In the last three years or so, LG has tried to keep pace with rivals such as Apple, Samsung, and recently, HTC, but more often than not its high-end products seem to miss the mark. Ask a common user, what he/she thinks the most desirable smartphones are, and chances are LG wouldn’t have figured in the top three in a bunch of responses. LG, however, seems to have kept on with its innovation and has recently launched the LG G2, which holds a lot of promise, both for the consumer and the company that produced it.

Personally, I love the dimensions of the handset. The 5.2-inch screen seems just the right size for the kind of media consumption I indulge in – lots of browsing on Dolphin, spurts of obsessive gaming with Dots, reading on the Kindle during the office commute etc. The body is neither too big (so it doesn’t feel unwieldy) nor too small (so there’s no problem reading/browsing on it). I could really get used to this screen size! LG, as usual, has opted for an IPS screen, which it usually does with most of its flagship smartphones. It’s a 1080p display so pretty much everything you render on screen – text, pictures, videos – end up looking pretty impressive. And to make the best of this, LG seems to have designed the G2 in such a way that maximises the real estate. The bezel is almost non-existent on the sides of the display, so it’s almost an edge-to-edge experience across the width of the phone. Despite not having any physical navigation buttons, there’s a thin strip of bezel at the bottom that flashes the company logo.

Not only has LG switched to virtual buttons on the device, it has also, quite unusually, moved the volume rocker and the power button to the back of the phone. This is the first physical tweak of its kind on any smartphone till date. And as weird as it sounds, it actually turns out to be a well-researched, ergonomic placement. Although a bit unusual, the finger almost always lands just at the back buttons – maybe not if you have creepy-long fingers! So, if the back buttons are not to your liking, you can just use what LG calls the “Knock On” feature, where you basically tap the phone twice to wake it up. It’s what Nokia, too, features in the budget Asha 510 phone, launched earlier this year.

Apart from this, the build of the phone is pretty standard. I wish the flagship had some of the classiness that the likes of the HTC One or Nokia Lumia 1020 have.

User Interface

With all its major smartphones till date, LG always seems to go overboard with the user interface, trying to pack in as many tricks as possible. The G2 is no different, but I have to say, somewhere it has become a lot less annoying than was the case with LG’s previous high-end handsets. Superfluous tricks still exist though – like when you double-tap and slide across to the homescreen, there’s sparkly, magic-wand type effect. The widgets that adorn a couple of screens also seem pretty redundant.

Maybe in an attempt to encourage multi-tasking, LG has a way for you to momentarily stow away apps and open news ones, and then recollect both of them (or more) together in a cascading pattern. You can stow them away with a three-finger swipe to the side and recall them using the reverse motion. Considering none of the app windows are shown in full to copy-paste data or quickly re-check something, I’m not sure why someone would keep wanting to using this feature and have the apps running in the background for long stretches of time.

The LG G2’s virtual keyboard is visually one of the busiest keyboards I’ve ever used on a smartphone. However, the keyboard is pretty intuitive. I usually make my fair share of typos and depend on the autocorrect function to rectify them. I didn’t even have to do that with the LG G2. It’s hands down one of the best virtual keypads to have to type on!

Performance

Given the fact that it’s LG’s current flagship model, you would expect the LG G2 to sport top specs, and it does. The G2 happens to be one of the smartphones to use Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor. The super-fast mobile processor proves it mettle with the G2 despite the animation-heavy user interface. Like most other super-smartphones, using it is a breeze and I rarely came to a point where the phone had trouble juggling multiple tasks or executing a new one.

The LG G2 has a massive 3,000mAh battery, which kept the phone powered for much more than our working hours. This, with intermittent app usage and lots of web browsing on the device. If you just happen to be someone who doesn’t use the web much on your smartphone, then you might even be able to squeeze a day and a half of usage from the handset.

The G2 delivers on a bunch of fronts that are essential to making a super-smartphone popular – performance, battery, display, multimedia capabilities. However, compared to its peers such as the HTC one or even the Samsung Galaxy S4 (despite its plasticky body), all LG G2 seems to lack in is a bit of finesse. Both in terms of build quality as well as its user interface. Having said that, if at all this is the phone (hardware-wise) that the next Google Nexus is going to be based on, we’re definitely keeping our eyes wide open!

Rs 41,500

Love – Excellent display and multimedia capabilities

Hate – Mediocre build, gimmicky user interface

mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in

comment COMMENT NOW