With LG now unveiling their latest flagship to the Philippine market, it will need a lot in order to stay relevant in the overly populated smartphone scene, especially with brands like Apple and Samsung still in the lead and even Chinese brands like Huawei and Xiaomi offering the best bang for your buck devices.

Thankfully, LG has come prepared offering features that will make you think twice on your next smartphone purchase.

Here are my first impressions with the LG G7.

At a glance: LG G7 ThinQ specs

• Screen: 6.1″ IPS LCD @ 3120×1440, Gorilla Glass 5
• SIM: Hybrid Dual SIM
• OS: Android 8.0
• CPU: 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, Adreno 630 GPU
• Camera: Dual 16 MP f/1.6 regular zoom with OIS + 16 MP f/1.9 wide-angle, LED flash (rear), 8 MP f/1.9 (front)
• Battery: 3000 mAh Li-Po (non-removable)
• Price: 42,990 Php (4GB RAM/64GB ROM) – Get it on Lazada

Design and Performance

It feels right at home for a 2018 flagship with a metal body construction and glass on the front and at the back of the device. It looks premium with its shiny back, but expect that it will be a fingerprint magnet thanks to that glass back.

It feels really light and hallow, though, so I have mixed feelings about it because it doesn’t feel as premium compared to the other flagships currently available in the market.

Something new I noticed on the phone is a presence of a new button right below the volume buttons which is a Google Assistant Key. Pressing it will trigger Google Assistant, pretty much similar to Samsung’s Bixby button.

Much like Samsung however, that button is also not remappable which is a shame. Performance wise, it’s right up there with the likes of Android flagships with its Snapdragon 845 processor. It zips through the heavily LG skinned interface with no problems whatsoever but it remains to be seen how well it will fare in the long run after installing a bunch of apps on the phone.

Camera

Smartphones have significantly gotten faster and more powerful over the years that smartphone makers are looking for ways to utilize it and integrating AI onto our phones is one of them. The G7 ThinQ is ahead of its game with its AI Camera. Essentially, the camera will analyze the subject in front of it and will automatically adjust the settings of the camera to provide the best good looking photo possible.

It has over 18 suggested presets ranging from a person, flower, food, animal, landscape, etc. During the demo, they have set up a lot of different images with different subjects, and the camera has successfully identified the subjects like food or flower and it enhances the colors of the photo to make it look really lively.

There are even times where it identifies the specific kind of flower it is looking at, which is pretty impressive.

G7 ThinQ’s camera also introduces a Super Bright Camera mode which will enable the camera to immensely brighten up the photo during low light shots to make sure you get all those tiny details especially during night time where most smartphones really struggle.

They demoed this by pointing the camera at a really dark hole with a photo inside and the camera really brightened up the shot. It works but the end result is a really noisy image which is to be expected for really low light shots.

Just like LG’s previous flagships, its secondary camera is still a Super Wide Angle Lens which is super useful to capture a lot of objects inside the frame, perfect for those landscape shots or big group photos

Audio

If there’s one thing where our smartphones get “devolved”, it will have to be in the audio department. With more and more smartphones removing the headphone jack, I’m glad that LG is still sticking to its guns with the G7 still retaining that headphone jack along with its 32-bit Quad DAC.

Something new to it is the DTS:X 3D Surround Sound built into it. I never had the chance to try this out but it’s supposed to deliver a 7.1 channel surround sound straight to your earphones to get that cinematic feel you usually get from watching in a cinema.

Something new to come to LG’s flagship is a “Boombox Speaker” built in to the G7 ThinQ. Unlike other smartphones where they usually put two speakers on their phones, the G7 ThinQ only uses 1 speaker but it uses its inner space as a  resonance chamber to amp up the bass.

The speaker is loud enough by itself, and I got the chance to try this out by placing the phone on to a surface while playing the music. You have to hear it to believe it but I can still clearly hear the music despite the really loud ambiance noise in the event area.

Display

The G7 ThinQ  uses a 6.1″ QHD+ FullVision Display. LG follows the trend we see on this year on most Android releases with a notch on its own but with its own twists.

First, the notch is a bit narrower compared to others and has the ability to customize it.  You can choose from different designs to style it or you can have the option of just hiding it altogether based on your preference.

New to the G7 ThinQ is its Super Bright Display. Once enabled, the G7 ThinQ will automatically brighten up the screen up to 1000 nits if used under really bright conditions like sunlight.

Overall the screen quality is good despite not using the increasingly popular OLED screen like its big brother the V30.

Conclusion

LG has put up quite a product, ticking all of the right boxes of a good smartphone. It remains to be seen though if its enough to battle with the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.

Prices start at P42,990 and it comes in 2 colors, Aurora Black and Moroccan Blue.

For more information on the LG G7 ThinQ, click here.

LG G7 ThinQ sample photos

LG G7 ThinQ technical specifications

• Screen: 6.1″ IPS LCD @ 3120×1440, Gorilla Glass 5
• Dimensions: 153.2 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm
• Weight: 162 g
• SIM: Hybrid Dual SIM
• OS: Android 8.0
• Chipset: Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4×1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver)
• GPU: Adreno 630
• Memory: 4/6 GB RAM, LPDDR4x
• Storage: 64/128 GB ROM, UFS 2.1
• Camera (rear): Dual 16 MP f/1.6 regular zoom with OIS + 16 MP f/1.9 wide-angle, LED flash
• Camera (selfie): 8 MP f/1.9
• Battery: 3000 mAh Li-Po (non-removable)
• Connectors: Bluetooth 5 A2DP, USB Type-C 1.0, 3.5mm DTS-X
• Features: IPS68 certified dust/water proof, DTS-X sound, “resonance” loudspeaker, dedicated Google assistant button
• Price: 42,990 Php (4GB RAM/64GB ROM) – Get it on Lazada