Gadgetory

with its signature curve unique rear-mounted controls and vibrant flamenco red paint job the LG G flex 2 is one of the most distinctive Android smartphones on the market today but it's more than just a showboat it's also a testbed for the newest silicon from Qualcomm and for now it's LG's top-tier smartphone I'm Michael Fisher let's find out if the G flex 2 belongs in your pocket now like it's 2013 4 runner the G flex 2 is a boastful smart phone and not just in terms of the person likely to buy one from the 700 radius full HD P OLED display - the curved 3000 milliamp hour battery - the high-density advanced self-healing coating on the back and the chemically enhanced Gorilla Glass 3 on the front this is LG showing off its manufacturing prowess and it's an incredibly effective showcase from the second you pick it up while it's a little light weight for my taste I still find the G flex to one of the most comfortable smartphones on the market because it makes very smart use of its curved construction while other phones use flexible displays to enhance the user interface LG focuses on making the phone itself more ergonomic it hugs the cheek during voice calls it conforms to the palm during one-headed use it makes movie watching and gaming ever so slightly more immersive and as its smaller than its predecessor it's also more pocket-friendly the curve is pronounced enough to make it perfect for back pockets but not so pronounced as to be uncomfortable in the front and if you're worried about bending it with your skinny jeans don't be true to its name and its forerunner it flexes by design when stressed combine the curvature with the rear key which sits right on the sweet spot for a finger and the DoubleTap to unlock and lock feature and you get a phone that's as fun to use as it is to look at a rare double win in a market that often makes you choose between one or the other even the glossy static cling dust magnet finish is forgivable here because it needs to be glossy to make its self-healing technology we'll cover that more thoroughly in a future piece and the phone's high technology isn't confined to the exterior beneath the spent hairline finish set two gigs of RAM on our demo device a three gig model is also available and you can choose between 16 or 32 gigs of storage with microSD expansion up to 2 terabytes the real star of the smartphone is one of the world's newest processors Qualcomm's 64-bit 8 core Snapdragon 810 this is the next generation of Qualcomm silicon and based on reports we've seen around the web its performance on big chunky reference hardware is very good but like fate miniaturization is a cruel mistress within the confines of the G flex 2 the Snapdragon 810 doesn't have as much space to dissipate heat so some pretty aggressive thermal throttling kicks in that means the phone runs very slowly at times now while there's been a lot of back-and-forth in the press about the severity of these temperature issues that's too broad an issue to tackle in this video all I can do is tell you what it feels like to use this phone in the real world and on our unit the answer is not great the combination of the new processor with Android lollipop means there's more lag stutter and hesitation in the G flex - it's not just animations sometimes even a simple text-based website is enough to slow the built-in browser to a crawl and often that performance lag goes hand-in-hand with a big dive in battery life even at 1/2 screen brightness with no other apps running in the task manager I once watched the G flex 2 lose 20% battery in less than an hour when I was doing nothing more strenuous than reading a newspaper website with almost no graphics strenuous games like asphalt 8 do play smoothly but only once you close other running apps first these performance issues only get worse if you're running an app like Spotify or Google Maps Navigation in the background on a budget device I might consider that an acceptable trade-off on a very expensive flagship I don't there's no reason to think these problems can't be solved in future hardware releases or with improved software and in fact LG has released this statement to that effect so to be clear we will retest the x2 in its North American trim when it arrives but there are some specs which won't be changing when it comes to America so we'll use them to help decide whether to recommend the phone as a daily driver the five and a half inch display is a market improvement over the six inch panel of the first G flex with full HD resolution and none of the burnin issues that plagued the earlier phone there's still a bit of a textured quality to grays and whites they bear a slightly modeled look that's been compared to wet newspaper but it's much better than it was on the first flex and it's only noticeable in some lighting conditions as I mentioned before using the G flex 2 feels a lot like using the g3 the stock keyboard is excellent with a persistent number row adjustable height and precise cursor positioning knock code remains a pretty quick and convenient way to secure the phone and I still love the option to toss in a short cut at the bottom to trigger the notification shape glance view is new with the G flex 2 just tap and drag on the screen to display the time and your notifications and it works well other features are more disappointing dual window is here again to let you run apps side by side but its app compatibility continues to lag behind Samsung's multi window LG's smart notice personal assistant still isn't as versatile or as useful as Google now and you can also switch over to Google messenger or your SMS app of choice if you don't want to put up with the comical graphics of the stock offering but if you do you'll miss out on the full window pop / notifications whether that's a plus or minus is up to you also familiar from the g3 the camera the viewfinder is almost identical and so is the hardware an optically stabilized 13 megapixel camera with laser assisted autofocus jumping into the camera the snapshot is as easy as holding down the volume key and focus times are indeed very fast thanks to that laser the results produced are well pretty average the autofocus is fast but it's not immune to drifting a few of the outdoor photos I took don't seem to have a defined focal point possibly because blowing snow confused the camera most outside shots are nice enough though with the kind of crisp detail and high quality I expect from a high-end smartphone camera in 2015 but saturation is a little on the low side and that problem gets much worse indoors this fire extinguisher is much more red in real life than the pinkish hue displayed here same with the red LED on this communicator which is so washed out as to look almost white there's also quite a bit of digital noise in medium to low light if you do any zooming at all most of these were shot at 10 megapixels with wide screen settings but even amping it up to the 13 megapixel maximum that strange oil paint look just doesn't go away LG makes much more noise about the 2 megapixel front-facing camera here shooting selfies with a fist pump is now easier to do and it's also easier to immediately review the results you just bring the phone closer to your face or down to chest level and it'll automatically jump into the gallery the pictures themselves suffer from the same processing distortion as the main shot but they're certainly serviceable as far as selfies go with a wide enough frame to fit all your friends in and a beauty face slider to tame your acne or overgrown facial hair while sort of making you look like a wax figure aim finally let's get the phone out of our face and up to our ear testing it on t-mobile us over the course of six days in the Greater Boston area I found voice quality on par with the competition and also got no complaints about the way I sounded from the other side again the curved construction makes talking of the G flex 2 more comfortable more natural to those old schoolers who grew up with banana phones the speakerphone is unfortunately hidden away around back and not as loud as some I've tested but it's loud enough for the occasional call game or YouTube video and the included quad beat 2 earbuds offer pretty nice sound for an inbox headset if you want to privately listen to your media instead so the G flex 2 comes home with a somewhat mixed report card it utterly dominates as a showboat there's no smartphone that combines great looks with a comfortable build and innovative materials like this but as a showcase for the Snapdragon 810 it stumbles no doubt due to that very ship it throttles itself very quickly and very often and the resulting lag is frankly very frustrating for such a very expensive device so as a daily driver it's only half recommendable at this point we'll let you know if that changes in a follow up video review when the u.s. versions land hopefully later this season if you're looking for details on benchmarks battery life camcorder mode and more be sure to check out our full review at pocketnow.com linked in the description below for your convenience and please give us a thumbs up and subscribe if you did enjoy this video till next time this has been michael fisher with pocket now captain to phones on twitter reminding you that you don't need Beauty face your great-looking just the way you are thanks for watching everyone see you next time