Reviewing LG G Flex 2

Reviewing LG G FLEX 2

LG has a very interesting idea of what a good flagship smartphone should be. The G2 and later the LG G3 had unorthodox button placement on the rear panel, but with a bit of practice this was hardly an issue. The G Flex was even more unorthodox with a massive 6-inch display curved in such a way to (supposedly) better fit the palm of your hand and shape of your face -- in practice it was just awkward.

Now they're back at it again with the G Flex 2. While similar in shape to the original, the second-generation Flex features a more reasonable 5.5-inch display, which keeps the handset closer in size to today’s popular flagships. The flexibility of the original also remains, allowing the G Flex 2’s curved body to bend in certain circumstances.

On the inside, LG is packing in the latest and greatest hardware. This is the second product to hit the TechSpot test bench that’s powered by Qualcomm’s flagship and most powerful SoC, the 64-bit capable Snapdragon 810. The screen has been upgraded from 720p to the flagship-standard 1080p, and we’re also getting LG’s latest 13-megapixel camera module with a laser-assisted autofocus system and optical image stabilization.

Although the G Flex 2 is still a niche flagship, and comes with a price tag that will likely be off-putting for all but the keenest early adopters, it’s nevertheless positioned against the standard crop of high-end smartphones. The question becomes whether the curved G Flex 2 is worth it.

The main feature of the G Flex 2 that makes it stand out from the crowd is, by far, the curved design. The vast majority of phones produced today use a standard, flat slate body that gets refined with every release. Some phones are curvier than others, but typically it’s a variation of a theme that started with the original iPhone. However with the G Flex 2, like the original G Flex, curves are taken to the next level.

The entire body of the G Flex 2 is concavely curved, including the display and the battery inside. The curve isn’t exactly subtle: there’s no mistaking the G Flex for a flat smartphone from many angles. LG did, however, decrease the amount of curvature in the G Flex 2 compared to its predecessor, which is a sensible decision that improves usability. Combined with the smaller display size (5.5” down from 6.0”), the G Flex 2 is a more portable, more easy to handle, and more standard-sized flagship.

While LG claims that the G Flex curve allows the device to be better sculpted to fit in your hands, and better shaped for placement against your face, I find the benefits rather dubious. Yes, the phone does sit closer to your face when making calls, which in turn brings the microphone closer to your mouth. But you’re not always making calls, and in the hand I see no real improvement in ergonomics from having the device curved in this way.

When you hold your phone in your hands, typically the palm does not make flush contact with the rear of the smartphone; in other words, normally people hold their phones by the edges. Curving the device in the way LG has with the G Flex 2 does not improve its ergonomics, as your hands simply aren’t curved in the same direction, and most of the time don’t make contact with the back. If the device was curved in the other direction (left-right rather than up-down), your hands might comfortably scoop the back panel more, but with the curve as it is, I don’t see any advantage over a regular, flat handset.

In fact there are some problems introduced by the curved design; thankfully they’re not major downsides, but they’re issues you wouldn’t normally get with a flat handset. The most annoying issue is that of comfort: the rectangular profile and curve mix to create an uncomfortable bottom-right edge that somewhat digs in to your right hand (the opposite corner is an issue for left handed usage, too). Then there’s the issue of strength.

Curving a phone makes it subject to more stress in some circumstances, such as when it’s dropped, or when something is dropped on it. In these cases there is a smaller impact area due to the curve, which leads to higher stress in the impact area. Not only that, but in some situations the phone may want to bend, such as when you’re walking with it in your pocket.

Luckily LG has a solution, which, as you may have guessed from the name of the smartphone, is small amounts of flexibility in the body. When I first heard that the G Flex 2 is a flexible device, I assumed it was relatively easy to bend. But make no mistake: the G Flex 2 is remarkably tough and rigid, taking a lot of force to bend it even slightly. The flexibility was obviously introduced as a failsafe to prevent the phone from snapping when something attempted to flatten it, rather than as a cool feature you can show off to people. The ability to bend the handset completely flat (albeit momentarily) also makes it much tougher than it otherwise would have been, and alleviates the need to worry about its breakability.

LG has also thought about the longevity of the device by coating the plastic rear panel with second-generation self-healing polymers. When the panel is scratched or lightly damaged, the coating will repair itself in around 10 seconds in room temperature, which is a decent improvement on the hours the coating took to repair scratches on the original G Flex. As for looks, the back panel has a familiar metallic shine to it, similar to the LG G3, which looks decent but can’t fully replicate the qualities of real metal.

Most of the G Flex 2 appears to have been crafted from plastic, which is no surprise considering the flexibility of the handset. Thanks to the self-healing coating, the G Flex 2’s is glossy and smooth to the touch, something I’m not a huge fan of as it cheapens the appearance of the device. However the use of Gorilla Glass 3 on the front, combined with a chemical strengthening treatment from LG, is good to see and keeps the front feeling slick and swooshable.

Like the past few flagships from LG, the G Flex 2’s only physical buttons are located on the back panel, just below the camera module. The convex power button is placed between the volume buttons, and with a small amount of practice, the unconventional positioning becomes easy to use. Also on the back you’ll find the main device speaker, which as usual is loud enough but not excellent in terms of quality.

Around the rest of the device, there’s not much to see, except for the microUSB port and 3.5mm audio jack on the bottom. On the top is a single microphone and the infrared LED for controlling TVs. Removing the back cover reveals a microSD card slot and micro-SIM slot, but no removable battery. You’d think that maybe these slots could have been accessible through a tray, removing the need for a massive removable piece of plastic, but apparently not.

