This year was a change in pace for LG. The company's "mainline" flagship device, the LG G7, was released a couple of months later later than in years prior, hitting the market in the early summer rather than the more traditional spring.

And while this may sound like a trivial distinction, it's actually more meaningful than it may first appear. The tight schedules in the smartphone industry mean that time is often the most valuable asset a manufacturer can have. In this case, scheduling the G7 for a bit later in the year gave LG an opportunity to try to raise its build-quality and to offer a well-rounded smartphone, in order to produce a more viable competitor to the fierce competition that are the other flagship handsets.

The biggest impact of this shift comes in the form of the SoC – the heart of the phone. Unlike last year's LG G6, where LG opted to use a prior generation SoC, for this year, the G7 avoids such a compromise. Instead LG is packing the phone with the latest internals, and at least on paper, it looks to be a competitive offering for 2018.

LG’s been in a relatively rough spot in the last couple of years, as we’ve seen the company stumble in terms of product execution. The LG G4 suffered from performance and battery issues due the Snapdragon 808/810 issues for that generation. The G5 promised great innovation through its modular design, however this again didn’t exactly pan out in terms of commercial success, mostly due to the phone’s weaknesses such as the display as well as a compromise in build quality due to the modular design.

The G6 overall was probably LG’s most solid phone over the last few years and it didn’t have any deal-breaking issues, other than it being a S821 device in a year of S835 alternatives. 2017 has been probably the year where the V-series actually seemingly has outshined the G-series as LG’s top-tier flagship line.

The V30 has been an excellent device, however I’ve been abstaining recommendations of phone due to the fact that my review unit had really bad uniformity issues, as well as bad low-brightness picture quality on the display. Newer units we've been sampled have offered better uniformity, but both were still not quite as perfect as you'd find from Samsung alternatives. Least to say, having to play the display lottery is not something that should be happening at these price-points.

The G7 promises a lot in terms of specifications, but most importantly for LG, what the phone needs to deliver is an increase in the overall product quality as well as more attention to detail.

LG ThinQ G7
	LG G7	LG G6
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 4x Kryo 385 Performance @ 2.8GHz 4x Kryo 385 Efficiency @ 1.77GHz Adreno 630 @ 710MHz	Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 2x Kryo @ 2.34GHz 2x Kryo @ 2.19GHz Adreno 530 @ 653MHz
Display	6.09-inch 3120x1440 (19.5:9) IPS LCD	5.7-inch 2880x1440 (18:9) IPS LCD
Dimensions	153.2 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm 162 grams	148.9 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm 163 grams
RAM	4GB LPDDR4x
NAND	64GB UFS 2.1 + microSD	32/64GB UFS + microSD
Battery	3000 mAh (11.55 Wh) non-replaceable	3300 mAh (12.54 Wh) non-replaceable
Front Camera	8MP medium angle (90°)	5MP, f/2.2, wide-angle (100°)
Primary Rear Camera	16MP Sony IMX351 1/3.09" 1µm pixels, narrow angle (70°) F/1.6 lens w/OIS	13MP, Sony IMX258, narrow angle (71°) 1.12µm pixels, F/1.8 lens w/OIS
Secondary Rear Camera	16MP Sony IMX351 ​1/3.09" 1µm pixels, wide angle (107°) F/1.9 lens	13MP, Sony IMX258, wide-angle (125°) 1.12µm pixels, F/2.4 lens
SIM Size	NanoSIM
Wireless	802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MU-MIMO, BT 5.0 LE, NFC, GPS/Glonass/Galileo/BDS
Connectivity	USB Type-C, 3.5mm headset
Features	Fingerprint reader, display notch, high resonancy speaker, AI assistant button, IP68 rating	Fingerprint reader
Launch OS	Android 8.0	Android 7.1 with LG UX 6.0

In terms of the hardware, the G7 is a large upgrade over the G6 as it represents a two-generation jump in the SoC, switching from the Snapdragon 821 to a Snapdragon 845. Performance wise we should see excellent results from the G7, as most other Snapdragon 845 devices this year have just been fantastic products.

The phone comes with 4GB of main memory as well as 64GB of UFS 2.1 storage, with the option of a microSD slot for expandable storage.

G7 vs G6

In terms of device footprint, LG actually managed to match the width and thickness of the G6 – although the industrial design has changed. The new G7 ergonomically feels like a smaller phone thanks to its more rounded edges. Where the G7 differs from the G6 in terms of dimensions is the height: it adds 4.3mm on to the top of the phone. The new format houses a longer 19.5:9 aspect-ratio screen which comes with a top display notch. Although the device is longer, its top and bottom bezels have seen a reduction compared to the G6 so the overall display-to-body ratio has increased.

A non-visible change in terms of the internals is that the battery size has actually decreased from 3300mAh down to 3000mAh – it’s possible that LG had to do this to be able to integrate the new speaker design. Overall though this doesn’t concern me too much as the efficient SoC and promised screen efficiency should still result in good battery life.

The display saw a lot of fanfare as the 3120x1440 resolution unit is of a new RGBW "M+" subpixel layout technology which promises great strides in terms of display power and power efficiency.

G7 vs G6

The back of the phone we continue to see a glass cover, and it comes with all the usually associated advantages, such as wireless charging and an IP68 rating. The camera housing has seen a redesign as the horizontal dual-camera layout in the G6 and V30 has been replaced for a smaller and tighter vertical setup.

