LG Spirit – Software

The Spirit runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is as up to date as you could ask for until Android M is released. However, this isn’t vanilla Android; LG’s custom UI is overlaid on top, which truly makes it presence felt throughout.

So while Lollipop makes moving from homescreens or launching the app drawer feel nippy, there’s still some clutter present. Core Android features are intact, though: customisable virtual navigation keys, lockscreen notifications and more actionable notifications in the dropdown menu remain.

LG has also included the great Knock Code, enabling you to wake the handset with a few taps on the screen. The Glance mode that first popped up on the G Flex 2 – which let’s you swipe down from the screen when it’s in standby to reveal notifications – also features. It’s remains a little fiddly to get working, however.

On the app front, LG doesn’t overload you with its own content. Alongside the usual Google apps, native calendar and email apps make an appearance. Also included is the QuickMemo+ note-taking app, which let’s you take screengrabs and draw on them. There’s no room for LG Health, although we suspect most won’t be too bothered by its omission.

Ultimately, there’s enough to get you going before you need to delve into the Google Play Store for the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

As we’ve already mentioned, the Spirit comes with 8GB of storage – in fact, even less once you’ve factored in the room taken up by the software – after which you’ll need to fork out for a storage-boosting micro SD card. A couple of games akin to the size of Real Racing 3 (1.8GB) will significantly chomp into that space reserved for your media.

LG Spirit – Performance

Powering the Spirit is a 1.2GHz quad-core, 64-bit Snapdragon 410 processor – which takes over from the Snapdragon 400 as processor of choice for 2015 phones. That’s accompanied by 1GB of RAM and an Adreno 306 GPU.

Unfortunately, the Spirit doesn’t run elegantly. In general, it’s fine, but on occasion – when the notification dropdown becomes a little congested, or there are more than two apps running with others in the background – it becomes sluggish.

As a result, power users will be disappointed by the Spirit. It’s more about covering the bases on everyday tasks. In Geekbench 3, the Spirit scored on average 1,440 in the multi-core tests. The quad-core Snapdragon 400-packing Moto G 2 scored 1,155 in comparison.

The processor didn’t have any issues running our go-to gaming test subject Real Racing 3, however. No lag or jittery moments were evident to make the game unplayable.