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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So the LG G7 was just announced, and I was able to use
00:08this phone at a media event, so I thought I'd give some early impressions on this phone.
00:12But before I get into that, I want to talk about the whole phone line as a whole. I have
00:17this love-hate relationship with LG's phones. The very first Android phone I ever purchased
00:21was the G4. I absolutely loved that phone until it started boot looping, and even the
00:26refurb unit that I got to replace it also boot looped. The G5 I didn't love very much.
00:31The G6 was also a great phone, but the G7 was rumored or even reported to have been
00:36discontinued at the beginning of the year. There were like reports of this thing just
00:39being straight-up axed from LG's lineup, but here we are in mid-2018, and it's finally
00:45here. Now, this phone is going to be really divisive because of one main feature. It's
00:49the notch, and I wouldn't even call it a feature. It's like a physical characteristic. Some
00:53people hate it, some people are tolerant of it, and maybe a small percentage of people
00:57like it, but the fact remains, it's a notch. And aesthetically speaking, I much prefer
01:02devices that don't have notches. There's a lot of phone companies out there that actually
01:05take advantage of the notch, like the iPhone X. It requires a notch because there's just
01:10no bezel around the bottom and the top, but on this phone, the G7 does have a bottom bezel,
01:15and there's a bit of a top bezel, so I feel like the notch wasn't entirely necessary.
01:18It almost feels like they put this in just for aesthetics, like they somehow thought
01:22that this would look good with a notch, which I personally don't find that it does. So here's
01:26the thing. There's a lot of Chinese phone manufacturers out there that put a notch on
01:30their 2018 phones just so it could look like the iPhone X, and I kind of get it for them
01:34because they don't have design teams, really, and they just kind of go with whatever they
01:38think is working out there, but not for LG. I don't think they needed to do it. LG's good
01:44with innovation. They're really strong with innovation. Why are they doing this? It bugs
01:48me that it's there. So yeah, right off the bat, I don't like this notch, but the good
01:54thing is you can kind of hide it with their software. So they have this feature in settings
01:57where you can basically turn the whole top of the screen black, and it essentially masks
02:01the notch. Now, in order for this to work, that black has to look really black, and fortunately,
02:06it does because the screen is incredibly good. It's 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 1,000 nits,
02:12very nice image. The blacks look super inky, and the colors are really vibrant as well,
02:17to the point where I thought it was an OLED panel, but it is an LCD screen, so you don't
02:20have issues like OLED burn-in. It's definitely a nicer looking screen than the LG G6. I'd
02:25say it's very similar in appearance to the S9 screen. It's really nice, and it's also
02:29a 1440p panel. The speaker is loud, like really loud. They claim 10 times louder than some
02:34of their competitors, and I don't know where they're coming with that number, but it is
02:37loud. It's using some resonance chamber design, so it's supposed to amp up the bass levels,
02:42and because it's an LG flagship, they're sticking their quad DAC in here, so if you're an audiophile,
02:46you're going to love the headphone jack, and the improved audio quality coming from
02:49that jack. So they also have an assistant button on the side, and this actually launches
02:53the Google Assistant. You can't remap it, but you can turn it off. It's kind of like
02:57how Samsung has their Bixby button, but this launches a Google Assistant. The camera uses
03:02two lenses again, with one of them being a wide-angle lens, and I've said this before
03:05in my previous videos, but I absolutely love phones with wide-angle camera lenses as the
03:09secondary lens. I just much prefer a wide angle over a zoom. Now, I haven't spent enough
03:13time with this camera to give detailed opinions on it, but it does have this AI feature, where
03:17the camera tries to analyze the scene that you're looking at, and then it'll adjust the
03:20camera settings to best optimize the shot. Now, it's very early stages of the software,
03:24and I wasn't able to test this camera out thoroughly, but the idea of it is pretty neat.
03:28The other features in this phone, like Snapdragon 845, IP68 waterproofing, it's all going to
03:32be very 2018 flagship feeling, with your fingerprint sensor on the back, and an iris scanner. The
03:37battery's at 3,000 milliamp hours. It's not particularly big, but because the screen uses,
03:42I think, like, 30% less energy than the previous version. I think that's pretty cool. The battery
03:46life should be good, but just, I don't expect it to be amazing or anything like that. So,
03:50early impressions of this phone, the hardware is great. It is an LG flagship, but they're
03:53always, like, pretty good with hardware. It's got some unique features. I really like the
03:57LCD screen on it. It's probably the best LCD screen on the market. It's got the wide-angle
04:01lens, and really good audio quality from the DAC. These are features that are relatively
04:05unique to the LG flagships. Now, the notch is something that I feel like they could've
04:09done without. I don't feel like it adds a lot to this phone, but it is what it is. The
04:13G7 has a notch. Now, the most important thing about this phone is its price tag, and right
04:19now, at the time of this video, and at the media event, they didn't reveal its final
04:23price. So, I can't really, like, give recommendations, but I will say this. The technology is good
04:27on this phone, the hardware is good, and if it's priced well, I think it's a good option.
04:31Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See
04:35you guys next time.