The G7’s camera hardware hasn’t changed much from the V30’s – the main camera is still a 1/3.09" 16MP Sony IMX351 with 1µm pixels and a lens with a large f/1.6 aperture.

The wide-angle module however has seen larger changes as it sees a resolution bump from though a sensor upgrade, this time around using the same sensor as the main camera. Also notable is that the wide-angle view has been reduced from 120° down to 107° - still offering a wide angle experience but reducing the fish-eye perspective and also improving image quality by reducing chromatic aberrations on the outer portions of the image.

LG jumps on the display notch bandwagon; the official name for the G7's notch is “new second screen”. In practical terms it doesn’t differ much from what we’ve seen with other vendors. LG also offers different options to customise the area – going from various more artistic background options to the option of just blacking out the notch. For an LCD screen the G7 actually really surprised me as the display offered sufficiently high contrast ratio that blacking out the notch worked basically *almost* well as an OLED screen – however it was still visible in some bright scenarios.

On the bottom of the phone we find the speaker grill with 3 large holes. LG has made big promises on the speaker improvements as it uses the whole internal space of the phone as a resonance chamber, promising louder and better audio. Objectively measuring this was one of the reasons I’ve (re)introduced speaker evaluation into recent reviews so we’ll later in the article how LG’s efforts panned out.

There’s a USB-C port, a microphone and a 3.5mm headphone jack. LG still caters to audiophile crowd and the G7 integrates a ESS Technology ES9218P audio SoC which is stated to be able to have enough capabilities and power to drive even the most demanding high-impedance headphones with up to a 2Vrms output voltage. I measured this and unfortunately the G7 doesn't quite reach the promised levels as it is only capable of 0.764Vrms without the Quad-DAC and 1.030Vrms with the Quad-DAC enabled. Distortion wise however the G7 performed excellently - I'm working on re-building a proper audio measurement methodology for the future.

On the right side of the phone we find a lone power button. LG’s past flagships had the power button integrated on the back on the fingerprint sensor, while this was “okey” in terms of ergonomics I still think a side-power button does a better job so LG going back to the more traditional placement is a good thing in my book. The SIM and SD card tray has been now relocated to the top of the phone.

On the left side we find the volume buttons, and a brand new assistant button. Instead of creating a new custom assistant, LG fully integrates Google Now. I found the button to have a massive usability issues in terms of actually listening to commands as there’s a notable delay between pressing the button and Google Now actually starting to listen to your queries. I found this annoying enough and such a bad integration that I think it kind of defeats the purpose of the button – for contrast and as an example, Samsung’s Bixby button will instantaneously start listening to a query as soon as you press the button and the app will catch up with responding.

System Performance

System performance of the G7 is also something that shouldn’t have too many surprises as we expect the phone to behave very similar to existing Snapdragon 845 devices out there – that’s to say, it should be excellent.

Starting off with PCMark, the G7 fares very well in the web browsing test scoring just a tad more than existing S845 devices. Fluctuations here can vary depending on minute scheduler/DVFS settings down to actual hardware changes such as possible DRAM timing differences.

The video editing score ends up the same as the Mi MIX 2S.

In the writing test which is likely the most important part of the PCMark suite we see that the G7 fares a bit worse than the OnePlus 6 and MIX 2S, however it still has a considerable lead over the Galaxy S9+.

The Photo Editing test we see the G7 as the lowest performing Snapdragon 845 device.

Data Manipulation score is high for the G7, outscoring most other devices. This along with the performance lead in the web test could point out to slight memory latency advantages for the G7.

Overall the LG G7’s performance in PCMark is only outshadowed by the OnePlus 6 and MIX 2S.

Moving onto the browser web tests performed under a WebView shell, the G7 performs slightly worse in WebXPRT 3.

Overall the performance of the G7 was excellent and would satisfy the vast majority of users. I have to add that in terms of feel and experience, I do think that the G7 was among the worst of the Snapdragon 845 devices. There was a notable little delay when switching between Android activities and in general opening applications wasn’t quite as fast as on the OP6 or MIX2S. Looking at the kernel source code it looks like the G7 is running an older branch for the S845 scheduler and it’s more similar to what Samsung was using on the Galaxy S9 as there’s some newer features missing on both devices that are present on the OnePlus and Xiaomi phones.

GPU Performance

GPU performance again is a known vector for the G7 as it should not differ from other Snapdragon 845 devices. The only way the G7 is to distinguish itself from other phones is in terms of the device’s thermal dissipation design and the resulting sustained performance.

In the CPU-bound 3DMark Physics test the main factor for lower sustained performance is the throttling levels imposed by the thermal drivers. Here the G7 ends up as the worst Snapdragon 845 device with a 40% performance regression compared to its peak performance.

When looking at 3D/GPU performance we however see the G7 perform quite well as it manages to surpass sustained performance of other Snapdragon 845 devices, bar the OnePlus6’s excellent results.

As a reminder, the sustained performance scores are done by continuously running the workload under constant environmental conditions until its performance no longer degrades (and it reaches thermal equilibrium).

In GFXBench Manhattan again the G7 performs great as it manages to shrink the peak-to-sustained performance delta, again only trailing the OnePlus 6.

