LG G8X ThinQ | Dual Screen Review – Your New Muse!

Technology | November 2, 2020 | Chayan Chakraborty

Life’s Good brand, popularly known as LG, has always been known for its innovation and unique product. They have never been competitive or has never shown aggression in taking the smartphone market share from the likes of Samsung or Apple. Yet, they kept innovating and launched some unique product down the years. Remember the LG G5 launched back in 2015 with the modular accessories. It was way ahead of its time. This time around LG launched the G8X ThinQ which is part of their G series, with this the company made their approach to the world of dual-screen smartphones.

So, recently I have purchased the LG G8X ThinQ Dual Screen during the Flipkart Big Billion Day sale in India. The phone has some amazing specs on paper as it was the flagship phone for LG in 2019. The phone seems just like any other Android phone launched by Realme, MI or POCO in Indian market from time to time. But what stands out is the brand image and the trust that every Indian household shares with the name – LG!

LG G8X ThinQ | Dual Screen: Specification

  • Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 855 Mobile Platform
  • 16.25cm (6.4”) OLED Full Vision Display
  • Rear Cameras: 12 MP Standard Angle; 13 MP Super Wide-Angle
  • Front Camera: 32 MP
  • RAM 6GB/ROM 128GB
  • 2.4W (1.2W + 1.2W) Audio with Hi-Fi Quad DAC and DTS:X 3D Surround
  • 4000 mAh Battery with USB Type-C™ port Qualcomm Quick Charge™ 4.0 charging. Also supports wireless charging.
  • IP68 Water & Dust Proof

LG G8X Camera

The rear camera of the phone captures some attractive shots both in the low light and in the daylight. There is no dedicated telephoto lens yet it captures some crazy macro shots. LG has added a dedicated night mode which actually takes better photos at night compared to the normal one.

Practically there are lots of option in the Camera application. The best part is the manual mode, where you can actually take DSLR like photos with your camera handling skills. This mode is very rare in phones these days. The shutter speed, the ISO, manual focus picking everything is there to adjust manually which is insane to have in a phone. The dual-screen do come handy while taking photos since you can just see the preview right at the time of clicking the photos. Here are some samples taken by LG G8X in auto mode.

The photos are real and true to what the human eye sees. There is no artificial colour boosting or enhancing. The photos are natural and very impressive. The dynamic range is very good as well.

LG G8X Build Quality

The device is made of glass. The rear panel has no camera bump. All the camera modules and flashlight are well inside the glass back panel. Thus keeping the phone over any hard surface won’t hurt the back camera. LG has provided Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the back and front panel which do adds more strength to the body from minor scratches. It also has IP68 certification which means if you carry your phone while it is raining heavily outside, you would have a sense of satisfaction that your phone is safe. The in-hand feel is very premium. The volume and power buttons are solid. The good thing is that LG has kept the earphone jack as well.

LG G8X Display & Sound Quality

The device has an OLED panel and this panel is made by LG. The quality of the display is so premium and nice. The screen brightness is good and it gets really bright under the sunlight so there is no issue with screen visibility. The panel do supports HDR content thus any HDR content comes to life to this panel. Though LG claims both the screens have OLED panel but to our real world experience the secondary screen(dual screen) behaves less like an OLED screen, it is more like an IPS screen, thus there is of course a quality difference. This may be something to do with their software but it is very less likely.

Mentioning about the sound quality, the device has a dual sound system. The earpiece and the bottom sound speaker works in together to produce sound. The sound quality is nice and LG phones are generally known for good sound quality. This phone is no exception to this. There are options for enabling HIFI-QUAD DAC, which once enabled enhances the sound quality of the device. There is also an option for 3D sound.

LG G8X Charger

Since the LG G8X is not available with adapter in the box, there has been quite a lot of confusion regarding the LG G8X charger with fast charging capability. We have tested charging time with below chargers to determine the adapter that unlocks G8X potential:

During our time with the device while testing different chargers which are certified by Qualcomm Quick Charge 3 and 4, we found that Moto Turbo 27 watt with USB PD and quick charge 4 certified charger actually comes out to be the better one among all but by a little margin. Also we have observed that during charging the phone doesn’t heat at all. We recommend to enable the ” Optimized Charging” feature under the battery section to maintain the battery health in the long run.

Note: The best way to charge a smartphone is to limit the cycle between 15% to 85% to last the battery longer. You can read more about prolonging battery life on Charging habits to maximize battery life

LG G8X Battery

LG G8X boasts 4000 mAh battery with the smarter power management system provided by the new Qualcomm 855 processor. Prolonged battery life and fast charging is one of the guiding factors while choosing your new phone. There are a lot of phones that offer charging at incredible speed but lack the prolonged battery life. It is often observed that the battery life diminishes significantly after 250 cycles or less. LG has stuck perfect balance with this flagship phone. The optimized charging capability regulates the charging current and limits heat dissipation to prolong battery durability. The screenshot below will demonstrate the incredible reduced power consumption of G8X, sometimes lasting for 3 days.

During our time with the device, we were amazed by the standby time the device was offering. We tried watching Netflix for a couple of hours, internet browsing, listening to songs on amazon prime music and clicking photos, attending voice calls. The screen on time was just amazing too. But yes, we maintained certain features active while our usage, like we kept the battery save mode on, not the extreme one but the standard one. We kept the auto-brightness feature active as well.

LG G8X Performance

Since the phone has Snapdragon 855 processor in its heart. So basically it handles everything you throw at it. It just never lags. Gaming is smooth, there were no frame drops and the best part is the device does not heat. We have observed that the phone’s software keeps most of the application open on the background which is good for them who loves multitasking but it somehow affects the battery as well. The Geek bench score for LG G8X is good considering it breathes with the 2019 flagship Snapdragon 855.

LG G8X Software & UI

The device comes with Android 10 out of the box with 5th September 2020 security patch. LG has put its own custom skin over Android 10 which they call LG UX 9.0. There are several features LG UX 9.0 provides which are really unique and cool like the gesture controls, the double knock screen unlock etc. But we feel there are some scopes for improvements too. There are some basic functions that we found missing, ie, we didn’t find any inbuilt call recorder function or file explorer. Apart from these small things, we didn’t find any issue with the software of the device.

One thing is very good that there is no bloatware which is pre-installed and there are no ads over the UI. This is where the big brand image comes in to play!

Further LG G8X ThinQ is expected to receive the Android 11 update and LG has made a declaration that it will provide updates to LG G8X ThinQ in Europe till 2022.

Therefore if you are looking for any premium smartphone which has a great rear camera, amazing display and stable software, then LG G8X would be a great choice!

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