LG G7 ThinQ First Impressions and Top Notch Features Ft. MKBHD

LG G7 ThinQ

So I (MKBDH) would actually describe this G7 kind of like a V30 but updated for 2018. So I don't know whether you remember the old V30 - one of the most underrated phones of last year.
Basically, this feels like a very reactive phone in 2018. Meaning it doesn't really do anything new that we haven't seen before but a lot of the things it does it has its own little LG twist on it.

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LG G7 ThinQ - First Look

So on the outside, it is looking familiar right. This one is silver but there will be four colors. It's glass on the back and then aluminum around the rails. Yes, it does have wireless charging and yes it is really reflective but not as bad as some others.

The biggest difference is now it actually has a real power button on the right side instead of just using the fingerprint reader on the back as a power button.

LG G7 ThinQ - Google Assistant Button

On the other side you'll probably notice the volume rocker and then, wait, look another button that is the Google Assistant button.

Now that's interesting that's actually I'm surprised is the first time we've seen a dedicated button for Google Assistant in a phone; not counting the squeeze feature of the Pixel  - that's not a button.

So you can press it to open the assistant or hold down and it'll let you ask certain things with custom voice commands kind of like a walkie-talkie. That's all this button does. So it's kind of like the Galaxy S9 bixby button but better because it's Google assistant.

Here's the thing I didn't just roast the Bixby button because Bixby is bad; because the button also wasn't remappable it was either on or off you couldn't make it do anything else.

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This Google Assistant button on the G7 is also not remappable and I have to stay fair and say you should also be able to remap that button not just because it's an assistant button because it's an extra button on a phone.

You should be able to whatever you want with it so you'll be able to enable it or disable it through the software but no one wants a useless extra button on their phone.

So I encourage LG to allow us to remap it to a custom software button. You can push your software upgrade that lets us do that. Take the lead on this one be the people's champ.

LG G7 ThinQ - Camera

Any way around to the back the orientation of the camera for the dual cameras is now vertical very 2018. Putting dual cameras like this but they still keep the flash and the laser autofocus outside of the camera module - I kind of like it better when they put everything inside the same module - but that's just me it feels cleaner that way.

Either way, G7's camera bump is really small it's in the middle of the phone. The cameras themselves might be the standout distinguishing feature of this phone. 16-megapixel cameras and f 1.6 aperture and the other one is still a super wide angle instead of a telephoto. LG sticking to their guns this year but this time it's a slightly less extremely fisheye.

LG G7 ThinQ - Main Features and Specification

Yet though that's something we're gonna have to test for the full review and that goes along to say with things like battery life on that 3000 mah battery and just general performance through LG's software on top of Android Oreo. But I think we kind of know what we're getting ourselves into here with Snapdragon 845 and 4 gigs of ram - it's probably pretty good.

So G7 is taking all the boxes. It's built well; it's IP68 water-resistant; it has a micro SD card expansion slot.

If you look at the bottom of the phone, yes it absolutely still does have the headphone jack backed by that impressive 32-bit quad act. LG stays committed to that premium audio experience and that little speaker down there it looks the same but they are much louder. LG says it's about 40% louder - from hearing it I'd say it's definitely a lot louder.

LG G7 ThinQ - The Speakers

What's actually more interesting is you can feel it vibrating and move the whole phone. The speaker uses some of the space inside the phone and it acts as a literal resonance chamber and you can actually put your hand up at the bottom of the phone and feel air moving out of it which is really impressive. But also just holding it's vibrating your hand it's actually pretty cool. Filling the bass actually moves air from a phone is impressive but the sad part is there's no stereo speaker action happening. This tiny speaker grille is it and it's really easy to block accidentally, sadly.

LG G7 ThinQ - Display

The main attraction of the phone is up at the front it's got the display. A 6.1 inch 3120x1440 IPS display with a notch - this one's interesting. It's a big display with small bezels obviously, so that's great for 2018.

There's a bit of a small chin more than some other phones but not so big that it's like a huge problem for me.

The interesting part of their choice is to go with an LCD panel instead of an OLED.

LG G7 ThinQ - Super Bright Mode

The biggest benefit to this was their super bright mode. There are a little toggle and the brightness slider which is basically when you're outdoors you can boost up this display as brightness by a lot and I can definitely say it's effective.

Samsung also has something like this and it's also an OLED display but nobody can do panels quite like Samsung's. So as long as what LG is doing here is effective I don't mind it works.
I got to use this one outdoors for a bit as you can tell and it looked pretty good to me. It's also colorful; it's definitely sharp and it gets bright and it has this nice little notch up at the top just in time for 2018.

LG G7 ThinQ - Second New Screen

LG in the settings calls it a second new screen for some reason, not really sure why, but there's the software feature that lets you hide the notch of course if you're not into that but then also even decorate it a bit if you want to. But then you can just see the notch again so I don't really see a point to doing that.

The bottom line is it's here Android P when it comes out will have some other apps working better with the notch. I suspect that before it happens this one will have some problems the same way the Huawei P20 and other early Android phones with notches did. 

LG G7 ThinQ - AI Features (AI CAM)

That just about covers it for the hardware like I said pretty familiar to the V30 but a lot of the other new differentiating things with this phone or of course in the software department and a lot of them have to do with you guessed it AI.

It kind of feels like it's a buzzword that everyone's throwing around. Everyone's got some new AI feature in their new phone but it is here.

The main place will see it in this G7 is the camera. Now in the camera app, there is a portrait mode button and there's also this huge new AI CAM button.

If you open that up you'll get this different mode that identifies and recognizes up to 18 different situations similar to what we saw with the P20.

It has a pet mode, food mode, sunset mode, fruit mode all that stuff.

I'll have to play with it more to see how it actually adjusts the photos once it identifies what it's taking a picture of but one thing it does is sometimes suggests four filters based on what mode it's in that. You might like based on what's in the photo I don't know it seems like very early like no one really knows exactly what they want to do with AI and the camera.

LG G7 ThinQ - Super Bright Mode

There's also a new super bright camera mode which kind of acts like a night mode and other cameras really brings up brighter exposure in nighttime or dark shots and crossing my fingers that works well.

There's a portrait mode on both the back facing and front facing cameras with adjustable blur - which is cool.

LG G7 ThinQ - Should you buy it or not?

But of course, all this will have to be tested for the full review and I think this will be a really interesting phone when it actually does come out a lot of this feels similar and familiar to people who have owned LG phones. If you've owned an LG phone before this will be right at home.
Even if you've owned a Samsung before with all the features they pack in in the settings it'll feel right at home plus a notch.

It feels like LG's biggest challenge is standing out from the pack in some way. None of the features really goes over in this post/video about this new phone kind of let's break it away from the pack and give you a reason to get this phone over Galaxy S9 or even Pixel 2 or iPhone or whatever
It's still definitely unique with the wide-angle camera lens I'll give it that and have a headphone jack with the quad DAC that's pretty unique, but outside of that you know it's pretty tough.
I think this phone is probably gonna fly under the radar again we'll see.

Let me know what you think now that you've seen LG G7. Is this enough to sway you and maybe move it to another phone or is it just kind of blending in the way it is for me right now? let me know what you think in the comments below.

Either way thanks for watching/reading. Talk to you in the next one. PEACE!

LG G7 ThinQ - First Impression Video MKBHD