Finally for the T-Rex test we see a similar advantage over Xiaomi and Samsung’s S845 phones. I re-verified the scores of the latter by running them again side-by-side to the G7 and OnePlus 6 to eliminate any concerns of changing environmental conditions and indeed the resulting scores were identical.

While not matching the OnePlus 6 – the G7 does fare quite well against all other devices. Like on the OP6, I’m not sure if this is due to a better thermal design of the phone or if there’s been a rework in the thermal drivers. What can be said however is that the G7, like the OP6, does exhibit lower temperature hotspots during testing than the MIX 2S and S9+. I verified the power consumption of the G7 to also eliminate the possibility of a potentially more efficient chip bin and again the power matched that of previous S845 phones, so like on the OP6, the better performance cannot be attributed to lower power.

Display Measurement & Power

The screen of the LG G7 ThinQ has been among one of the most marketed features. The phone distinguishes itself from other devices as it’s one of the rare phones with an RGBW screen. The panel manufactured by LG promises great improvements in terms of power consumption, such as 35% better efficiency thanks to improved light transmissivity enabled by the new white sub-pixel.

The panel uses a proprietary subpixel arrangement called "M+", as such it does not actually have four subpixels per logical pixel as you would expect from a “straight” RGBW implementation. In practical terms this means that there is lower sharpness than a RGB 1440p LCD screen. However at these pixel densities, much like the Diamond Pentile arrangement on OLEDs, I found the visual fidelity loss is absolutely negligible, and results are much better than the 1080 RGBW panel from the Huawei P20.

In terms of display colour management, the G7 doesn’t feature Android 8.1’s wide display gamut framework functionality. Instead LG opts for the usual colour profiles within the display settings.

LG was keen to advertise its settings screen ahead of the G7 launch, which might have lead some, myself included, leading to believe we’ll have some great screen calibration options.

Unfortunately as in the past with LG devices, it seems the company puts very little value in achieving any kind of colour accuracy. The screen has a native gamut of DCI-P3, and essentially all of the profiles included by LG are some sort of variation inside the P3 colour space.

Even the “Expert settings” which includes dedicated sliders for colour saturation, are actually of very little use as the effect is of a non-linear saturation compression rather than a linear saturation reduction. This means that full level colours are still very much hitting the maximum P3 intensities no matter what you do.

As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.

SpectraCal CalMAN

Expert Adjusted:
Default:

On the default profile, the phone’s colour temperature is a horrendous 9000K. There’s very little point in using this as any kind of accurate baseline for measurements as it’s just way off the charts in terms off (in)accuracy.

Indeed the best predefined colour profile is the “Cinema” setting. Even in this setting, the colour temperature reaches 7800K which is still extremely blue. I tried various combinations, and the best possible result you can achieve is by using the “Expert” setting and reducing the blue component to its minimum setting, resulting in something that’s just slightly better than the Cinema setting.

Even in this “best case” setting the accuracy is abominable, as the colour temperature is still way off. While this can be “ok” for most users, what really handicaps the G7 even more is that it’s targeting a really high gamma of >2.5. The accepted industry standard is a gamma of 2.2, and any higher target is meant for speciality professional displays or cinemas. The result is that content on the G7 seems darker than on other phones, and adds to the inaccuracy of its colours.

Brightness of the G7 screen is one of its undeniable strengths. At manual maximum brightness the screen reaches 500nits which is plenty bright.

Where the G7 literally shines though is in its auto-brightness mode. Here the screen boosts up to nearly 1000 nits in bright environmental conditions. In the past this boost was only momentary for LG phones, a particular problem which Matt had covered in the G5 review. The G7 fares a lot better here and this maximum boost brightness is seemingly maintained indefinitely. This makes the G7 the by far brightest smartphone released to date and its outdoors usage is outstanding.

SpectraCal CalMAN
Cinema / Expert Adjusted

In terms of the saturation accuracy, the only reasonable measurements we can do is in the Cinema and manually adjusted Expert modes. Here the accuracy is bad with a dE2000 of 6.78 and 6.67.

SpectraCal CalMAN
Cinema / Expert Adjusted

Overall the G7 is a massive disappointment when it comes to colour accuracy as it very much singles itself out as the worst calibrated display in recent memory. This has been a pervasive issue for LG and its phones for a long time now, and it seems the company has no interest in changing it. In the past when we’ve brought this up with them, the rationale was that most users prefer the “punchier” colours.

While this could be somewhat excused in the past, the fact that LG promoted the display settings openly as they did just seems overall misleading to potential consumers as it gives the expectation that there would be an “accurate” setting among all those options, as after all, that’s what has been the status quo on Samsung phones for well over 8 generations now, and more recently that’s now also the behaviour of most other flagships from other vendors.

Display viewing angles, contrast, and brightness are otherwise very solid for the G7 – and were it not for the abysmal colour calibration, this might have been one of the best LCD displays released to date.

Display Power - RGBW: Efficient when bright, inefficient when dim

Analysing the RGBW panel’s efficiency is of great interest as it really the single most differentiating factor for the G7. RGBW panels promise better power efficiency by having dedicated white sub-pixels which allow for more light to be able to transmitted from the backlight's LEDs through the LCD panel.

