a curved
form factor. Image: LG
Design
Most of the pre-launch talk about the LG G Flex concerned its design,
and although there's more on offer here (there are some interesting
aspects to how LG handles Android, for example), design certainly
takes centre stage.
That's because the LG G Flex is curved. You
won't be dropping this handset into your
back pocket, even if the pocket is large
enough to accommodate the phablet's 81.6
by 160.5 by 79.9mm dimensions. It simply
feels oddly awkward in a way that flat
handsets don't.
You can, in fact, bend the G Flex away
from its curved shape to a more
conventional flat design. But this isn't
something you'll be doing in order to
pocket it: we found that it required two
hands and a fair bit of pressure to get the
handset flat — and as soon as we relieved
the pressure, it popped back into its preferred curved form.
Why build a curved handset? LG says a phone that follows the curve of
your face inevitably leads to improved voice quality by placing the
microphone close to your mouth. However, people we called on the G
Flex did not gush with positive comments about how good we
sounded.
Another reason LG gives for the curvature of the G Flex is that it
makes movie watching and games playing more enjoyable. The viewing
advantage of curved screens may hold for larger devices like TVs, but
we're not sure it translates to a 6-inch phablet. We didn't notice any
great improvement in the enjoyment of either movies or games.
Nor does the LG G Flex's shape make it more or less comfortable to
hold than other similarly sized phones. LG has copied the design
convention it adopted in its excellent LG G2 of putting the power
button and volume rockers on the back. They sit in a vertical
configuration beneath the 13-megapixel camera's lens and flash.
There's an infrared zapper here too, incidentally.
With the 5.2-inch LG G2, we found this system awkward initially, but
did get used to it. On the much larger frame of the 6-inch LG G Flex it
works very well. Once we purged the idea of side-mounted buttons
from our muscle memory, prodding the rear buttons with a forefinger
became second nature. The location works equally well for right-and
left handed people.
The volume rockers have small silver nubbins that make them easy to
find when the handset is in a bag or pocket — something you'll
appreciate if you use your phone for listening to music a lot. If the LG
G Flex is sitting on a desk, you reactivate its screen with a double tap
rather than picking it up and reaching for the back button. We found
this an efficient and responsive system with the G2, but less so here as
taps had to be fairly firm to register.
With the buttons located on the back, the only role for the edges of
this handset in terms of connectivity is to house the MicroUSB and
headphone slots. Both are on the bottom edge.
The back of the G Flex uses a special scratch-resistant material.
Image: LG
The back of the LG G Flex is made from a shiny, not particularly
grippy, material featuring a membrane layer that slowly bounces back
if depressed. LG calls this a 'self-healing back cover', which, up to a
point, seems to be true: we lightly scratched the surface with keys and
the scratch did indeed disappear within a couple of hours — although
look hard with the phone side-on and you can still see traces.
We tested further by being a bit rougher with the key-scratching, and
must have permeated the membrane layer: this second scratch looks
distinctly permanent.
Returning to the screen for a moment, it's noticeable that the
resolution is somewhat lacking. For a handset that costs £642 (inc.
VAT; £535 ex. VAT) we expect better than 720 by 1,280 pixels (245
pixels per inch, or ppi). This is the resolution LG used in the much less
expensive G2, and is much lower than other flagship handsets such as
the 4.7-inch HTC One, which is now almost a year old (1,080 by 1,920
pixels, 468ppi).
The screen technology here is a new one: P-OLED. The P stands for
'Plastic substrate' and its use is a key factor in it the screen's
flexibility. Although the use of a new technology is laudable, there is
definite fuzziness to text; not only that, but whites, such as the
background on web pages, can take a blueish tinge if you're viewing at
an angle. We expect crisper, sharper images from a top-end handset.
Features
The LG G Flex is an LTE handset that accommodates a MicroSIM. You
can't get the back off, so the SIM lives in a slot on the left edge.
The SoC is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 MSM8974, which includes a
quad-core CPU running at 2.26GHz. This is complemented by a healthy
2GB of RAM. Wi-fi is bang up to date, supporting dual-band
(2.4/5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and the ability to act
as a hotspot. Bluetooth 4.0 is present, along with NFC and the
aforementioned infrared zapper. The 13-megapixel rear camera is
accompanied by a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera.
The MicroUSB port supports USB On the Go (OTG) and USB Host, so
you could add external data devices such as the Kingston DataTraveller
MicroDuo. We attached ours and it was instantly recognised.
LG does not offer MicroSD card support, so unless you use a USB OTG
device, you're stuck with the 23.7GB of free internal storage from the
32GB that's installed. This is always irritating on a handset that
purports to be top of the range.
The Android version is 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean), which will disappoint those
who like their high-end handsets to have the very latest OS version
(4.4 KitKat in Android's case). LG's Android skinning is far from light
touch but on the whole it meets with our approval. We won't discuss
everything LG has done, but a few favourites deserve a mention.
Pop-up QSlide apps are available in the Notifications area. Image:
Sandra Vogel/ZDNet
The notifications bar offers a feature called QSlide, which allows you
to pop apps up on top of whatever you're doing. You can make these
items more or less transparent using a slider. Dual Windows lets you
run two apps at once. Not all apps are compatible with these features,
but they are good attempts to maximise the screen area.
There's a clever popup that appears when you attach devices. Attaching
our Kingston DataTraveller MicroDuo, for example, called up relevant
apps, including a file explorer, video and music players, and the
gallery. When we attached headphones we were offered music and
video players, the YouTube app and the phone dialler.
We like the fact that you can left- or right-
align the dial pad and keyboard to assist
with one-handed operation, and simply
swipe the front touch buttons to get them
to all rush to one or other side of the
screen for much easier access. You can also
reconfigure the front touch buttons into
your preferred order and add a fourth to
launch LG's Quick Memo app or pull down
the notification panel. You can even hide
the buttons in selected apps to give them
access to the entire screen.
Smart On settings use the front camera to
pause video when you look away and keep
the screen on when you're looking at it,
overriding any display timeout you may
have configured.
The final tweak we will mention is Slide
Aside, which lets you swipe leftwards on the screen to park up to three
running apps off-screen, and then pull them in as needed. Although a
neat idea, it's our least favourite Android tweak in terms of execution.
LG could rethink this into a system that's more ergonomic to use on a
device of this size.
In addition to the interface tweaks LG adds a number of apps to
Android. Quick Memo and Notebook are our favourites. Both are
obviously note-takers, the former including the ability to grab a
screenshot and scrawl on it before sending it off to an email recipient,
the latter offering more sophisticated note-making features.
The G Flex has a 3,500mAh battery — a curved lithium-polymer unit.
In our anecdotal experience the battery lasts longer than average, and
you may even be able to go two days between charges with a light
usage pattern. We found it to be an extremely fast charger too, so it
should be feasible to top up the battery quickly during the day should
the charge level become a concern.
Conclusion
LG may have hit the headlines with the G Flex's curved shape, but
there's more to this phablet than a curved chassis. The moderate
screen resolution and lack of storage expansion are disappointing, but
the way LG is working on enhancing Android shows great potential.
Having said that, LG's UI tweaks are in many cases already found in its
G2 handset and will no doubt be found in future products. Overall the
G Flex, although interesting, is simply way too expensive.