For LG, the past few years have been disappointing, to say the least. The company has continuously lost money in its mobile division, and turning a profit hasn’t been in the conversation for a while. The company has also failed to deliver a phone that could properly tackle the latest flagships from Apple, Google, and Samsung. LG has certainly tried, but perhaps not hard enough.
I don’t really know if LG is trying to turn things around with its latest flagship, the G8 ThinQ. Starting at $819.99, it’s certainly not competitively priced. Its specs are rather run of the mill for a 2019 phone. And despite being a decent package overall, the phone’s various gimmicky features create a flash-bang that’s cool to advertise but not practical for everyday use. This phone will go down as the blood-scanning phone. Because other than this feature and a few others, the G8 is just kind of flat.
The G8 isn’t bad, necessarily, and it shows in the design department. LG is sticking to a very similar form factor to last year’s G7. This time around, the company decided to make the camera module flush with the rest of the back of the phone by making it slightly thicker and filling it out with a larger battery. I, along with many other tech reviewers, have been asking companies to do this for years, so kudos to you, LG, for doing it.
The thicker phone is comfortable to hold. You don’t necessarily feel like it’s going to slip out of your hands like you do with thinner devices on the market. However, speaking of slipping, this is by far the slipperiest phone I’ve ever tested. I don’t know what the process is when it comes to producing glass for smartphones, but whether LG omitted a special coating or wanted extra gloss, the G8 can’t help but slide literally anywhere you place it.
This is maddening. I placed my G8 on top of a book that wasn’t slanted whatsoever. After around a half-hour, I noticed the phone had fallen off the face of the book and landed on my desk. No damage was done, but I’ve never had a phone do that in my entire life. Mind you, it was on airplane mode, so the vibration couldn’t have caused it.
I’ve also noticed the G8 gets much more slimy, crusty, and gross than other phones I’ve tested. Whatever coating LG is missing needs to be implemented, because as a result of the omission, you get a finger grease-covered slip fest that essentially requires a case for any sane person to handle it every day. LG sent me one to try with the phone, but it’s just a cheap plastic cover for the back that does nothing but add slightly more grip and collect scratches like your cat’s favorite section of the furniture.
At least the G8 has good design intentions. Like I said, it’s made of glass, so it feels premium. You also get a USB-C port on the bottom along with a headphone jack and loudspeaker. LG brings over its Boombox speaker from the G7 and V40 by using the G8’s body as a resonance chamber, creating a louder sound presence with a touch more bass. If it’s volume you desire, you’ll love this feature.
On the front of the G8, LG includes a 6.1-inch OLED display with a resolution of 3120×1440. It also includes a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, making it taller and more compact than some other flagships on the market. It’s a good-looking screen, with a decent amount of brightness and good responsiveness. The colors are pretty saturated but not overly done like Samsung phones of the past. All in all, it’s a good screen that should please anyone who lays eyes on it.
Of course, there’s more to the G8’s screen than just its quality, and this is where we start talking about the wacky new features added to the device. The first one is the most practical, and it’s called Crystal Sound OLED. Essentially, the G8 uses a specialized OLED display that can vibrate enough to produce sound. It replaces the traditional speaker port at the top of the phone where you’d normally find an earpiece. The tech is used to create a stereo sound field like most other phones have and fully replace the traditional earpiece, allowing you to hold your phone however you’d like up to your ear when making a phone call.
In my testing, I thought it was a weird sensation to move the G8 up and down my ear with no sound distortion. Nothing ever got muffled and I could consistently hear callers clearly, so while it’s a bit strange to use, as soon as you get used to it, you’ll be thankful the feature is there. When you play music on the loudspeaker, everything gets a bit louder and clearer thanks to the Crystal OLED.
You may be wondering why LG would get rid of the earpiece in the first place. After all, they could’ve just included it and made it a loudspeaker to pair with the downward-firing unit for stereo separation. As it turns out, it doesn’t appear the company had enough room to fit such a feature in the same sized notch as the G7. So to avoid increasing the size of the notch, the vibrating OLED panel was probably the best move.
I say the G8 doesn’t have enough room in its notch because of the added tech LG includes this year. Instead of just a selfie camera and earpiece, the company includes its all-new Z Camera for multiple new features. The Z Camera consists of a Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor along with an infrared sensor. The infrared camera blasts infrared light at a subject, while the ToF sensor measures the time it takes to read the reflection of the subject at hand. It works very similarly to Apple’s Face ID system on the iPhone and iPad.
Using LG’s Z Camera, a few new features are brought to the table. You get much more advanced facial recognition, better portrait photography, and the wackiest feature I’ve seen on a phone in a long time, Air Motion.
By placing your hand above the Z Camera on the G8, you can control your phone with hover gestures. Once it’s unlocked, you place your hand over the G8 until an indicator light is shown. After you see the light, scoop your hand up almost like you’re grabbing sand at the beach or cooked spaghetti. This will enable Air Motion and allow you to switch between two different apps, use controls within an app, and turn up and down your phone’s volume.