Comparing the screen luminance power at 200 nits, we measure the linear regression in power between the screen at 0 nits and 200 nits.

Screen Luminance Power Efficiency 100% APL / White @ 200nits
Device	Screen Luminance Power at 200cd/m²	Luminance Power (mW) / Screen area (cm²) Efficiency
LG G7	257 mW	2.93
LG G6	363 mW	4.43
P20	411 mW	4.86
Galaxy S9	563 mW	6.69
P20 Pro	601 mW	6.74
Galaxy S8	590 mW	7.01

The G7 posts some outstanding figures here as we’re seeing the single best luminance efficiency of any recently or previously measured devices Overall we see the G7 measuring 36% more efficient than the G6, which is very much almost spot on with the 35% that LG advertised for the phone. This is also a much better figure that what we’ve measured on the Huawei P20, which also promised an efficiency boost through its RGBW panel, but which never materialised.

There’s however a big caveat in terms of power efficiency of the phone / display. While the luminance power is extremely good, the overall total device power isn’t where it's expected to be at. The G7 showcased a very large total device minimum brightness power of 563mW which is significantly higher than the G6’s 347mW. Other phones also vary between 300-400mW so this really eats into the device’s efficiency. This regression in minimum power will still skew the overall efficiency for the G7 well into commonly used brightness levels – for example at 200nits, the G7 is actually less power efficient than the G6, measuring at 830mW vs 717mW.

As to what to attribute this power regression to, I don’t know for sure without doing detailed teardown and rail power measurement on the phone. It’s possible the screen has a much less efficient DDIC as it has to drive the more complex algorithms for the RGBW panel, or it could also be some other non-display related component.

It’s only when pushing the brightness a lot higher when the G7 really pulls ahead of any other device. At 500 nits the luminance power is only 1.34W, and at the maximum 1000nits it’s still only using 2W which is way ahead of any other display panel at similar luminosity levels.

Overall what this means for the phone’s battery life is that the lower the daily brightness level you use, the worse off the G7 battery life will seem, and conversely, the brighter you drive your display in usage, the better will the G7 perform when compared to other devices.

Battery Life

Performing the battery life tests on the G7 was a daunting task as the display makes it extremely difficult to maintain a set brightness. While in daily usage this is not an issue, it has extremely aggressive APL brightness scaling / CAB (Content adaptive brightness) with swings of up to 100nits on the backlight intensity.

For the browsing test, I actually had to set the display brightness to a level that took into account the average APL over the duration of the whole web test cycle as to maintain an overall average 200 nits brightness on the backlight. Least to say, battery testing on the G7 is extremely challenging due to this.

The resulting battery life run for the web-browsing test was quite good as the G7 ended up with a runtime just shy of 10 hours. Considering the phone’s 3000mAh battery, this is an overall good result and well in the range of other Snapdragon 845 devices. As expected, the smaller battery didn't handicap the phone in comparison to the G6, as the SoC efficiency gains compensate for the 10% smaller battery and actually goes beyond that, outlasting the G6 by an hour and a half.

PCMark’s battery run ended up with only 7 hours, although because of the aforementioned display brightness variations I’m not all that confident in this result as I adjusted the screen to the best of my abilities.

Overall the G7 perfromed quite well in the battery tests. Again it’s to be noted that subjective battery life of the phone will very much depend on your screen brightness usage patterns, and the lower brightness you will use, the worse will the G7 fare against other devices. The brighter you drive the phone, the better it will fare against other competitors.

Camera - Architecture & UI

The main camera on the LG G7 differs very little from what the V30 incorporated. The sensor is still a Sony IMX351 which offers an active pixel matrix of 4656 x 3496 (16MP). The downside here is that this is a rather small 1/3.09” sensor which results in 1µm pixel pitches. As this is the same sensor as used in the LG V30 – I’m not too worried about the performance as we saw very competitive results from the sister flagship. The lens has an f/1.6 aperture, a viewing angle of 70°, and the module supports an OIS mechanism.

The wide angle camera is one of LG’s flagships’ distinguishing feature as we saw essentially no other mainstream vendor adopt the same type of camera, with most of them opting for telephoto lenses in their secondary modules. The G7 continues the trend here, but fine-tunes the wide-angle camera a bit. We’re seeing the exact same sensor as on the main camera, but the lens system has changed as this is now an f/1.9 lens with a slightly reduced wide viewing angle of 107° rather than the 125° optics found in the G6 and V30. The reduced viewing angle is meant to reduce the more extreme cases of fish-eye effect and also reduce chromatic aberrations on the edges of the image. The wide-angle module doesn't sport OIS.

Camera - Daylight Evaluation

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ]
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

In the first scenario the G7 offers a very similar exposure and colour balance to the G6 and V30 – although it’s ever so slightly more exposed at 1/1042s versus the V30’s 1/1207s take. The G7 offered slightly lower dynamic range through more reduced highlights and darker shadows than say the S9 or OnePlus 6, but the overall result was still very good and among the top performers.

In terms of detail retention there’s however some glaring differences between the G7 and the V30. If one opens the images in their native resolution, it's plainly visible that the G7 has vastly different processing in place. The result is a watercolour-like effect on all details throughout the scene and most blatantly visible in the leaves of all greenery throughout the picture. The effect is also very notable on the edges of objects throughout the picture, and is seemingly applied non-discriminately to almost all scenarios.

