2018 is not shaping up to be a shocking year for smartphones.
Like its competitors, the LG G7 ThinQ is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Compared with last year's G6, it brings the processor up to date, improves the camera, and pumps up the volume on the speaker.
And yes, it has a notch.
Despite the lack of any blockbuster new features, the $750 G7 still has powerful specs, excellent audio quality, and a sharp AI-powered camera.
It's a solid multimedia powerhouse if you're looking for an alternative to flagship models from Apple and Samsung.
Design, Features, and Display
The G7 looks a lot like a lot of other smartphones right now.
LG has softened the G6's edges, giving the metal surrounding the screen a smoother feel and accentuating the prominent notch at the top of the display.
The back is naturally layered in Gorilla Glass 5.
The G7 is available in black, blue, gray, and rose, though availability depends on carrier.
At 6.0 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD), the G7 is smack in between the size of Samsung's Galaxy S9 (5.8 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches) and Galaxy S9+ (6.2 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches).
It weighs in at 5.7 ounces, which is 0.1-ounce less than the GS9.
It's quite pocketable, and we had no problem using it with one hand.
LG bucks the trend of removing the headphone jack by keeping the 3.5mm audio port on the bottom, driven by a quad DAC, like the G6.
There's also a USB-C charging port and speaker down there, a power button on the right, and a SIM/microSD card slot on top that worked fine with a 256GB card.
There's also volume buttons and a dedicated Google Assistant button on the left, which you can't remap.
LG says the phone's far-field mics can pick up the "Hey Google" activation phrase from 16 feet away, which makes us wonder why the button is needed.
There's no reason one of the volume keys couldn't have been configurable, the same way that double pressing the power button launches the camera app.
The phone boasts a military standard 810G rating for durability.
It survived several five-foot drops on the hard, rubberized floor in PC Labs, though we'd be cautious of concrete, since the glass body is likely to scratch.
Like the high-end Apple and Samsung phones it competes with, the G7 is also IP68 waterproof and stood up to a thorough rinsing in the sink.
The G7 forgoes the trendy 18:9 aspect ratio in favor of a notched design for its 6.1-inch screen, giving the it more than a passing resemblance to Apple's iPhone X.
In terms of resolution, the 3,120-by-1,440-pixel IPS display works out to a crisp 564ppi (pixels per inch).
Viewing angles are great and color reproduction is accurate.
In the display settings, you're able to tweak color saturation, tune RGB levels, hue, gradient, and white balance, as well as use different preconfigured modes for gaming, movies, and sports.
The display is extra bright, with what LG says is a 1,000-nit maximum brightness and dedicated white pixels to go along with the traditional RGB, resulting in strong visibility in direct sunlight.
The notch can be turned into a black, dedicated status bar through settings, though it doesn't have the sort of extra alert capabilities we saw on the "second screen" status bars on the LG V10 and V20.
Since the panel is LCD, turning the notch into a black bar doesn't look as neat as it would on the AMOLED Galaxy S9, which can turn pixels off entirely, giving you true black.
Network Performance, Connectivity, and Audio
Carrier availability and LTE bands haven't been confirmed as of this writing, but LG says the G7 will support all major US carriers and their bands.
T-Mobile, which we tested the G7 on, has confirmed support for band 71, which improves rural coverage.
In our network testing in (heavily congested) midtown Manhattan, the phone recorded mostly single digit download speeds and higher upload speeds, which is par for the course among our recent tests.
All the usual connectivity protocols are present, including dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 (which lets you stream to two audio devices at once), and NFC for mobile payments.
Call quality is fine.
Transmissions sound a little robotic, but fairly clear, and noise cancellation is solid.
Earpiece volume is loud and the speaker phone is thunderous, so you should have no problem carrying out a conversation in a noisy environment.
See How We Test Phones
Audio quality is a strength here.
With its discrete DAC (digital-to-analog converter) in a number of recent phones, LG has been carving out an audiophile niche recently, making the G7 a good pick for people with high-end analog headphones.
Listening with a pair of wired Meze 99 Classics, we were able to take advantage of the G7's high-resolution 32-bit audio and quad DAC.
You're able to customize your audio profile with the built-in equalizer, tweak left/right balance, and use a number of preset options for genres like Classic, Jazz, and Pop.
The digital surround sound feature didn't come across clearly in testing, but that's typically been our experience with any software-based surround sound.
While the G7 technically only has one, bottom-ported speaker, it uses the phone's body as a bass chamber, giving it the kind of deep, powerful sound that you usually associate with phones that have dual front-facing speakers.
The audio was thunderously loud while playing games and music, resonating through PC Labs.
The phone also vibrates a lot when it's playing music, which is a cool effect if you're a fan of bass-heavy tunes.
