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at pocket now we had one more thing to be thankful for this past Thanksgiving the North American holiday was made a little brighter this year with the arrival of a South Korean product the LG G flex we continue to be thankful not so much just for the arrival of the device itself but for what it represents finally a major manufacturer has made a bold move away from the sea of flat slabs into something a little more distinctive but while most good products are distinctive not every distinctive product is good so is the LG G flex a smartphone you should consider buying let's find out I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our video review of the LG G flex fair warning if you're anything like us by the end of this video you might want a G flex of your own if you feel compelled to snap one up do what we did visit Negri Electronics who provided us with one of our two demo units and while you're at it follow pocket now at the various online watercoolers and here on youtube so you don't miss future reviews more than anything else the G flex is defined by the shape that gives it its name a gentle continuous curve from top to bottom in daily use this curve does four things first and probably most importantly it makes the phone's massive size easier to handle as it physically brings the screen closer to your thumb in one-handed operation second it makes talking on the phone more comfortable more akin to the old banana phones of your third it gives watching video a slightly more cinematic feel and finally the G flexes gentle angle causes it to conform much better to the buttock for all you back pocket phone bearers out there the G flex isn't just about the curve though LG has also made the back cover out of a urethane like material which gives it the ability to heal itself when scratched this finish is incredibly slippery it feels like no other phone material out there which is fun in its futuristic tactility despite its tendency to attract dust we put the coating under stress in a rare torture test here in the PocketNow labs and while that coating didn't do anything for deeper gouges it did indeed eliminate light scratches given enough time we'll drop a link to that torture test at the end of this video so you can refer to it for more detail like the rest of the phone the 6-inch display is curved it's P OLED panel rated at 720p resolution you don't really notice the step down from the 1080p resolution standard on most flagships these days the screens colors rich and beautiful with high contrast and user controllable saturation our only disappointment B comes from the displays whites which are gray murky and reminding us of the wet newspaper look of earlier OLED displays powering it on requires either a double tap on the glass cover or a press of the rear mounted power standby volume collective which you'll either love or hate we tend to like it though it does make adjusting speaker volume tough when the phone's sitting on a table under the flexes Titan silver fuselage sits a spec sheet familiar from LG's more conventional g2 the extendable DMB TV antenna is useless here in the States but the rest of the guts certainly are not the Flex is powered by the muscly Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor backed up by the now-familiar 2 gigs of ram and the usual array of radios and interfaces with 32 gigs of non-expandable storage and a curved embedded lipo battery rated at a whopping 13.3 watt hours it's probably why the G flex sits a little heavy in the hand at 177 grams but somehow it doesn't seem as massive as it is likely due to the hardware shape and the space age back cover material manufacturers take note it's amazing what a little boldness in design can do that's somewhat true for the phones software as well LG's skin feels better suited to the G flex than to the g2 slide aside multitasking it's still pretty clumsy but the qslide mini apps are more useful now that we have a larger display to work with more importantly LG's new dual window feature allows you to use two apps side-by-side it's not quite as mature as Samsung's multi window offering you can't use as many apps with LG's incarnation but we're very glad to see it just the same a big screen means very little if it can't be used intelligently and with this mix of multitasking options LG passes that test there are enhancements here even if you're a one app at a time kind of person - there's still the option to install a little toggle in the HOME key Road to deploy the notification shade which makes up for that shade being so far out of reach and quite overcrowded out of the box the new flex theme is no more subtle than its predecessors but we like the new neon accents better than we did the old cartoony bubbles little touches like the animations when you plug in a cable are quite nice and almost every animation and scroll effect can be tweaked if you're the tinkering type you'll find an awful lot to keep you busy here we tested the G flex between rural New York suburban Greater Boston and urban San Francisco over the course of 14 days on AT&T HSPA Network we haven't found any reception trouble over cellular or Wi-Fi and neither we nor the people we call have any complaints about sound quality during a voice call while we miss LTE speeds are usually manageable over 3G depending on what market we're testing it speed on the software side is brilliant with almost no lag even when playing games like sky gamblers air supremacy or asphalt 8 and even with high strain action like this battery life is outstanding wrapping up our first day with the G flex saw has hit the 10% mark only after 21 hours of heavy use and nearly six hours of screen on time that's awesome endure it's the camera suite is just as well developed here as on previous LG smartphones and the company again uses the rear notification light to good effect tying it into the self-timer and face detection features the 13 megapixel camera module isn't the same one as used in the g2 this one features faster shutter speed and it does very well in broad daylight especially when shooting in dynamic mode making some very nice photos possible even if the saturation might be a little high for some folks we like it indoor shots get a little dodgy err once you take the sunlight away noise starts to crop into even well-lit scenes and photos with sharp differences in lighting reveal that purple blotting we remember from the g2 there's also no optical stabilization here we're not going to lie that was pretty disappointing but you can still get some really nice stills from the G flexes camera given the right combination of lighting and patience all that holds true in video performance as well outdoor videos are sharp crisp and soaked in beautiful color with audio capture holding up pretty well even in a gale-force wind while indoors more noise creeps into the image and brighter areas tend to appear washed out we're hoping that can be corrected via software update even without it the camcorder is passable it's just not outstanding in this age of buzzwords and prosaic ism you'll probably hear some people say that the G flex is just a curved version of the g2 that is not the case the G flex flouts convention in a way its predecessor never did it's curved construction and self-healing coating might seem like gimmicks but they work to solve problems we've been complaining about for a long time namely the awkwardness and fragility of modern large screen phones aside from display resolution and OAS the G flex makes almost no compromises to achieve its unique form factor it's a long lasting powerful smartphone with software smart enough to justify the hardware's bulk all that adds up to a comfortable useful and truly beautiful product one we'd love to see made available in the United States we give the LG G flex an eight point nine out of ten we'd like to extend our thanks once again to Negri electronics for our first demo unit and two LG for the second review device you can see our written review on the LG G flex at pocketnow.com that is live right now check the link down in the description below you also notice a like button down there please click it if you did enjoy this video and leave a comment down below if you have some feedback also as I mentioned before please follow us on social media we have more coverage on the G flex coming including comparisons features editorials almost everything you can think of because there's a lot to be said about this device until next time this has been michael fisher with PocketNow thank you so much for watching and we'll see you soon but while all yeah but while most here but while most distinctive products are good not all good products no that's not right while not every good product is most the LG G flex I need better Vanna White skills