The Curved P-OLED Display

As you might have gathered already, the LG G Flex 2 comes with a 5.5-inch curved P-OLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Although this display is smaller than the 6.0-inch monster in the original G Flex, the increased resolution (up from 720p) goes a long way to producing sharper, crisper imagery and text. At 400 PPI, this display looks significantly better than its predecessor, and although it doesn’t reach the monstrous densities of recent 1440p displays, it still looks great in its own right.

The curve is achieved through LG’s plastic OLED technology, which can also be used for flexible displays. Like many OLEDs of this resolution, a PenTile subpixel matrix is being used, although you’ll be hard pressed to notice the effects. I did notice, however, subtle graininess in the display’s picture, not caused by the display itself, but by one of the layers between the display and the outside world. Although the graininess is hard to spot unless you look closely, and doesn’t hugely affect picture quality, it’s not something I’ve seen on smartphone displays before. This leads me to believe it’s due to the construction of the curved display.

Does the curved display provide a better viewing experience than a flat display? Well… no. Like with televisions – and manufacturers will disagree with me here – there is really no benefit to a curved display at standard viewing distances and sizes. The small radius of curvature introduces distortion to flat images, though it’s not really significant enough to kick up a fuss. For using apps, playing games, browsing the web, and even viewing photos and videos, the curved display of this smartphone provides a similar experience to the standard flat displays we’ve been using for years.

Although OLED displays have their downsides, there are plenty of reasons to like the panel used in the G Flex 2. Colors are vivid, as you would expect from this type of display, with oversaturation that wouldn’t go astray in a Samsung device. You can alter the color profile from ‘standard’ to ‘vivid’ or ‘natural’ in the display settings, and while natural is the most accurate in its color reproduction, I prefer to leave it on standard to get a vivid picture without going overboard.

Of course, like all OLEDs, blacks are extremely deep and contrast is outstanding. The overall tone of the display is reasonably balanced, although whites don’t quite reach an ideal 6500K color temperature. Viewing angles are also excellent, which is key for a curved display that will have parts often viewed at off-normal angles. There is a slight tone shift at angles beyond 45 degrees, though there is hardly any tone shift or reduction in general viewability even at acute angles.

Peak brightness levels are good but not great from the G Flex 2’s AMOLED, which can make outdoor viewing a little difficult in comparison to similar LCD panels. LG hasn’t implemented a software-based artificial brightness booster, which might have improved the viewability in some circumstances. Minimum brightness isn’t as low as I’d like, though it’s fine for use at night without worrying about burning your retinas out.

The LG G Flex 2 uses on-screen navigation buttons, and like previous LG flagships, the order and amount of buttons can be customized in the device settings. As well as the standard home, back and recent tasks buttons, you can add in a notification tray button, a QuickMemo+ button, a dual window button, and a QSlide button. I didn’t feel the need to add any of these buttons to the navigation bar while I was using the G Flex, although if you’re a frequent user of these features, it may be worth your while.

Hardware Overview & CPU Performance

Inside the G Flex 2 is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 SoC, which we first reviewed in the HTC One M9. The implementation of the SoC was slightly difference in HTC’s flagship, due to aggressive CPU and GPU downclocking in some circumstances, which we shouldn’t see as much of in the G Flex.

The Snapdragon 810 features an eight-core CPU made up of a quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 cluster clocked at 1.96 GHz and a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1.56 GHz. There’s also an Adreno 430 GPU clocked at 600 MHz, and a dual-channel 32-bit LPDDR4-1600 memory controller providing 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth. As the SoC uses ARMv8 CPU cores, it’s fully 64-bit compliant.

There’s also support for LTE Category 9 in the Snapdragon 810, which supports connections of 450 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps up. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, and A-GPS+GLONASS. If you want to read more about the Snapdragon 810, check out my Review of the HTC One M9 which goes in to more detail on Qualcomm’s flagship silicon.

As for hardware specific to the G Flex 2, we’re seeing either 2 or 3 GB of RAM depending on whether you get a model with 16 or 32 GB of internal storage. If 32 GB isn’t enough for you, there’s also microSDXC card support via a slot under the back cover. You also get NFC, which is standard for a flagship smartphone, and infrared for controlling home theatre equipment through a built-in app.

As with many phones today, there are several variations of the LG G Flex 2, each supporting a different range of LTE bands. Rather than listing all the variants here, check with your carrier before purchasing the G Flex 2 to ensure there’s good compatibility.

Before I get straight into the benchmarks, it’s worth talking about how the G Flex 2 performs in a general sense. While the Snapdragon 810 is undoubtedly a powerful chip, LG hasn’t done a great job of optimizing their skin, so after a few weeks of use the G Flex 2 can feel a bogged down. This manifests itself as a somewhat laggy interface on occasion, and it can slow down multi-tasking that is otherwise extremely snappy.

Luckily the G Flex 2 isn’t naturally a laggy device, meaning most of the time it’ll feel blazing fast. However you’d expect a modern flagship to be fast all the time, so I hope LG can address the occasional slowdown through a software update.

Due to less aggressive throttling, the LG G Flex 2 is 12% faster than the HTC One M9 in CPU limited workloads, despite the One M9 using the same SoC. This lead extends to 15% when looking across each individual test in the system benchmarks we run, which factors in NAND, memory and (sometimes) GPU performance. All things considered this is a pretty good result for the G Flex 2.

Compared to the LG G3, which used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 SoC, we’re seeing gains of 49% on the CPU side and 44% from a general system perspective, which again is a great result for a device less than a year newer. For those interested, the G Flex 2 was around 25-30% faster than the Snapdragon 805 Galaxy Note 4, albeit with a more limited sample of benchmarks to compare.