Standout curved design, fine HD screen, powerful processor, expandable memory, good battery life
Battery size reduced, still not cheap
The revised LG G Flex 2 retains the original phablet's uniquely curved design, intended to match the shape of your face and minimise glare, and adds a few improvements and updates. But is it enough to justify the premium pricetag?
The good news is that the G Flex 2 debuts at about £100 less than the original, and that goes a long way towards making that curved body seem less like a look-what-we-can-do gimmick and more like something you'd actually want to use.
The body is still curved of course, but it's shrunk from the frankly huge 161x82x7.9-8.7mm to a more manageable 149x75x7.1-9.4mm. It's 15g lighter too and that makes quite a difference to comfort in your pocket, making it easier to accommodate that curve, and yes, it really does flex -- you can press it flat on a table again and again and it will still return to its original shape.
Screen & Chassis
The curved screen has also shrunk from 6in to 5.5in while the resolution has been increased to a full HD 1920x1080 pixels, resulting in 403ppi -- a big improvement on the original's 245ppi.
The slightly smaller size isn't an issue, but the improved resolution, combined with that curve, gives an impressively immersive effect that draws the eyes in, especially with movies.
Good to see that it's running the very latest 5.0 Lollipop version of Android, and as usual LG has added its own skim on top, which includes a few useful extras such as Dual Window, so you can use two apps at once, and Smart Notice, that throws up notification cards for events, weather etc, a bit like Google Now. It still has LG's Knock On and Knock Code features too, which allow you to wake up or unlock the phone with a preset series of taps.
Software & processor
The quad-core processor is now a more efficient octa-core, with four cores clocked at 2GHz and four at 1.5GHz. Opening and using apps is consistently smooth and we encountered no problems, even when running HD games.
Photography
The 13-megapixel camera has a similar spec to the original, but picture quality seems considerably better than the so-so results delivered by the earlier phone. So long as you're careful with your light, colours are accurate, and there's a good level of detail to be had. The 2.1 megapixel snapper on the front is a bit of a disappointment however, in these days when 5MP and up is becoming the norm on premium phones.
There's 16GB of memory on board but fortunately you can add another 128GB via microSD card.
The battery has been reduced from 3500mAh to 3000mAh but it doesn't seem to have affected it unduly. Perhaps thanks to the more efficient processor, you'll still comfortably get a day and more of fairly heavy use out of it.
Conclusion
The LG G Flex 2 has made some significant improvements to the original, with a beefed up processor and greatly improved screen.
It's a little smaller overall, as is the battery, but with more sensible pricing this is now looking like a genuine contender.
Software: Android 5.0 Lollipop
Processor: Octa-core (4x 1.5GHz, 4x 2GHz) Qualcomm Snapdragon 810
Memory slot: No
Display: 5.5in curved POLED, 1920x1080 pixels, 403 ppi
Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera: 13 megapixel laser autofocus, optical image stabilization, dual-LED flash; 2.1 megapixel front
Video playback: MP4, DviX/XviD, H.264, H.263, WMV
Audio playback: MP3, WAV, FLAC, eAAC+, AC3, WMA
Radio: No
Battery: 3000mAh
Size: 149x75x7.1-9.4mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