Switching over to the wide-angle shot, we see the differences between the G6 and V30’s modules and the G7’s new shooter: the G7 is able to capture a more natural wide dynamic range, capturing more details in the shadows. I do prefer the V30’s better retention of highlights as it’s a more accurate representation of the very bright conditions of the scene.

An interesting phenomenon that we’ll see more often today, is an odd behaviour of the camera and its processing: When shooting pictures rapidly in succession, the camera software seems to fall behind in terms of producing processed images, and the result is closer to the result of what the sensor is actually capturing. This can be seen in the versus comparison; the latter shot was shot sequentially within the same second. This is extremely valuable as we can directly see what kind of processing is done on the picture, and what’s obvious is that there’s a noise reduction filter which smudges the details, as well as the effect of a sharpening filter applied on top. There’s also some software HDR processing going on in attempting to bring out more highlights in the picture.

The noise reduction filter in particular is very destructive and it makes it easier to understand what’s happening on the main camera photo samples.

Of course, the fact that the camera’s processing suddenly doesn’t work when capturing pictures in quick succession is something that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. I’ve actually encountered the same behaviour on the V30 in past camera evaluations, but now it looks that this is very much a characteristic behaviour of LG’s camera software.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ]
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ]
[ P20 Pro ] - [ S9+ ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ iPhone X ]

The next shot the G7 doesn’t fare well at all. First of all the phone was extremely inconsistent on deciding on the exposure and processing. In the first auto shot the camera does a relatively longer exposure at 1/1205s which is actually longer than the V30’s 1/1884 take. The problem is that the software falls prey to typical over-processing and destroys most highlights in the scene, resulting in a very flat image with very little remaining dynamic range. Compared to the V30 shot, the G7 performs terribly here.

In the auto and , the G7 severely underexposes. Even worse is that it couldn’t decide between HDR processing or not, and this wasn’t an issue of quick subsequent shots as described earlier.

Detail retention was just abysmal, this is essentially the same camera hardware as on the V30 yet what the G7 outputs couldn’t be more further away from the sister flagship’s shot.

Using the AICam in this scene amounts to nothing more than a simple colour filter and brings no advantage whatsoever.

Unfortunately what was said about the main camera also applies to the wide-angle lens, as the camera couldn’t manage to maintain higher levels, having worse results than the G6 and particularly the V30.  The AICam here also doesn’t help beyond an increase in colour saturation.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ]
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ]
[ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

This is admittedly a tough shot as we’re facing against the sun, but there’s several devices which do manage good results. The G7 produces again a far too dark shot, crushing the dynamic range of the picture. Detail retention suffers the same massive issues as previous scenes.

 [ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ]
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ]
[ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

This last shot with a lot of green landscape is again a large miss on the part of the G7. Note the stark difference in processing between the G7 and V30, with the latter producing a vastly superior result. Detail retention is again disappointing.

To be noted here is the difference of the AICam effect on the V30 versus on the G7, the latter uses a more heavy-handed approach to the effect while the V30’s result is still pleasing.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ]
[ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ OnePlus 6  ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

The abbey shot is less harsh for the G7 when it comes to exposure, and the result is ok, but it’s still a regression in dynamic range compared to the V30. I don’t have to mention detail retention as the G7 just blurs out the roof tiles, while the V30 actually had one of the best results among current generation flagships.

This scene was probably the single worst for the AICam on the G7 as the resulting colours are just outright comical both in the main camera as well as the wide shot. The same AICam on the V30 resulted in a very light touch in terms of processing and did manage to make for a more subjectively pleasing sky colour.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6  ]
[ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

The alley shot for the G7 was more forgiving and overall we’re getting good colour balance and exposure. Although a lot less immediately visible, the G7 still loses out detail to the V30 due to its processing.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ]
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

The shop front scene is yet another example of how the G7 differs from the V30. Both units use the same exposure at 1/1471s, yet the V30 manages to be ever so slightly more pleasing with its HDR decisions.

Detail wise it’s another disaster for the G7 as it uses needlessly a harsh spatial noise reduction filter. Notice the carpet on the lower right as its details disappear in the G7 shot.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6  ]
[ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

The last scene can be used as an analysis on the behaviour of dynamic range retention in scenes where’s there’s a prominent colour reaching the limits of the camera’s sensor. In this case it’s the red petunia flowers in the scene. The best behaving sample from a phone is seemingly the S9+. Again the G7 regresses over the V30 as it compresses the dynamic range needlessly, and this is plainly visible when looking at a histogram of both phone’s pictures.

It’s hard to tell at first glance because of the short focal length of the shot, but again the G7’s details are again blurred out. Best example is the stem hairs on the petunias which just vanish in the G7’s pictures.

Daylight pictures conclusion

Overall in terms of daylight pictures, the G7 was a massive disappointment. When I first started sorting out the images from the phones I couldn’t understand what was wrong with the G7’s samples as I thought I inadvertently shot in a lower resolution or messed up some setting. Re-trying some shots in isolated conditions this is was indeed what the G7 produced. In the past we’ve had some phones which had hardware faults so maybe the phone wasn’t focusing correctly? Looking at sample shots of other review websites confirms that it wasn’t an issue of my unit alone.

