Before Apple’s smartphones began bending unexpectedly, LG started making a phone with a deliberate curve, and it’s continuing to turn heads with another, the LG G Flex 2.
This concave Android phone is the follow-up to the world’s first curved smartphone, the LG G Flex, and while it bends the same way, it has new dimensions and specs backing it up.
At CES 2015, I found the LG G Flex 2 screen to be noticeably smaller and easier to hold at 5.5 inches, matching the display size of the LG G3. The previous Flex was a full 6 inches.
Going with that new, more manageable display size is a high resolution P-OLED touchscreen that’s 1080p, up from the decidedly deficient 720p display of the original.
With a faster Snapdragon processor, more RAM and Android 5.0 Lollipop on board this banana-shaped boat, the LG G Flex 2 is headed in the right direction.
The specs make more sense this time around, but does a curved smartphone makes sense to begin with? I bent over backwards to test out all of the following features.
Display
The LG G Flex 2 kicks in the extra resolution necessary to make it Full HD, meaning it’s flexible OLED is now on par with other 1080p screens out there including the Moto X.
It’s no longer 720p and stretched to 6 inches. At 5.5 inches, those 1080p lines of resolution are even more dense, equating the pixel count to 403 pixels per inch, up from the old 245ppi.
Okay, no, this isn’t a Quad HD display that meets the quality of the LG G3, but the jump from 720p to 1080p seems more significant to the human eye than the trendy move to 2160p.
That’s enough for LG to call this curved Plastic OLED very easy on the easy and immersive, but with only a few seconds, we’ll have a full review to be the judge of that.
What’s clear right about about the LG G Flex 2 display is that it’s more durable than the first Flex as well as traditionally-shaped smartphones.
It’s not completely flexible as the name suggests, but the phone does have some give, as evidenced by my finger forcefully pressing down on the phone’s curved back hump.
LG’s head of smartphone planning, Dr. Ram-chan Woo, had an even more drastic test at the CES 2015 unveiling: sitting on it. The LG G Flex 2 survived unscathed.
Design
LG touts the LG G Flex 2 as the perfect equivalent to the curved 4K TVs that it is showing off a CES 2015, a design that the company says naturally matches the contour of your eyes.
As skeptical as we remain about this curved trend, it does offer something new to increasingly stagnant smartphone designs. They’ve been refined ad nauseam.
The same thing can be said about the virtually-bezel-free Sharp Aquos Crystal, but it’s a distant second when you consider all of the chances LG is taking with its design choices.
Take for instance the second-generation self-healing back. Light scratching the smooth “spin hairline” polish now disappear in as little as 10 seconds.
It used to take about ten minutes for these same blemishes to fade. The LG G Flex 2’s new Wolverine powers are now 18 times faster than before.
The back is also home to another LG design pattern: buttons on the rear of the phone. Volume up and down flank the center-located home button from the top and bottom.
This feature has been controversial among LG phones, but when it works well it makes sense and the idea seems initiative and keeps the phone’s sides, which you often grip, clean.
When it doesn’t work – whether you accidentally press the power button and mistakenly turn the screen off or can’t find the right buttons blindly – it seems like a terrible idea.
LG G Flex 2 comes two colors: Platinum Silver and the more daring Flamenco Red.
Specs
It can flex on the outside, but what kind of muscle does the LG G Flex 2 have on the inside? None other than a Snapdragon 810 processor.
LG touts this as the first official phone with the Qualcomm’s new system on a chip for 2015, complete with 64-bit Octa-core CPU and speeds of 2.0GHz.
TechRadar went hands on with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor in December and walked away impressed on reference units. Now it’s time to try the real thing.
Backing up the speedy processor is 2GB of RAM, showing that LG is not quite ready to make this the premier product sporting 4GB of memory. It is, however, the faster DDR4 RAM.
The other kind of memory, on-board storage, amounts to 16GB and 32GB and, yes, the LG G Flex 2 adds a much-valued micro SD slot that maxes out at a whopping 2TB.
The Snapdragon 810 processor should make for better battery life, and given the smaller 3,000 mAh Li-Polymer that replaces the LG G Flex’s 3,500 mAh battery, that’s a good thing.
Charging the smartphone is also easier thanks to the next-generation chip and new battery. It supports faster charging that’s said to garner 50% battery life in under 40 minutes.
That matches the Turbo Charging found in the phones like the Nexus 6 and Droid Turbo, and it’s clutch when on a brief layovers between airports.
Interface
LG’s skinned version of Android 5.0 Lollipop should also extend LG G Flex 2’s battery life, evening out the naturally smaller capacity. It is a 5.5-inch phone after all.
Other new software features include Glance View, a way to peek at the time and notifications with a single swipe held down from the top.
Studies show that people check the time and notifications on their phone 50 times a day on average. That makes this method of lighting up only the top portion of the screen appealing.
LG compared Glance View to an addictive game of Blackjack, an appropriate metaphor given our Las Vegas CES 2015 surroundings.
Glance View joins the existing Knock Code that lights up the phone with two taps and unlocks it with a specific pattern and other LG G3 software like the Smart Keyboard.
Camera
LG admitted that the original G Flex had a camera that didn’t meet most users’ expectations, but the 13-megapixel snapper on the G Flex 2 intends to right those wrongs.
It has advanced optical image stabilization, laser autofocus and dual flash all on the back. On the front, there’s a 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera.
The camera software is also better, especially if you’re looking to snap some selfies. Gesture shot makes its way to the LG G Flex so you can form a fist to acivate a 3-second timer,
Even better, reviewing the shot happens automatically when you hold the camera down, as you would to preview the resulting pic.
Early verdict
I like the LG G Flex in Flamenco Red because it sums up LG’s choices a lot better. It’s a new approach to conventional smarphone design.
There’s more to like about the LG G Flex 2 and the first phone certainly had its admirers. But it was a bit of a cult following and of those fans were all about the 6-inch display.
Nevertheless, at 5.5 inches, the new design is more likely to be picked up by bored Android phone owners tired of the same flat design.
The specs make sense and the G Flex release date is expected in the first half of this year, debuting in Korea first in January.
If the price makes sense, it’s more likely this trend could become a legitimate alternative feature in more than just LG smartphones.
Powered by WPeMatico