LG G Flex launched for Rs 69,999: Meet India’s most expensive Android phone

Finally, LG has officially launched its G Flex with a curved display in India. The smartphone is expected to be made available this month for a price of Rs 69,999. Earlier this week, it was spotted online sporting a similar price tag. At that price, the G Flex is quite easily the most expensive Android phone in the market and if it weren’t for the 64GB iPhone 5s (priced at around Rs 73,000), the G Flex would be the most expensive smartphone overall as well.

LG had announced its first smartphone with curved display for the Indian market late last year. While LG India told reporters then that the price would be between Rs 60,000 and Rs 65,000, the current listing puts it at just 10 bucks short of Rs 70,000. Let’s quickly brush through some of its specs. The USP of the device is obviously its 6-inch 720p Plastic OLED (POLED) curved display. The design is vertical oriented as the phone is curved on the horizontal axis. Under the hood, the smartphone comes powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor (MSM8974), clocked at 2.26 GHz and coupled with 2GB of RAM.

On connectivity front, the device supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 3.0. It is also fitted with a 13-megapixel rear camera and 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. The G Flex runs the older Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version, with LG’s customisations on top.

One of the highlights of the device is the “self healing” protective film for the back panel. LG claims that the phone can heal itself against minor scratches and bumps. It is claimed that the special protective film on the back cover will ensure that the hairline scratches disappear within minutes. Apart from the new “healing” feature, LG has also added a host of features to take advantage of the curved screen. A feature called QTheater lets users quickly access photos, videos and YouTube directly from the lockscreen just by dragging outwards along the curved surface with both fingers. It creates a theatre curtain effect before introducing the content.

Users will also find the “dual window” mode that allows better multitasking. There’s also a “swing-lock screen” that keeps changing the device’s wallpaper depending on how the phone is held in your hands. Now that the price is out, it is clearly targeted at premium users. It should be noted that the full-HD LG G2, perhaps the best LG phone yet, is selling for half the price

Phone and Battery
Though LTE was out of the question, we had no issues with 3G data and talk on the G Flex, and the phone proved tenacious with a signal. The speaker is reasonably loud, though lacking in the bottom end - which, to be fair, you notice more in music than hands-free calls - and callers reported no issues hearing us. Whether that's down to just sensitive microphones or, as LG might have it, the curve of the G Flex better hugging the side of your face is unclear; either way, oversized device aside, we've no complaints.

Software and Performance

1. LG's customization of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is by now a familiar one, an at-times cluttered UI that nonetheless has a few gems that we wish other OEMs would "borrow" for their own phones. We're big fans of LG's tap-to-wake gesture, which brings up the lockscreen with a sharp rap on the display, and the split-screen Dual Window mode makes more sense on a bigger panel. It's straightforward to bring up, say, the email app and the gallery, and drag photos from one to the other.
2. The tweaks don't end there, either. There's Guest Mode, which allows a second lockscreen PIN or pattern to be set up, accessing a limited account which can be only permitted to open certain approved apps. Slide Aside uses a three-finger swipe to multitask, while Plug & Pop triggers certain apps when accessories are plugged in, like Spotify when you jack in your headphones. Quick Remote, meanwhile, turns the G Flex into a universal remote control; somewhat unusually, the IR blaster is on the rear of the phone, to the left of the camera, rather than on the top edge, so you have to hold it out flat toward whatever you're controlling rather than point as you might a regular remote.