Under daylight conditions, the G7 is a regression in every single aspect when compared to the V30. The resulting camera performance is maybe what would have been acceptable 3-4 years ago, but to showcase such poor exposure, consistency and detail in a 2018 flagship is just shameful.

The G7’s saving grace is that its wide-angle camera is still a unique feature and I do think it’s something that has a lot more uses than telephoto lenses, but again that’s something subjective and varies from user to user. The new sensor on the wide-angle helps a lot in terms of dynamic range and detail, however the sensor suffers from the same unbalanced exposures as the main camera.

All in all, what is most embarrassing for LG is that they had a really good camera in the V30 and its processing was extremely competitive, producing results competitive with the best 2018 flagships. The fact that it’s the same sensor and optics just boggles the mind as to what is going on.

Camera - Low Light Evaluation

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] 
[ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

Switching over to the low-light scenarios, the first scene already again shows the inconsistency of the G7 in deciding on a good exposure. Although the G7 isn’t really alone here and both the G6 and V30 needed help to point out what the main subject is.

Again coming back and doing an apples-to-apples between the G7 and V30 (  vs shots) which have both respectively 1/25s ISO200 and 1/24s ISO400 – I can’t understand how the G7 manages to produce a much noisier picture even though by all means it should have had the clearer shot due to the lower ISO setting. It also continues to blur out details in a much worse manner.

The only positive here is that the HDR processing did manage to produce a quite good result – at least in shot 1.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ] - [ Mate 10 ]
[ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]
[ OnePlus 6    ]

The next shot we finally see a result in which the G7 doesn’t obviously blur out the details. The result is quite good overall, although the colour temperature is a tad too warm but that’s also something a lot of phones had trouble with in terms of white street lights.

Here it’s also visible that the 1µm pixel pitch sensor is limiting the dynamic range as the larger sensor phones have better shadow definitions throughout the scene.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

Here’s another shot where the G7 doesn’t apply its super harsh water-colour effect, and I would say it’s for once finally a clear winner overall over the V30. The result is actually extremely competitive with most other flagships – while it loses to some out in dynamic range, the overall combination of the exposure and detail retention is pretty balanced.

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

In this last low-light shot the one thing that is blatantly wrong is the colour temperature – again this is a regression to the V30, but at least it’s not as awfully off as on the G6.

Please note that both G7 shots were shot at the same settings – 1/14s at ISO750, yet the second shot is far worse and this is probably the single best before-and-after in terms of showing what the processing is doing to the capture. The  is the heavily processed one. The phone is attempting to balance out the luminance in the shot but what is happening is it’s also bringing out the noise with it – this is especially visible in the sky.

The compressed rubber turf is naturally porous and here again the G7’s processing just loses all of its texture definition – look at the P20 Pro for the best baseline comparison.

Overall again the G7 regresses in practically every aspect compared to the V30 in this shot.

Extreme Low Light

[ G7 ] - [ G6 ] - [ V30 ] - [ Mi MIX 2S ] - [ Pixel 2 XL ]
[ Mate 10 ] - [ P20 ] - [ P20 Pro ]
[ OnePlus 6  ] - [ S8 ] - [ S9+ ] - [ iPhone X ]

The V30s introduced the “Low-light shot” mode and was backported to the V30. The G7 includes it as well and under a certain threshold (if enabled in the settings) it switches over to LLS mode. This is a 2x2 pixel binning mode with a quarter of the resolution, but drastically increases light sensitivity.

The extreme-low-light scenario is essentially there to see how the phones perform under very dark conditions where you wouldn’t normally expect to capture much. Recent development in computational photography and special capture modes such as pixel-binning on the camera sensor have recently allowed phones to finally make this a somewhat viable scenario for newer smartphones.

The G7 here produces a very bright result which does beat most other phones. Looking at the EXIF data both the V30 and G7 did a 1/7s exposure, but the V30 doesn’t have any ISO entry while the G7 says it’s at ISO2250. Usually when the EXIF data doesn’t get populated it’s because the resulting image went through heavy processing, and there’s a notable difference between the G7 and V30 again as the latter, while being a bit darker, produced a much clearer and sharper image.

Low Light Conclusion

Unfortunately, while the G7 did fare a bit better in some low-light scenarios, it overall still represented a regression over the V30.

There’s just no real excuse for LG here as all it had to do to maintain camera quality was to port over the existing camera calibration and processing from the V30 to serve as a baseline. Instead it looks like LG started from scratch, and somewhere in the process they forgot to finish the work. I’ve heard from a lot of vendors that the camera is usually the last thing that’s developed during the bring-up of a new phone platform, but to have such a regression over a previous generation phone in a company's line-up is something that I haven’t really seen before.

Video Recording

Video recording on the G7 is actually a very interesting topic because you have the two cameras to choose from. In terms of recording modes the phone is limited to 4K30 as its highest quality mode, while 60fps recording is enabled only for 1080p. There are also 18.9:9 aspect ratio resolutions at 2268x1080 and 1512x720 at 30fps which give you a wider field of view. EIS is only applied at 1080p30 and below.

In terms of encoding settings, the G7 only uses AVC/H.264 and doesn’t take advantage of the SoC’s more powerful HEVC encode mode. The encoding bitrates are standard for the respective resolutions and capture rates.

