LG G Flex 2 – Australian Hands On

When curved screens started appearing in 2013, there was of course the infamous ‘taco’ shaped Samsung Galaxy Round, but while Samsung went on to curve their glass in another direction and introduced the Edge line, LG believes that they got it curved the right way the first time with the LG G Flex. The G Flex 2 is the followup phone and was announced at CES, the G Flex 2 contains an updated the screen, as well as the internals and even the self-healing back got an update.

While LG hasn’t announced if the G Flex 2 will be coming to Australia yet, we did get the original, and it’s here on display at CES and I thought I would take a look.

The G Flex 2 is quite big in the hand, but after using the Nexus 6 for a while, and the Note Edge and LG G3 prior to that, my hand is seemingly ready. The curved form factor somewhat offsets the actual size of the phone, but it fits into the hand really well. The form factor is obviously the key here and the curve, just as it did in the original, conforms to the curve of your face quite well when you hold it up to receive a call.

The G Flex 2 has the same rear mounted keys that LG introduced on the G2, and has continued through on their premium G series line to date. They’ve been updated from the G3 design though with a more squared off look which is actually quite an aesthetically pleasing choice. The texture on the keys has been modified as well, but not too much and the buttons are easy to reach as usual, with your fingers naturally coming to rest in the rocker.

The obvious hardware trick here is the curved display, which is flexible, although to only a certain extent. Rather than a party trick, the flex is designed for those little accidents you have as you travel through life. Sit on your phone? No problem.

The G Flex 2 is a beast of a phone in terms of specs, packing a Snapdragon 810 processor under the hood and 3GB of RAM. It’s a massive amount of memory and processing power packed into quite a tiny device. The UI seemed fairly responsive, but as with all these things it’s a matter of wait and see once we get the phone on the test bench.

There’s not a huge amount of bloatware on the phone, but there is a little, nevertheless it’s LG’s UI over Android 5.0.1, so if you’re not a fan of LG’s UI then you’ll be looking to put a ROM on it quickly. The usual UI elements are there, and if you’re after a decent software experience then the G Flex 2 could be for you.

Overall, the G Flex is a great looking and feeling phone. It still retains enough novelty factor for a large amount of people not to take it seriously, but that’s to their own detriment. If the G Flex 2 makes it to our shores, then it’s is definitely worth a look and I will be first in line to get one to review.

If you’d like to see a little more I filmed a brief hands-on video to show it off a little more. If you like the videos give them a thumbs up (and share them) and we’ll look at doing more of these in the future.