When the original G Flex was launched, many people laughed at it as a machine for LG's brush presence. When we thought that LG would honestly make a normal product, LG brought out the G Flex 2. The new model was smaller, more compact, and more beautiful, and also added a flirtatious red color. Then the question came again. Is it worth buying?
Specifications:
149.1×75.3×7.1mm，152g；
5.5 inch P-OLED 1080p curved screen;
Snapdragon 810 processor, 1.5GHz × 4+2.0GHz × 4;
2GB/3GB RAM+16GB/32GB memory, supporting SD card expansion;
13 million pixel optical anti shake camera (OIS+) with laser assisted auto focus;
3000 mAh non removable battery, supporting fast charging technology;
Android 5.0.1 system.
appearance:
Before we talk about G Flex 2, we still have to review the previous generation of G Flex. As competitors from the same country, LG and Samsung have never stopped their competition. As a product in a new field, G Flex really received a lot of attention at the beginning of its release. But when the aura of dazzle faded, what remained was an immature product with many shortcomings, So G Flex 2 has been upgraded in all possible aspects, which also makes G Flex 2 the best arc-shaped mobile phone, although so far there are few arc-shaped mobile phones.
The appearance of the G Flex 2 is very recognizable. All the buttons are placed on the back. There is nothing on the top and bottom except the infrared transmitter, USB interface and microphone opening. The two sides are naturally empty, which is very consistent with the family design language of LG mobile phones in recent times.
The opening of laser assisted focusing and LED fill light are on both sides of the camera. Is it easy for users to use LG's design? After a period of use, the answer is yes, and once you get used to the design of putting buttons on your back, you will even begin to doubt whether those manufacturers with different designs have not studied ergonomics carefully.
The feeling of G Flex 2 in the hand is better than that of the traditional mobile phone, which is sure. In addition, the curved body can also be closer to the user's face when making a call. Compared with the previous body, the shrunken body also makes it not difficult to put G Flex 2 into the jeans pocket, and the foreign matter feeling of G Flex 2 in the pocket is also low, If you are really using this machine, you'd better check your pockets before throwing your pants into the washing machine.
In addition, another important feature of G Flex 2 is that it can automatically repair small scratches on the back cover. Although this feature has appeared on the previous generation of G Flex, LG has upgraded this technology on G Flex 2. LG claims that the new self repairing back cover can repair slight scratches in 10 seconds at the earliest. From our actual test, LG basically doesn't exaggerate, and it can also speed up the disappearance of scratches if you rub the friction surface with your thumb when there are scratches. But don't believe that this technology can make G Flex 2 go up and down - if you accidentally fall to the ground, the paint will still fall off at the corners.
Screen:
For LG, which has always been a leader in screen resolution, it was a good decision to maintain 1080p resolution in 2015. The 5.5 inch 1080p screen converted to 403 ppi, which is a new era compared with the previous generation 243 ppi. Of course, this 5.5 inch 1080p screen can't compete with the 2K screen above G3 in terms of fineness, However, maintaining 1080p resolution is definitely good news for the Party.
This P-OLED screen uses a diamond shaped sub-pixel arrangement. Generally speaking, it looks "not bad", but the words "not bad" are the highest praise for this screen. If you want to match the LG screen with Samsung's AMOLED, don't think about it. The general feature of this screen is that it has good visibility in the sun, and its black color is very deep.
As for the disadvantages, first of all, the minimum brightness is too high, which causes users to have trouble using it at night or in a dark room, and the color is also dim. Although the system has three modes of standard, vivid and natural settings for this screen, the color performance of this screen is still unsatisfactory.
And I don't know whether it is due to individual reasons. In the evaluation, the upper part of the screen of our G Flex 2 has yellowing, which is still quite obvious when the white background color is displayed.
In a word, this screen is good, but it is only good.
Camera:
The rear camera of G Flex 2 has almost the same specifications as that of G3, except that the optical anti shake of G Flex 2 has been upgraded. Although there is no obvious decline compared with G3, for such a not cheap mobile phone, the camera hardware configuration seems a bit insincere, and the functions and interface layout are basically the same as those of G3. Those familiar with LG mobile phones should not be unfamiliar.
In terms of actual photographic effect, we are quite satisfied with the performance of G Flex 2. If there is any deficiency, LG's noise reduction algorithm is a bit too radical, which will lead to the loss of details in the picture.
In addition, the G Flex 2 can record 4K resolution video at most, but the time of single continuous recording cannot exceed 5 minutes. The front camera supports gesture self taking. In general, we are satisfied with the performance of the G Flex 2 camera, which should also be competitive in 2015, but according to existing information, Both HTC and Samsung will use more powerful camera hardware, so whether the G Flex 2 can survive the fierce attack of competitors is still a question.
Performance:
In fact, the reason why G Flex 2 has attracted much attention is that it has won the first launch of Snapdragon 810 processor. People have placed a lot of expectations on this 64 bit processor that is going to land on many other flagship phones. In addition, native Android 5.0 supports 64 bit computing, so I'm sorry for the audience not to run away.