Main Camera:     
Wide Angle:        

Recording Mode	AVC / H.264
3840p 30fps	[email protected] - 47.9 Mbps
1080p 60fps	[email protected] - 24 Mbps
1080p 30fps	High@L4 - 17 Mbps

The 60fps capture modes suffer a lot from either a too low encoding bit-rate or the ISP isn’t doing as much processing, as it’s immediately visible that there’s far less dynamic range and detail compared to the 30fps modes. And it happens on both cameras.

1080p and 4K look good on both camera modules, although the lack of OIS is very visible in the wide-angle shooter. EIS functions extremely well and manages to retain a lot of detail – it’s to be noted that the occasional blurring jitter in the videos here is more of an effect of the YouTube transcoding, as the effect isn’t nearly as bad in the original video files.

What I really loved though about the G7 is the wide-angle recording in combination with EIS. I usually don’t enjoy EIS video capture because it really narrows your field-of-view too much in most cases, however on the G7 the wide-angle lens cancels out any disadvantages of the EIS, and you end up with a FOV that’s still wider than most other smartphones, with the benefit of great stabilisation.

The sound recording quality of the G7 was good, although I found that wind noise was a lot more pronounced than in other smartphones.

Speaker Evaluation

LG made some big claims for the speaker of the G7 as it promised some really notable gains with its new design.

During our pre-brief we were presented with a few basic specs: the speaker is 39% bigger than on the G6, and also the resonance chamber is said to be the biggest of any smartphone. Instead of using the speaker housing as resonance chamber, the G7 uses the whole internal volume of the phone. This was also very much achieved thanks to the sealed nature of the phone through its IP68 rating. What this promises is vastly increased bass levels than any other phone.

First up though, let’s measure the speaker loudness. We’re using a flat response calibrated microphone and we’re measuring pink noise at a 40cm distance from the phone. The phone is held both one-handed in portrait mode, as well as two-handed with cupped palms in landscape; both of these should represent common use-cases for most people.

The results are extremely good for the G7, as it manages the loudest results among recent flagships. What is more remarkable still for the G7 is actually the directionality of the sound. Even though it only has one speaker and it’s bottom/side firing, this doesn’t seem to really hinder it much in terms of having excellent frontal directionality. I was really surprised at just how well this works and it easily outperforms even some true front-facing speakers of other phones. The sound directionality and evenness in portrait mode is particularly excellent.

Holding the phone in landscape is tougher though as it’s very much biased towards the side of the speaker and here the phone doesn’t fare as well as other stereo implementations.

Moving on to the frequency response of the speaker, we’re measuring a sweep from 20 to 20KHz, in the same conditions as our previous test, while holding the phone in landscape mode with two hands. All the phones are calibrated to the same loudness, aiming for 75dbA.

Although LG promised a lot of bass through the new speaker, it it actually ends up as one of the worst performers. The phone is significantly lacking in terms of depth, sounding very hollow. This is represented by the low SPL below 400Hz.

Investigating it more, one of the things LG did during the presentations of the phone is to showcase how the sound profile significantly changes when you lay it down on a surface. Indeed, while you hold the phone you can really feel the reverberations on the back glass of the phone. The problem here is that this is just wasted energy that doesn’t translate into any meaningful sound. Putting the phone on a standing surface allows the phone to transfer the vibrations and use the surface to amplify the sound.

I tested this out on my work desk, with once the phone held in my hand on the desk, and then again with the phone’s back flat against the desk.

Looking at the frequency response, we now see all that low frequency energy transfer to the desk and really amplify the low to mid frequencies of the phone, resulting in a much flatter frequency response.

To better represent the difference, here are two audio recordings of the two scenarios. Unfortunately I don’t have a proper omnidirectional recording microphone to capture this too well, so the recording was made with the measurement microphone – the issue with this one is that it lacks sufficient dynamic range and that’s why it sounds more muted. Here’s a recording of flat response speakers that should serve as an apples-to-apples baseline for comparison.

You can switch playback between the two recordings by pressing anywhere on the waveforms, and the recordings are synchronized in terms of their timestamps. This really represents the large audio profile difference between holding the G7 and putting it on a surface.

While this is all good in terms of looking at the frequency response, there’s a big catch when comparing the G7 to competitors. Putting the Galaxy S9+ onto the desk right next to the G7 and repeating the measurement, we actually see the Samsung phone perform even better in terms of bass as well as showcasing a significant advantage in the high frequencies.

When listening to the recording of the S9+ next to the G7, it puts the G7 into context, suddenly makes one question what the actual benefits of LG’s speaker design is. The coup de grâce for LG’s speaker is the fact that other phones don’t need to be put onto on a surface to be able so sound good; the S9+’s sound profile barely changes between holding it or putting it down. The G7 in the other hand just sounds bad when you’re holding it.

The most interesting fact is that when holding the phone, you can squeeze in the back side quite hard – what this does is reduce the internal reverberation and vibrations, and vastly increases the amplitude of lower frequencies actually coming out of the phone, noticeably improving the bass and depth of the audio.

Here’s the thing; while LG’s idea has some kind of merit and does work in some cases, a smartphone is still a handheld device, which by definition you hold it in your hand. Taking all of this into account, I don’t really see LG’s new speaker design paying off and I would even go as far to say that I somewhat prefer the G6’s sound, although that one isn’t great either.