Processor and Battery
Under the hood, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.8GHz, and either 4GB or 6GB of RAM depending on the configuration (we tested a 4GB RAM model).
In the PCMark benchmark, which measures a variety of tasks like web browsing, video editing, and data manipulation, the phone scored 7,983, for performance right between the Galaxy S9+ (7,273) and the Sony Xperia XZ2 (8,306).
In terms of more traditional use, the G7 is fast and responsive, and more than capable of handling demanding games like Player Unknown Battlegrounds on high graphics settings without any sluggishness.
Battery life is solid at 6 hours, 28 minutes of when streaming video over LTE at maximum screen brightness.
It's not as good as the S9+, which lasted over 10 hours in the same test, but it's much better than the the Xperia XZ2, which only managed 4 hours, 40 minutes.
There are several power-saving modes baked into the Settings menu that can help you identify and kill power-draining apps, as well as tamp down screen brightness and background processes.
LG includes a fast charging adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0.
Wireless charging is also supported.
Smart Camera
The G7 has two 16-megapixel cameras on the back—one standard-angle f/1.6 with optical image stabilization (OIS), and one wide-angle f/1.9—as well as an 8MP, front-facing f/1.9 camera.
Using its AI-powered ThinQ software, the camera tries to pick the best shooting mode for your content, using algorithms entirely on the device—there's no cloud-based aspect.
As you pan around your subject, little words pop up on the screen showing what the phone is guessing you're seeing.
After a few seconds, it locks in.
It's pretty good at identifying people, cityscapes, plants, and food.
Indoors and in low-light settings it takes longer, and sometimes we became impatient and snapped without waiting for the camera to make adjustments.
The AI camera tweaks on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro feel more instantaneous.
In most instances, the AI errs on the side of increasing the saturation of colors, reducing shadows, and increasing details.
As you can see below, the G7's photos look crisp, with rich, saturated colors and a great view of details like the individual balcony railing of buildings.
Noise is practically nonexistent.
But placed side by side with a photo from the Galaxy S9+, the G7's image looks a little cold, lacking the warm golden glow of the sun on the building's face that the GS9 captures.
In the shot above, the G7 strips away the shadow and smooths out some of the rougher textures of the building's facade, resulting in a look that's brighter and softer than what the S9+ captures.
Both images look great, so it comes down to a matter of preference.
If you like the true-to-life look, the S9+ does well at capturing images as they are, while the G7's AI-augmented camera leans more heavily on post-processing to create bright, punchy images.
The AI also enables a low-light mode, which uses four-pixel binning to create much brighter, but lower resolution shots in very low light.
In the dark interior of PC Labs, the shots we took with the G7 look much more colorful and saturated than the ones we took with an S9+, although they aren't necessarily sharper.
Ultimately, the G7 and the S9+ are neck and neck when it comes to overall photo.
If you'd rather have a wide-angle lens that's capable of capturing almost panoramic shots (with some minor barrel distortion), the G7 is the phone for you.
It also boasts bokeh mode with both the front and back cameras, although it's better with the dual rear cameras, where it uses one to create a grayscale depth map while the other one captures the full-color image.
The 8MP front sensor takes good selfies and also benefits from AI augmentation to tweak colors and exposure.
It makes taking selfies in a dim restaurant a much easier feat.
4K video records at a smooth and stable 30fps, though the S9+ with dual OIS does a better job of reducing jitter.
Software
The G7 ships running Android 8.0 Oreo.
LG's custom skin makes some visual changes, like splashing apps across the home screen by default and using custom icons and menus.
The phone will get Android P, according to LG, along with functionality upgrades over time.
Some of them could be new camera modes, for instance, or LG could enable new things to do with the Google Assistant button (or let you remap or disable the button entirely).
Out of 64GB of internal storage on our review model, 44.1GB is available for use.
If you plan to take a lot of photos or 4K video, you can use a microSD card for additional space.
Conclusions
The next few years are going to be big ones for smartphones.
5G will launch in 2019, enabling new applications and new form factors.
We might see foldable phones, or AR- and VR-focused devices.
But for now, we have phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the LG G7 ThinQ, which make everything a little bit better.
The G7 is packed with features to please audiophiles and photographers alike, making it a solid alternative to Samsung, though the S9+ is a little more polished all around, and our Editors' Choice.
Pros
Audiophile-friendly sound.
Sharp, bright display.
Solid low-light camera mode and AI image tweaking.
Latest processor and modem.
View More
The Bottom Line
The G7 ThinQ hits the latest phone trends and includes signature LG features like a wide-angle camera and audiophile-quality sound for a solid alternative to flagships from Apple and Samsung.
