LG has graced us with another of their flagship smartphones, the G7 ThinQ and in a lot of ways this is a very familiar device jam packed with LG’s usual offerings, but the company has introduced a couple things that they hope make this device stand out like AI and an interesting speaker setup. I think LG remains sort of underrated with their smartphones and a lot of people still aren’t over the bootloop issues from years ago, but the company puts out really solid devices, and when they can figure out their product cycles and maybe bring down the retail prices a bit, they’ll probably receive a lot more love.
Inside the package with the G7 you of course get a whole bunch of documentation and paperwork along with a SIN ejector tool and then behind all that some more paperwork and a SIM card if you bought it from T Mobile, and there’s also a wall plug and USB cable obviously but nothing else beyond that.
At a glance, the G7 looks like an LG device, they’ve stuck to a very similar form factor and design for their last few phones and while some people might find that a little boring, LG phones give off that aura of quality with an all glass design, solid build, bright display and it’s on pair to what we’ve seen from everyone else for 2018, LG just didn’t really need to make an design changes to compete.
Now at a bare minimum, the G7 is a natural progression from last years G6 with the expected upgrades, but LG took it a setup further by incorporating their ThinQ branding with this device. And in a simple explanation, ThinQ is LG’s version of AI. This isn’t necessarily a groundbreaking feature, it’s mainly incorporated with the camera software that allows the phone to identify objects and scenery and make the necessary suggestions and adjustments to photos to ensure you’re getting the best possible results. Google lens is incorporated in there, but beyond that, calling the LG G7 a AI device is sort of a stretch I think.
Up front, LG once again offers an excellent IPS Display at a 1440 resolution. And what’s not quite as obvious is this is a notche’d device. Out of the Box, LG hides the notch but if you go into the settings, you’ll see something strange- a tab for the New Second Screen. I don’t know why LG took this route, it’s not a second screen, it’s just the area around the notch and you can add some interesting customizations that both hide it and make it more pronounced. I don’t mind that the notch is there, I’m just a little uneasy about lg Trying to make it some additional feature like we saw with the small second display on the V20. With this phone, it just doesn’t really work that way.
Beside the notch, the display by itself looks great from any angle. It’s bold, colors look good and it also packs one little additional feature that really sets it apart from the pack: brightness boost. If you’re in direct sunlight, you can make the display go beyond its default max brightness for a couple of minutes to see what you need to see. And it is insanely bright, 1000 nits, and LG says this is why they decided to Stick with the LCD panel rather than going with OLED, specifically for a feature like this.
As far as the rest of the hardware, LG kept everything like the dual camera setup with the wide angle, a rear fingerprint sensor, and the headphone jack which Is still in my opinion a selling point for LG devices, not because it exists but because LG makes it exceptional with the Quad Dac and the way LG has this set up makes listening to music an experience that no other phone offers.
What’s also an interesting experience is the new speaker setup. On the surface, it’s a single downward firing speaker but when you set the phone down on a hard flat surface, the phone acts as a resonance chamber to make the sound louder and enhance the bass. Lg calls it their boom box speaker and it is sounds really good. It’s noticeably louder and clearer than a lot of other devices and I think it was a good solution to not having a dual speaker setup.
LG also added a dedicated google assistant button to the G7, not a surprise here it seems like every android phone is slapping on one more button for an assistant and it was sort of expected that LG would do it too.
Beyond all that though, it’s still an LG device so it ships with the very familiar LG Android skin. The phone has top of the line internal specs, 6GB of RAM, snapdragon 845 so it’s a very smooth experience but you gotta like what LG does with the software. If you’re an Android purist, this isn’t necessarily the experience for you but it’s still a flawless experience nonetheless.
So there you go, that was just a quick look and my initial impression of the new G7 ThinQ. Let me know if you guys have any thoughts or questions about this phone in the comments below. Also be sure to follow TechDaily on twitter and subscribe to the TechDaily YouTube channel and I’ll see you guys later.
