Gadgetory

it's a whole new trend curved displays curved phones and at the forefront are a couple of companies hoping to make the best of those curves and today we're going to take a look at LG and see what they can do with a top to bottom curve on their new smartphone hey it's Josh regard from Andhra Authority what's going on everybody and this is the LG G flex okay new challenge let's see how far I can get through this entire review without making one curve bend or flex pun the six-inch screen makes for a pretty large device there's really no other way around it this is just a big phone the sides are pretty thin however and completely bare but that is due to LG's new button layout that was first introduced in the g2 and it returns here on the G flex that is the index finger position on the back of the power button flanked by volume rockers and also the power button on the back does double as a notification LED light overall this is a glossy plastic design that really does encompass the entire phone in some pretty fingerprint Pro material however once you get past all of that - the next thing you obviously notice or maybe the first thing you notice is of course that curve when it comes to the form factor the curve really doesn't change the handling all that much sure it actually helps you to somewhat reach the top of the screen but it still requires quite a bit of hand gymnastics the main function of the curve however is obviously durability as we've shown in a couple videos before the phone is able to become flat without any problems and bounce right back into its original form this is mostly useful for people who probably put their phones let's say in their back pockets and then they forget that they're there and they end up sitting down or if you're like me sometimes you just leave the phone on the couch and at times when you sit down you don't know if you just broke your phone at least with the LG G flex you won't really see many problems with that you'll have a little bit more confidence in the phone because it is able to be very somewhat malleable but just enough so that it provides a little bit more safety and no the phone does not feel weird in the pocket especially in the front pocket where you would think a side to side curve might be a little bit better no definitely not the LG G flex fits very squarely in the front pocket and actually doesn't feel weird at all so don't worry about that all of you who have been and then finally we come around to the back and this is another kind of variation that is available in the G flex it is the self-healing back this is a back made of a material that is supposed to have small scratches slowly fade away and pretty much not be there at all yes it can work on small scratches but anything from moderate to heavy scratches obviously won't be going away our drop test proved this because very deep scratches did happen onto the back of the phone when we dropped it on its back and after a few hours yes they improved let's say the color came back but certainly they were not eradicated and it never quite improved after that and even for the small scratches it's more of a first client's type of thing if you look very closely at where those small scratches once were as you might not be able to recognize them you might actually see remnants of them still there the scratches don't completely go away but they do get improved somewhat it's kind of like polishing a crater like I said during the drop test so this is not a phone that is meant for one-handed usage it's meant for two-handed usage but that curve definitely does serve a purpose and in terms of the design it might allow your phone to survive the elements a little bit better than most of the ones you've probably owned before now when it comes to the display we might find one or two kind of peculiar choices this is a six inch screen that brings 720p resolution and 245 PPI and as you can see here the curve does somewhat distort the image that you can see there however it really just turns out to be pretty cool and really doesn't take away from the experience it is far from experience breaking yes I did ask the question myself why is screen this big and potentially this good knowing what LG is capable of using 720p resolution rather than 1080p resolution it seems like a bit of an odd choice but you know what after using the phone for a little while I do have to say that that 720p resolution you actually really don't notice it after some time do I notice the lower resolution in the YouTube videos yeah a little bit did ruin and otherwise a good viewing experience no definitely not for the distance that the screen may be away from your face the text still looks quite good and even when you zoom in it still generally stays that way ultimately LG's prowess with screens is properly represented here regardless of the resolution and besides the good colors make for enjoyable media all around you'll have a good time watching pretty much anything on this phone or playing anything on this one or even reading anything on this large screen and that is a testament to how LG is able to make even 720p resolution work for you on a six-inch screen if there's one place that LG didn't want to have any compromises it is in the performance aspect yes the G flex comes with the best powered processing package available the Snapdragon 800 backed by the audrina 330 and two gigabytes of RAM there is no shortage of power speed and reliability from the snappy optimus UI the good performance was needed in the LG G flex because of the added multitasking additions the ones you probably know already are the slightest side and then LG added into this phone dual window which is basically a multi window version that LG has put into this phone rest assured you will be able to get all you need done on the powerful G flex even sometimes all at once so aside from the curve and the healing back that were already covered in design the hardware is pretty largely simplistic the phone comes with 32 gigabytes of storage which is a pretty respectable amount considering you don't have any higher or lower capacities the usual bevy of connectivity tools are included and are largely standard now speaking of which phone calls did come in just fine with everything coming in crisp and clear in the phone speaker through the LG G flex and when it comes to the main audio speaker it is actually not that bad it gets quite loud and has some richness to it now where