2018 is not shaping up to be a shocking year for smartphones.
Like its competitors, the LG G7 ThinQ is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Compared with last year's G6, it brings the processor up to date, improves the camera, and pumps up the volume on the speaker.
And yes, it has a notch.
Despite the lack of any blockbuster new features, the $750 G7 still has powerful specs, excellent audio quality, and a sharp AI-powered camera.
It's a solid multimedia powerhouse if you're looking for an alternative to flagship models from Apple and Samsung.
Design, Features, and Display
The G7 looks a lot like a lot of other smartphones right now.
LG has softened the G6's edges, giving the metal surrounding the screen a smoother feel and accentuating the prominent notch at the top of the display.
The back is naturally layered in Gorilla Glass 5.
The G7 is available in black, blue, gray, and rose, though availability depends on carrier.
At 6.0 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD), the G7 is smack in between the size of Samsung's Galaxy S9 (5.8 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches) and Galaxy S9+ (6.2 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches).
It weighs in at 5.7 ounces, which is 0.1-ounce less than the GS9.
It's quite pocketable, and we had no problem using it with one hand.
LG bucks the trend of removing the headphone jack by keeping the 3.5mm audio port on the bottom, driven by a quad DAC, like the G6.
There's also a USB-C charging port and speaker down there, a power button on the right, and a SIM/microSD card slot on top that worked fine with a 256GB card.
There's also volume buttons and a dedicated Google Assistant button on the left, which you can't remap.
LG says the phone's far-field mics can pick up the "Hey Google" activation phrase from 16 feet away, which makes us wonder why the button is needed.
There's no reason one of the volume keys couldn't have been configurable, the same way that double pressing the power button launches the camera app.
The phone boasts a military standard 810G rating for durability.
It survived several five-foot drops on the hard, rubberized floor in PC Labs, though we'd be cautious of concrete, since the glass body is likely to scratch.
Like the high-end Apple and Samsung phones it competes with, the G7 is also IP68 waterproof and stood up to a thorough rinsing in the sink.
The G7 forgoes the trendy 18:9 aspect ratio in favor of a notched design for its 6.1-inch screen, giving the it more than a passing resemblance to Apple's iPhone X.
In terms of resolution, the 3,120-by-1,440-pixel IPS display works out to a crisp 564ppi (pixels per inch).
Viewing angles are great and color reproduction is accurate.
In the display settings, you're able to tweak color saturation, tune RGB levels, hue, gradient, and white balance, as well as use different preconfigured modes for gaming, movies, and sports.
The display is extra bright, with what LG says is a 1,000-nit maximum brightness and dedicated white pixels to go along with the traditional RGB, resulting in strong visibility in direct sunlight.
The notch can be turned into a black, dedicated status bar through settings, though it doesn't have the sort of extra alert capabilities we saw on the "second screen" status bars on the LG V10 and V20.
Since the panel is LCD, turning the notch into a black bar doesn't look as neat as it would on the AMOLED Galaxy S9, which can turn pixels off entirely, giving you true black.
Network Performance, Connectivity, and Audio
Carrier availability and LTE bands haven't been confirmed as of this writing, but LG says the G7 will support all major US carriers and their bands.
T-Mobile, which we tested the G7 on, has confirmed support for band 71, which improves rural coverage.
In our network testing in (heavily congested) midtown Manhattan, the phone recorded mostly single digit download speeds and higher upload speeds, which is par for the course among our recent tests.
All the usual connectivity protocols are present, including dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 (which lets you stream to two audio devices at once), and NFC for mobile payments.
Call quality is fine.
Transmissions sound a little robotic, but fairly clear, and noise cancellation is solid.
Earpiece volume is loud and the speaker phone is thunderous, so you should have no problem carrying out a conversation in a noisy environment.
See How We Test Phones
Audio quality is a strength here.
With its discrete DAC (digital-to-analog converter) in a number of recent phones, LG has been carving out an audiophile niche recently, making the G7 a good pick for people with high-end analog headphones.
Listening with a pair of wired Meze 99 Classics, we were able to take advantage of the G7's high-resolution 32-bit audio and quad DAC.
You're able to customize your audio profile with the built-in equalizer, tweak left/right balance, and use a number of preset options for genres like Classic, Jazz, and Pop.
The digital surround sound feature didn't come across clearly in testing, but that's typically been our experience with any software-based surround sound.
While the G7 technically only has one, bottom-ported speaker, it uses the phone's body as a bass chamber, giving it the kind of deep, powerful sound that you usually associate with phones that have dual front-facing speakers.
The audio was thunderously loud while playing games and music, resonating through PC Labs.
The phone also vibrates a lot when it's playing music, which is a cool effect if you're a fan of bass-heavy tunes.