As you can imagine, this feature is extremely finicky. You have to position your hand directly in the spot where the sensor can even notice your hand. The G8 does try to help you position your hand by telling you to move to the left or slightly upward, but these tips aren’t easy to see since your hand is covering the portion of the screen where they’re displayed.
If you’re lucky enough to get Air Motion working, switching between apps is just a matter of moving to the left or right. That works fine. But if you want to increase the volume without touching your phone, you have to twist an imaginary knob, and the G8 isn’t exactly the best at figuring out what you’re doing.
Why have air controls in the first place? LG says a hypothetical situation could be if your hands are dirty and you don’t want to ruin your phone. That makes sense, I guess, but it’s important to remember the G8 is IP68 waterproof. You can rinse it off afterward and it’ll work fine. And if your hands are just wet and there’s no towel nearby, touching the screen likely won’t have any repercussions at all.
Then there’s Hand ID. To coincide with Air Motion, LG uses the Z Camera to shine infrared light at the vein pattern in your hand and read the reflection of the hemoglobin in your blood. Using various algorithms like with facial recognition, this creates a unique data pattern that, if identical to the stored information, will unlock your phone. It’s the most LG thing that’s ever been released, and like cheap LG features of the past, it doesn’t work very well.
The idea here is to avoid having to pick up your phone to unlock it. I get that because having to unlock your phone while it’s on your desk is oddly annoying when the fingerprint scanner is on the back (like it is on the G8). But Hand ID isn’t always accurate or reliable, with a rough success rate of only around 55 percent. Face recognition on the G8, for instance, has a success rate of around 75 percent. Meanwhile, the fingerprint scanner on the back has a success rate of 95 percent.
With stats like those, you can pretty clearly tell that I’m not a fan of Hand ID. It’s cool in concept, but considering how unreliable it is, I’d rather just pick up my phone to unlock it. Even LG’s Face Unlock doesn’t do it for me.
The security situation on the G8 is pretty weird. You have two solutions that are supposed to be advanced and more secure than a fingerprint, but neither works very well. Then you have an average run-of-the-mill physical fingerprint scanner on the back which works fine. If LG wanted to avoid people picking up their phones to unlock them, they could’ve just done an in-display reader like on the Galaxy S10 and OnePlus 6T. It’d be more up to par with what’s on the market today, and you wouldn’t have to pick up your phone to unlock it if it were sitting on your desk. Even if it had the same success rate as the phone’s facial recognition, I think it’d be worth it.
LG definitely wants you to use Hand ID and Face Unlock. They’ll be marketing these features to no end. It’s probably what the company will use in commercials and ads to draw you in, and I get why. But if you’re buying a phone based on reliability, the G8 is not your best choice.
The camera system on the G8 is also kind of strange. The phone includes a standard 12MP lens with an f/1.5 aperture and OIS, a secondary 16MP lens with an f/1.9 aperture, and a 107-degree wide angle. It’s a decent setup, but it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. The same can be said for the photos that come out of the G8. They’re fine, but they’re not jaw-dropping.
The G8 tends to underexpose things, even with HDR turned on. For instance, I took a picture of some trees with an overcast sky behind them. The tree leaves looked nice and crisp, but the sky was nothing but a gray blotch. I don’t think the G8 is worth it for the camera alone, and if that’s your primary concern, you’re better off getting a Pixel, Galaxy, or iPhone.
Performance is where the G8 really shines, but that’s to be expected. It comes with a Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, so it’ll be fast for years to come. Apps open quickly, things load fast, and nothing is ever a pain. The G8 can handle whatever you throw at it.
For those of you wondering, yes, it runs Fortnite and PUBG. They run really well, too. Battery life is also pretty decent. You should have no problem getting through a full day of work. It comes with a 3,500mAh battery, so it’s larger than last year’s G7, and it helps to get you to the end of your day.
Software-wise, the G8 runs Android 9 Pie with LG’s skin on top. I haven’t had any issues with it, but it’s very bloated. LG includes a bunch of its own apps and doubles up on certain Google apps (there’s a Google Photos app and an LG Photos app). It’s kind of a mess, but you should be able to navigate through it just fine.
LG’s software skin hasn’t been my favorite, and the skin on the G8 is no exception. There are just too many little quirks that make it kind of annoying to use. The settings menu, for example, is all over the place. LG has yet to really figure out where everything should go, and it’s messy.
You’re probably wondering, though, should you buy it? Well, in conclusion, the LG G8 ThinQ is a phone that attempts to innovate but ultimately falls short in execution. While it brings some unique features to the table, such as the Crystal Sound OLED and Z Camera, these additions feel more like experimental gimmicks rather than practical enhancements to everyday use. The G8 fails to stand out in a crowded market dominated by competitors who offer more polished and reliable experiences. For its steep price, the G8 doesn’t deliver enough to justify the cost, making it a tough sell in a landscape where consumers have more compelling alternatives. LG’s efforts to differentiate itself are commendable, but until these innovations are refined and made more user-friendly, the G8 remains a decent phone that could have been so much more.