phablet. The G Flex is absolutely incredible when it comes to watching videos or playing the latest high-end games thanks to the panoramic, immersive effect of its 6-inch curved OLED display. It also features one of the best multitasking implementations I've seen, truly capitalizing on the expansive screen real estate and the blazing fast quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor. I wanted to dismiss this phone as nothing more than a gimmick, but turns out the curvaceous G Flex has real chops. The Flex isn't for everyone, though, and our Editors' Choice for phablets remains the Samsung Galaxy Note 3$285.00 at Dell Small Business thanks to its tighter display and dizzying array of features.
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The G Flex is essentially a stretched out and vertically arched LG G2$0.01 at Amazon, complete with razor thin bezels and that awkward rear-mounted button array. Measuring 6.32 by 3.21 by 0.31 inches (HWD), it's all screen thanks to that huge 6-inch display. I'm still not a fan of those rear-mounted buttons, but at least they feel more natural with the curvature and size of the Flex, and you can still tap twice anywhere on the screen to wake the phone. Speaking of the back, LG trumpets the Flex's "self-healing" properties—it dispensed with some lighter scratches from my fingernails, but taking a sharper object to the Flex left permanent scuffs in my tests.
Note: The slideshow below is of the Sprint LG G Flex, which is physically identical to the AT&T Flex.
With its vertical curvature, the G Flex fits awkwardly into front pants pockets and felt equally out of place in my back pocket; it poked out and was asking to be lifted, even by the most inept pickpocket. True to its name, the curved phone flexes when pressed against a flat surface and then springs back to shape when released. The feat of flexibility lends a level of durability to the phone and the plastic screen technology definitely makes it less shatter prone, but I'm not sure how I'd actually carry it around if it were my everyday phone.
The 6-inch display is made from LG's new plastic substrate OLED technology, curved to a radius of 700mm, which the company claims is the ideal curvature for a device this size. It features a full RGB subpixel matrix (not PenTile), but it leaves a lot of pixels on the table with its 720p resolution. That works out to 245 pixels per inch, which is a far cry from the G2's 423 ppi. Pull up a text heavy website and compare the two side by side, and you'll see an immediate difference. The display's colors also run cool, as OLEDs tend to do, and the max brightness isn't all that impressive. The latter is less of a problem here, as the curved display really does cut down on glare by a significant amount.
I didn't really expect the curved screen to really do much for the Flex in real-world use. After queuing up some HD content on Netflix and YouTube, though, I found myself taken with the expansive, gently curved display. It's not just the size, which in and of itself is great for media, but there's something engrossing about the design here—it made me forget I was watching video on a phone. I'm a sucker for panoramic and wide-angle photography, though, so maybe it's evoking something similar for me. Games and other visually impressive content benefit equally from the design as well.
LG also claims that the curved design improves call quality, which in theory makes some sense since the mic is marginally closer your mouth. I'm not really sure I can detect any real advantage thanks to its design, but call quality was, for the most part, very good in my tests. Volume in the earpiece gets plenty loud, and voices on the other end of the line sound clear, if a bit on the harsh side. Transmissions through the mic were easy to understand, but they had a digitized edge and wavered in and out at times. Noise cancellation was excellent, neutralizing a loud engine truck feet away from my test call. Inside the Flex is a specially designed, curved 3500mAh battery. We're still running battery tests now, but in an initial run, the Flex discharged less than 10 percent of its battery after a 4-hour call, so it looks promising. We'll update this review once we have complete results.
The Flex supports AT&T's UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz), GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz), and LTE (700/1700/1900MHz) networks. I tested on a clear day in New York City and pulled down 3-5Mbps down and 2-4Mbps up when connected to LTE. That's pretty slow, but I saw almost identical results on an AT&T HTC One X+ I tested side by side, so I'll chalk it up to congestion in my area. There's also dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and GPS.
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