Processor and Battery
Under the hood, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.8GHz, and either 4GB or 6GB of RAM depending on the configuration (we tested a 4GB RAM model).
In the PCMark benchmark, which measures a variety of tasks like web browsing, video editing, and data manipulation, the phone scored 7,983, for performance right between the Galaxy S9+ (7,273) and the Sony Xperia XZ2 (8,306).
In terms of more traditional use, the G7 is fast and responsive, and more than capable of handling demanding games like Player Unknown Battlegrounds on high graphics settings without any sluggishness.
Battery life is solid at 6 hours, 28 minutes of when streaming video over LTE at maximum screen brightness.
It's not as good as the S9+, which lasted over 10 hours in the same test, but it's much better than the the Xperia XZ2, which only managed 4 hours, 40 minutes.
There are several power-saving modes baked into the Settings menu that can help you identify and kill power-draining apps, as well as tamp down screen brightness and background processes.
LG includes a fast charging adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0.
Wireless charging is also supported.
Smart Camera
The G7 has two 16-megapixel cameras on the back—one standard-angle f/1.6 with optical image stabilization (OIS), and one wide-angle f/1.9—as well as an 8MP, front-facing f/1.9 camera.
Using its AI-powered ThinQ software, the camera tries to pick the best shooting mode for your content, using algorithms entirely on the device—there's no cloud-based aspect.
As you pan around your subject, little words pop up on the screen showing what the phone is guessing you're seeing.
After a few seconds, it locks in.
It's pretty good at identifying people, cityscapes, plants, and food.
Indoors and in low-light settings it takes longer, and sometimes we became impatient and snapped without waiting for the camera to make adjustments.
The AI camera tweaks on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro feel more instantaneous.
In most instances, the AI errs on the side of increasing the saturation of colors, reducing shadows, and increasing details.
As you can see below, the G7's photos look crisp, with rich, saturated colors and a great view of details like the individual balcony railing of buildings.
Noise is practically nonexistent.
But placed side by side with a photo from the Galaxy S9+, the G7's image looks a little cold, lacking the warm golden glow of the sun on the building's face that the GS9 captures.
In the shot above, the G7 strips away the shadow and smooths out some of the rougher textures of the building's facade, resulting in a look that's brighter and softer than what the S9+ captures.
Both images look great, so it comes down to a matter of preference.
If you like the true-to-life look, the S9+ does well at capturing images as they are, while the G7's AI-augmented camera leans more heavily on post-processing to create bright, punchy images.
The AI also enables a low-light mode, which uses four-pixel binning to create much brighter, but lower resolution shots in very low light.
In the dark interior of PC Labs, the shots we took with the G7 look much more colorful and saturated than the ones we took with an S9+, although they aren't necessarily sharper.
Ultimately, the G7 and the S9+ are neck and neck when it comes to overall photo.
If you'd rather have a wide-angle lens that's capable of capturing almost panoramic shots (with some minor barrel distortion), the G7 is the phone for you.
It also boasts bokeh mode with both the front and back cameras, although it's better with the dual rear cameras, where it uses one to create a grayscale depth map while the other one captures the full-color image.
The 8MP front sensor takes good selfies and also benefits from AI augmentation to tweak colors and exposure.
It makes taking selfies in a dim restaurant a much easier feat.
4K video records at a smooth and stable 30fps, though the S9+ with dual OIS does a better job of reducing jitter.
Software
The G7 ships running Android 8.0 Oreo.
LG's custom skin makes some visual changes, like splashing apps across the home screen by default and using custom icons and menus.
The phone will get Android P, according to LG, along with functionality upgrades over time.
Some of them could be new camera modes, for instance, or LG could enable new things to do with the Google Assistant button (or let you remap or disable the button entirely).
Out of 64GB of internal storage on our review model, 44.1GB is available for use.
If you plan to take a lot of photos or 4K video, you can use a microSD card for additional space.
Conclusions
The next few years are going to be big ones for smartphones.
5G will launch in 2019, enabling new applications and new form factors.
We might see foldable phones, or AR- and VR-focused devices.
But for now, we have phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the LG G7 ThinQ, which make everything a little bit better.
The G7 is packed with features to please audiophiles and photographers alike, making it a solid alternative to Samsung, though the S9+ is a little more polished all around, and our Editors' Choice.
Pros
Audiophile-friendly sound.
Sharp, bright display.
Solid low-light camera mode and AI image tweaking.
Latest processor and modem.
View More
The Bottom Line
The G7 ThinQ hits the latest phone trends and includes signature LG features like a wide-angle camera and audiophile-quality sound for a solid alternative to flagships from Apple and Samsung.
