LG G2 Beast within!

LG G2 Beast within!

Shahriar Rahman

Some might say LG G2 is a beastly smartphone, I won't agree with that. To me, the exact way to describe this smartphone would be 'Beast within'. Why we will come to that later.
This flagship phone of LG's was in the market to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. It competed fiercely, at least at first.  But slowly it got outpaced by Samsung's Note III and HTC One Max. Why that happened is a story for another day. Just know this: LG took a lot of time to understand how the game is played. With the G2, it seems like LG learned (!) a lot from its Korean brethren and built what some may call the perfect Galaxy S4 killer.
The specs of this handset are pretty good: enough to make you drool.  Made of lots of plastic, shaped in a bar & is locked and loaded with enough features that are more than what you wanted.  Also some might find the placement of the power button and volume control keys hipster like, we found it interesting and easy-to-use.  
Its display and form factor is hunky, yet not entirely awkward. 5.2-inch 1920 x 1080 display, which gives us a 424 PPI density: more than good enough for the average users.
The heart of LG G2 is a Qualcomm MSM8974 Snapdragon 800, with a 2.26GHz quad-core Krait 400. Which loosely translates: in terms of processing power, it can run almost anything. In terms of ROM & RAM: 16GB and 32GB variants, with 2GB RAM. Good good good! Connectivity includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, Infrared port and 4G LTE. Thanks to the Infrared port and the in-built special software, you can control most of the home appliances using your LG G2. Neat feature indeed. The RAMs and the processors have excellent benchmark scores resulting lag-less performance almost every time. In normal, everyday use it certainly doesn't ever crash. The test unit that we had crashed only once but it was because we were trying to install a black-market app in the phone. Other than that:  apps open swiftly, and jumping between screens is smooth as butter.


The custom interface that the LG G2 comes with can be weird to use at first but it will grow on you over time. It's better than Samsung in some aspects but definitely much better than Huawei.
The buttons and options are in a way that you expect them to be and customization options are very wide. The apps screen is trouble-free to steer. The home screen is cool as well.
From the apps screen, one can jump to the phone's widgets- just like that. Tapping the widget icon will be bringing in a wide array of widget from which you can choose the ones you want to add to your home screens.
Battery life on the LG G2 is stunning. Although it doesn't have the same monstrous battery capacity to Samsung Galaxy Note III or even Motorola DROID MAXX, still it can outperform any average smartphone any day. The test unit of ours was able to give up continuous battery backup of 38 hours of which included 3 hours of 3G browsing and 2 hours of video streaming via YouTube over Wi-Fi.

 

Specs

Display:  True HD-IPS + LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.2 inches (~424 ppi pixel density)
OS: Android OS, v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean), upgradable to v4.4.2 (KitKat)
CPU: Quad-core 2.26 GHz Krait 400
ROM: 16/32 GB
RAM:  2GB
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, BT, EDGE, 3G, 4G, Infra-red etc
Camera:  Primary 13 MP, 4160х3120 pixels, autofocus, geotagging etc. & Secondary 2.1 MP.
Sensors:  Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass etc
Battery: 3000 mAh
Price: 16 GB Tk. 52,990/-

 

 Verdict

The verdict is quite simple: it's a great looking phone. It has outstanding performance record with a more-than-what-you-want battery life. The Infrared feature makes the handset even cooler. The only issues that we encountered was with the display which for no good reason dimes out time to time. The price is also an issue. For a late 2013 phone, the price is a bit high. But hey! You have to pay more for the good stuff, right?