Conclusion & End Remarks

The G7 was an opportunity for LG to try to raise its build-quality and to offer a well-rounded smartphone to offer a viable alternative with the current fierce competition.

In terms of the design of the G7, I think LG did a good job and I don’t have anything to reproach the phone for in terms of its industrial design choices. In terms of ergonomics, LG went for a rounder bezel which feels slightly handier even though the G7 keeps the exact same footprint as the G6. Moving the power button back to the side is I think a good choice, as although it was unique in past LG devices, it’s something that I personally never got used to.

Obviously there’s a lot of drama around the new screen and the fact that it includes a display notch. Again, similar what I've found in my reviews of the Huawei P20’s and the OnePlus 6, the notch in the G7 doesn’t detract from the aesthetics of the phone, especially as LG offers sufficient customisations in terms of backgrounds for the notch “ears”. The display, although it’s an LCD, offers enough contrast to have sufficiently dark blacks to hide it up until the brightest conditions.

The screen itself is among the G7’s key advertised features, and here LG fulfills all its promises. The RGBW IPS display offers excellent viewing angles, contrast, and is the brightest display we’ve seen in an Android device as it reaches and maintains an eye-searing 1000nits. LG’s promises of 35% better power efficiency on the panel were tested and verified – we’ve never seen such an efficient screen on a mobile device before. The catch here is that the phone has an (unattributed) above-average base power consumption which up to certain brightness levels essentially eliminates the efficiency advantage that the screen brought to the table.

The biggest disappointment is LG’s repeated failure to provide an accurate colour calibration – and if that’s something you value, then the G7 is definitely not the phone for you as it sports the worst colour reproduction we’ve come to measure in a phone released in the last few years.

Performance of the G7 is very good. I would have been naturally surprised to see otherwise as every other Snapdragon 845 device this year has performed excellently. It’s to note that LG’s framework doesn’t seem to be quite as integrated as what we’ve seen from other vendors, and while performance is still great – this is likely the least “snappy” S845 device I’ve come to test this year. GPU sustained performance also behaved above average for S845 devices, as much as it overtakes Samsung and Xiaomi in terms of prolonged gaming performance.

But the biggest disappointment from the G7 ended up being the camera. Even though the G7 employs the same main camera sensor as on the V30, with the same optics, the G7 consistently underperformed its sister flagship. I have no idea what happened here but the image processing on the G7 was just atrocious and absolutely not worthy of a flagship device. LG’s heavy-handed and pointless usage of a harsh noise reduction filter – which creates a water-colour effect – essentially destroyed a large amount of detail in the vast majority of scenarios, defeating the purpose of having a 16MP sensor in the first place.

Cameras are usually the last thing that are developed for a new smartphone, but it feels like LG just forgot the calibration step in its entirety on the G7. I don’t have a sample device of the V35, but I’m really curious to see how that phone behaves and if it shares any of the same issues of the G7.

The saving grace in terms of camera capture is that the wide-angle lens is still a unique selling point for LG. I still find vastly more uses in a wide-angle module than a telephoto module. Wide angle with EIS video capture is especially a really nice feature on the G7 that I enjoyed.

Although AI was a heavily marketed aspect of the G7 – and I’m purposefully avoiding bringing up the “ThinQ” branding throughout the review – its practical uses are very slim. The added assistant button on the side of the phone is a new feature and is integrated with the Google Assistant. The drawback here is that the response time from pressing the button to the assistant actually starting to listen is quite long and unnatural in its implementation. I fear to say that Samsung’s Bixby button is far better in this regard.

The AICam on the V30 was a neat feature which could offer some improvements in colour representation in some scenarios. The same can’t be said for the G7 as in my experience almost any kind of change applied while in AICam mode has been detrimental to picture quality. I’m not even going into the fact that there’s very little machine learning going on and any of it that does happen is actually run on the CPU. LG needs to avoid catering to the latest trendy marketing buzz-words and concentrate on improving the core characteristics of its phones.

Lastly, the new “Boombox” speaker promised some big improvements in sound quality. Sure, if you’re the type to put your phone down and listen to music, then the G7 does compete quite well. Unfortunately a handheld device is, well, most often held in your hands, and here the G7’s speaker design underperforms in terms of sound quality. The positives here is that it does get very loud, and it’s one of the rare mono side speakers that actually manages to have surprisingly good frontal directionality.

So does the G7 make the cut in terms of a worthy purchase? For me the camera is one of the more major deal-breakers. The good news is that the problem here appears to be software – it's the image processing that seems to be the problem rather than the optics or sensor – so LG can fix the problem, if they want to. But until LG resolves the phone’s processing calibration and at least manages to get the G7 back to the picture quality of the V30, I think it’s going to have a very tough time justifying itself. I can only think of a niche use-case where the G7 would beat other phones: prolonged usage in very bright usage conditions, thanks to its efficient screen.

For me the G7 just feels like a phone that has been rushed out and the designers just didn’t get to polish the details out. The two biggest concerns, display calibration and camera calibration, are both fixable by software. But as we’ve seen in the past, the chances of vendors addressing such issues after the fact are slim and are more of an exception to the norm. For now, I don’t see the G7 as a competitive offering versus a similarly priced OnePlus 6, or a superior product, the Galaxy S9(+).