In the last one year LG has launched many new Android Smartphones including some high end devices such as LG Optimus G Pro. With the ever growing competition in the smartphone market LG has came up with a device which can help them dominate the smartphone market. We are talking about the LG G2 which is their latest flagship device.
LG G2 was launched in India couple of months back and it is now one of the most talked about devices in the Indian market. So is this the best Android smartphone you can buy at the moment? Can it beat other flagship devices from various companies? Read on to find out.
Display & Design
The first thing which you will notice when you take out the device from the box is its almost bezel free display. The phone measures 138.5 x 70.9 x 8.9 mm and has extremely narrow bezels (2.65mm) on the side edge. LG G2 has all plastic construction but it still feels sturdier and better quality device as compare to many other high end smartphones available in the market.
The front is dominated by a 5.2 inch full HD display which comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 2 protection. The display is quite impressive with good brightness and color levels. The touch response of the display is very good.
Above the display you have 2.1 megapixel camera, notification LED, ear piece and hidden ambient light and proximity sensors. At the top of the device you will find a IR Blaster and a secondary mic for noise cancellation.
Below the display you just have the LG logo and there are no physical keys present. The usual Android menu buttons appear on the display itself.
At the bottom of the device you have a 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB port and a pair of loudspeaker grilles.
The phone does not have any buttons on the right side and on the left side you just have a micro sim card slot. You must be wondering where is the volume rocker or power button. These keys are now present at the back of the device just below the camera.
We never faced any problems while trying to access any of these keys. The volume keys can also be used as the shutter key while in camera app. So now you can easily take a selfie by using one of the volume key as the camera shutter key.
Overall, LG G2 has a great build quality and design. The rear key design is something which makes this device unique and we really like this new design as it is much more convenient to use the volume keys while on a call or while taking a selfie if the keys are placed at back.
Hardware & Performance
LG G2 is powered by a 2.2 GHz quad core qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor along with Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Looking just at the specs one would say that it is a pretty powerful device and it will get a good score in most of the benchmarking tests. So we ran few of the most popular benchmarking tests on the device and you can see the results in the video below.
So clearly LG G2 is a powerful device in terms of performance. We even played few high end games on the device such as modern combat 4, nova 3 and asphalt 8 and all the games ran quite smoothly on the device. The device is perfect for multitasking, playing games or for running any kind of app.
Software
The LG G2 runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean along with Optimus UI on top. Users can unlock the device by simply double tapping on the screen, a feature called as Knock On. Users can add a widget on the lock screen and then expand it by swiping down. They can also use set shortcuts of 5 applications on the lockscreen itself. LG has also customized the notification area and users can toggle various features such as sensors, brightness and volume from the notification area itself.
LG G2 comes pre-loaded with number of applications such as Quick Translator, LG Backup, Quick Remote etc in the device. Quick remote allows the users to use the device as a remote to control various appliances such as TV, AC, Set top box etc. Overall in terms of software LG G2 does not lack anywhere except the Android version and we hope LG would soon release the Android 4.3 upgrade for the device.
Camera
LG G2 packs a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 2.1 megapixel front facing camera. It has tons of modes and features and it also includes manual focus option which is pretty cool. The camera has optical image stabilization module and supports full HD recording at 60fps. Here are few sample images captured using LG G2 back camera:
[Flickr Gallery=”LG G2″]
The camera is capable of capturing amazing images even in the low light conditions. The camera also has some unique features such as Audio Zoom which allows the users to highlight or enhance the audio of a particular area in the video.
Battery Life
Most of the flagship devices these days comes with a large full HD display which usually result in a mediocre battery life but this is not the case with LG G2. It is powered by a 3000mAh Lithium polymer battery which has a rated talktime of around 17 hours on 3G.
With moderate usage the device easily lasted for 1.5 days during which we made few phone calls (1.5 hours), played few videos, our email and social accounts were on sync and clicked few images using the back camera. We really like the standby time of the device as the battery hardly drained when the device was not in use.
Conclusion
LG G2 is undoubtedly one of the best Android smartphone available in the market. The phone has Good build quality, amazing performance and superb battery life which makes it a perfect choice for the people looking to buy a Flagship device. Personally we really like the rear key design but some users may find the button placement unusual and they might need some time to get used to it.
Pros:
- Good Build Quality
- Brilliant Display
- Amazing Performance
- Superb Battery Life
Cons:
- Rear Key Design
Rear key design is not exactly a disadvantage, only some users will find hard to use the new design and I am sure rest of the users will love the design.