the G flex really shines when it comes to hardware is in the battery usage the phone easily handled a full day of moderately heavy usage and is likely to be able to handle yet another half a day if the power saving was on if you're just a moderate user of your smart phone then you could get maybe about 2 days worth of life out of the G flex thankfully that is one of the main trade-offs when it comes to big phones they might be large and it might be a little bit harder to handle but the battery inside matches the size and will likely last wide while from a big phone like the LG G flex you could kind of expect a big camera and that is exactly what you get here with a 13 megapixel camera optic package that alludes to some pretty high quality pictures while we could expect that the G flex take some cues from the g2 camera it does not come with optical image stabilization unfortunately while the app does come with quite a few ways of getting creative there are a bunch of modes including HDR panorama and dual camera shooting along with a couple different ways of using burst shot modes one of the cool additions happens to be in the LED light that covers the power button on the back you are able to keep the phone turned around in order to get a high-quality portrait and once you see a green light on the LED denoting that it has detected your face and has focused on it you can press the volume down button in order to take the actual photo it's kind of a nice and neat feature that allows you to get some nice self-portraits without having to rely on the lower quality front-facing camera pictures do tend to be quite good from this camera though the optics tend to go for the slightly overexposed photo so for those of you that might be photons if you look at the picture you might see it's a little bit lighter than you want it to be and it's even more apparent when you use HDR since it's looking for that high dynamic range it'll tend to give you a much more detailed photo but still slightly overexposed however overall the pictures do seem to come out quite well and are more than useful especially from a 13 megapixel shooter like this as I said before the camera on the G flex performs about as well as it should so if it's the only camera you have on you you could definitely do a lot worse and finally we make it to the software portion many of the features that were introduced in the g2 do make it onto the G flex however I will say that there really aren't any features that take advantage of this curve the only one that kind of does actually has nothing to do with the curve it is just that when you are on the lockscreen and you move the phone up and down it follows along that axis and allows you to see the background of the lockscreen sort of move along with it yeah that's pretty much it all of the features that are available in the Optima Co I do have to do with a lot of multitasking the main ones that are available in the LG G flex include the Q slide apps which are small overlays that provide small multitasking abilities with little windows that allow you to get a few little things done after that we have the slide aside which was originally introduced in the g2 slide aside allows you with a three-finger swipe to move aside entire applications and stack them together once you are ready to switch to a different application just slide back with your three fingers and you will see all of them stacked and available for usage and then finally the newest addition and arguably probably the most useful one is the dual window now this is a multi window functionality that is very welcomed on a large screen such as this hold the back button at any point and you will be greeted with a list of applications that you can put on the top or the bottom and then after that when the two apps are running at once like let's say YouTube and let's say the browser for a website you can always switch the to move the bar up and down it's a very nice addition for especially a large screen that you can take advantage of all that real estate with but overall the Optimates UI tends to really shove its features into your face after all when you bring down the up the notification drop down you'll see all of the options right there in front of you and there's not a whole lot of room for gesture notifications so overall the Optimus UI tends to lower its simplicity quotient but in the end I do like the utilitarian take on Android even if it doesn't come off as the most elegant setup ever now while we don't have any official pricing when it comes to the LG G flex in the West it has been on sale in South Korea for maybe a couple weeks now and in South Korea the price converted from the South Korean one and over to the US dollar comes in at about nine hundred and forty dollars now that's a really hefty price point but what we do know is that the phone is coming to AT&T t-mobile and Sprint and for a high-end fund like this I wouldn't be surprised if you had to do a two-year contract and this phone still came in at that high-end price of 299 dollars and so there you have it the LG G flex what we have here is a phone pioneering what is shaping up to be an interesting trend what the new form factors will mean for functionality will vary by phone but LG took it to mean durability and style and in the end the G flex gets plenty of points for style especially for achieving what it sets out to do great performance a wonderful screen proving that resolution sometimes doesn't even matter and a totally different profile make this a phone made to turn heads in a growing market of large phones you don't have to bend over backwards to find yourself enjoying this one you don't define us out bending over odd damn it as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this full review of the LG G flex stay tuned to android authority for more coverage on it and on its Samsung counterpart the galaxy round stay tuned for reviews comparisons vs. videos and our weekly shows drop us likes on our videos and don't so don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and also you can follow us on social media pretty much everywhere just find Android authority across your social media networks if you want to follow me from time to time you can find me under the handles that are found below that subscribe button usually Joshua Vergara on Google+ and Josh solutes on Twitter and Instagram keep it tuned to this 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