LG G Flex: Battery Life

The LG G Flex has a giant 3,500mAh battery. It’s in the same ballpark as other 6-inch phones, but does beat most of them. The Sony Xperia Z Ultra has a 3,050mAh battery, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 a 3,200mAh battery and the HTC One Max a 3,300mAh battery.

As you would hope, battery life is strong. The LG G Flex will last for a full two days with moderate use. Battery retention when in standby is excellent, too. Left for a couple of days on its own, it’ll only lose a few per cent of its power.

We also tested the G Flex’s multimedia abilities as it’s an obvious phone to use as a portable video player.  The phone stormed it with over 16.5 hours of video playback of an SD-quality DivX file at 50 per cent screen brightness. Its screen may not be perfect, but as a video player the G Flex’s stamina is hard to beat.

Giving life back to a fully-flat G Flex is also quick. It uses a fast charging to inject the initial 25 per cent of battery, for a quick and handy juice-up.

LG G Flex: Call Quality

One final claim LG makes about the G Flex’s curve is that it can improve your calls as it bends the microphone and speaker closer to your mouth and ear. While it’s true, it’ll only be of use in noisy conditions where you’d normally need to squish your flat phone against your face to hear the person on the other end.

Otherwise, call quality is of the solid standard we expect from a top-end phone. There’s a secondary microphone up top that provides noise cancellation for calls, and sound quality is respectable.

Other things to consider

The LG G Flex is, as you’d hope given the price, a 4G phone. Although it is at risk of being categorised as a gimmicky phone, it hardly loses out on any mainstream tech doodads as a result.

Should I buy the LG G Flex?

So many of the phones we review are exercises in dull, rote iteration that it feels a shame not to be able to give the LG G Flex a commendation. However, its screen issues, high price and interface issues mean we can’t.

It isn’t harder to use than any other 6-inch phone, but such a large body is problematic too. The LG G2 costs half the price, and is in several respects the superior phone.

LG deserves a pat on the back for having the stones to bring as unusual phone as this to market. But seriously consider the HTC One or the LG G2 unless having a huge, curvy screen is really what your heart wants most.

Verdict

As an experiment with new technologies, the LG G Flex is a bold success. However, as a phone that LG wants us to spend £500-650 on, it has too many issues to be considered a contender for most buyers.

Next, read our best mobile phones round-up

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