Gadgetory

- Hey, it's Chaim with The Verge, and I'm here with the new LG G8 ThinQ. It's LG's latest flagship that it's announcing at MWC 2019. (mellow music) LG's focusing on a couple areas as improvements with the G8. It's focusing on biometric security, new camera features, and just generally improved hardware. The biggest area that it's changing is the new front-facing camera which LG is calling the Z Camera. The Z stands for z-axis, and that's because LG's using some IR 3D mapping technology that'll allow you to detect how far things are from the device. LG's using this in a couple of cool ways. (upbeat music) The first is for face unlock, so it can do face ID just like an iPhone. Actually, very similar to the iPhone, and it's using these IR sensors to get better, 3D maps that work well in low light. LG says its system is actually an improvement on Apple's because LG's using a constant live feed instead of more static 3D images that Apple is using. The second is in just improved portrait selfies. LG's using the added data from the new sensor for better depth mapping, which it says should give better portrait selfies and allow it to use more effects on those portrait pictures, and the third is probably the weirdest one that LG's doing, which is something it's calling Hand ID. That's where it's using the IR sensors to reflect the IR lasers off the hemoglobin in the veins in your hand and then using that vein map as a way to identify that it is your palm and no one else's. LG says that this is a secure way to unlock your phone, and the net result is that you can just kinda hold your phone, hold your hand over your phone, and it just unlocks. It's very weird, and honestly, like, I had a lot of trouble getting it to work, probably just because I'm not very used to unlocking my phone that way. I really don't think anyone is, but I kinda see where LG is coming from, and it ties into one of the other big features that they're introducing with the G8, which is called Air Motion. Now, that's LG's phrase for its gesture control system. So you activate it first by holding your hand close to your phone, and then, you draw it back a bit. Then, you can tilt your hand to play, pause music or rotate it like a dial to adjust volume. It's interesting and it kinda works. Again, I had some difficulty, largely due to the fact that I had a few minutes to learn it, and I'm just not very familiar with it, and it's a feature that's meant when your phone's like, on a table, your hands are dirty, you're making bread, or painting a picture or something, and you still wanna change music or answer a call, but it doesn't work super well, and I'm just not entirely convinced by it just yet as a feature. LG's completely eliminated the top speaker from the phone. That's nice just because the notch gets to be smaller now, but to replace it, LG's using a pretty weird and cool technology which it's calling its Crystal Sound OLED, which uses the entire pane of glass that's the front of the phone and vibrating that, so you create sound instead. Now, I tried it out. It actually works pretty well, but it's kind of bizarre in that it doesn't really now matter where you hold it, so you can just kinda slide it up and down your ear and the sound quality doesn't get any worse, which is kinda weird. The sound was a little muffled. I'm not sure if that's just because inherent of the speaker technology or just because I had a really bad cell connection, but it's definitely a nifty way to use the tech, and the Crystal Sound OLED panel also works in concert with the regular speaker on the bottom which is still there. So if you're just trying to play music or listen to your video, it still will sound fine, and it still will have stereo sound. The rest of the specs of the G8 are a little more lackluster. They're perfectly fine and, you know, regular standard upgrades for an Android phone in 2019. There's a Snapdragon 855 processor, which is new and good, six gigabytes of RAM, USB-C charging. There's still a headphone jack, which is great. A 3500 milliamp-hour battery. These are perfectly, you know, it checks all the boxes. Nothing here is just super standout, though. One nice thing, LG has gotten rid of the camera bump. The camera is actually completely flush with the back, which is great, just a seamless piece of glass. There are also a couple upgrades to the camera. There's a new Dark mode, which layers up to 10 frames to help reduce noise, and there's a new Video Portrait mode, where you can shoot videos in Portrait mode with this live blur effect. You can actually adjust the blur in real time while you're shooting, which is certainly cool from a tech perspective. My, again, very brief test, it didn't work outstanding. Chunks of the background kept flipping in and out of focus. It wasn't super great at focusing in on my subject, but again, this is early hardware, early software. It's not out yet. LG's probably gonna tweak it, and this was absolutely not a full hands-on demo, so. (gentle music) It's hard to say, but it's certainly nifty. So that's the LG G8, and honestly, it's a perfectly competent-looking smartphone. It checks all the boxes for specs and hardware and features, but I think it's gonna suffer from the same problem that the G7 had, which is there's just not a lot here that makes it stand out. As a new phone, if you're looking at it, there's nothing that's jumping and screaming to say buy this and even if you have a G7, if you're already an LG fan, there's just not a lot here to upgrade, and in a world where we're seeing just wild new innovations, we have folding phones and 5G phones and weird cameras and things, I'm just not convinced that LG has, you know, the pitch here to, to make the G8 a compelling argument in the face of that. LG hasn't announced the price or release date for the G8 yet, although announcements should be coming from its carrier partners within the next couple days at MWC, and again, this is still an early hands-on, so we'll have much more about the G8 and all the other phones at MWC as the week and months go on. Thanks so much for watching. Please make sure to like and subscribe for more great videos like this, and keep it locked to the Verge all week. We'll have tons more news from MWC.