LG recently announced that it will improve the software to improve performance before G Flex 2 enters more markets, so perhaps after a certain version is updated, the performance score of G Flex 2 will change. In the score comparison, we use LG G3 (Snapdragon [email protected] ， 2GB RAM, Android 5.0) and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Snapdragon [email protected] ， 3GB RAM, Android 5.0.1).
For those who can't understand the performance scores, let's first say that G Flex 2 has good performance, especially in browser performance and single core performance. The performance of the new Adreno 430 GPU in the GFXBench test also indicates that G Flex 2 can cope with large-scale graphics games without pressure.
However, in the performance test, we found that G Flex 2, like G3, has serious overheating and frequency reduction. For example, after several consecutive runs of Anthare, the score dropped significantly, The CPU single core score dropped from 2512 points in the first run to 1386 points in the third run. Although overheating and frequency reduction are common in many mobile phones, the G Flex 2 is also too serious.
Long before the G Flex 2 was launched, there were many rumors about the impact of overheating on the performance of the Snapdragon 810 processor. For the above phenomenon of the G Flex 2, it is difficult to determine whether it is caused by Qualcomm or LG. After all, the 801 processor of the G3 also has obvious overheating and frequency reduction. If there is a problem with the 810, It will not be convincing until more machines using this processor have problems.
In daily use, G Flex 2 It is also a special existence - it is fast and slow, why do you say so? Because most of the time in the evaluation, the mobile phone runs quickly and responds quickly, but in the smooth process, it often gives us an inexplicable Caton, which is not good for a high-end flagship mobile phone with a life cycle of at least one year, The HTC ONE M8, MOTO X, and Nexus 6 with lower configurations are much smoother than G Flex 2. It seems that LG's software optimization is insufficient.
In addition, with regard to the overall encryption function on Android 5.0, G Flex 2 is not enabled by default. It seems that LG feels that it is not worth sacrificing performance for privacy, so it gives the user the option to enable it if necessary.
Software:
For G3 users, the software performance of G Flex 2 is basically in your hands, except that G Flex 2 natively enables 64 bit support, but the 64 bit operating system has not brought much improvement to the user experience, and currently there are few 64 bit optimized APPs. Anyway, at least the foresight of G Flex 2's support for 64 bit is OK.
In terms of software, the most distinctive feature is LG's KnockOn and KnockCode functions. Users can wake or unlock the phone by tapping the screen when the screen is closed. In addition, G Flex 2 It also has a unique information listing function. When the screen is closed, a piece of "light" can be pulled out by sliding from top to bottom. At the same time, the phone will display time and important notices. Although it is not a new function, it is easy to use. The function developed by taking full advantage of the OLED screen's feature that can control the light emission of a single pixel has good usability, and will not affect the endurance.
Endurance:
The battery of G Flex 2 is a 3000 mAh non detachable design, and the Korean version of the aircraft evaluated this time may also be different from the version developed specifically for the corresponding market in terms of endurance, and LG also claims that it will improve the endurance performance in the next system upgrade, so it's good for everyone to take a look at this aspect.
In daily use, this 3000mAh battery can only provide a more general endurance for G Flex 2. Set the screen brightness to 50% and turn on the automatic brightness. Under the intensity of indoor and outdoor use, as well as mixed use of Wi Fi and LTE networks for web browsing, sending and receiving information, using social apps, and playing music for a while, A single charge of G Flex 2 can last for 12 hours, and the screen lighting time is about 3 hours. If the use intensity is increased, the battery life will even be halved, and the screen lighting time will also be shortened to 2.5 hours.
As a result, the endurance has become a major weakness of G Flex 2, and this phone does not provide replaceable batteries or wireless charging functions (at least the original factory does not have a standard configuration), so for those who care about endurance, this sexy phone may not be the best choice.
Summary:
When we first saw the G Flex 2, we hoped that it would not be a fancy product this time, and that it would still be an excellent phone even after the gimmicks of bending the body and self repairing the back cover were thrown away. After the evaluation, we had a general conclusion about this product.
First of all, it is definitely not a bad phone, but LG's sacrifice for bending has really affected the user's experience. Although LG's innovation in mobile phone styling is really commendable, it is just for this novel and unique body, LG had to use a screen with a display effect that was not top of the line on the flagship targeted mobile phone, and although it won the first launch of 810, it was plagued by overheating and frequency reduction, which made it unable to enjoy top performance most of the time, and the battery life was also hard hurt. In general, it was just a little less interesting.
It has to be said that LG has worked hard on curved mobile phones, and its efforts have been fruitful, but it is still impossible to challenge the current top mobile phone camp by this point.
Is G Flex 2 worth buying? In fact, it depends on whether you can fall in love with it at first sight. As far as we are concerned, this mobile phone is still a good technology demonstration machine, and its competitiveness in the high-end market is still insufficient.
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