LG WING™ 5G Review

LG has done an excellent job designing the mechanism which isn't something we can always say about all experimental phones 5g+.

is super smooth and feels very natural and far from jaunty, there are double locking points to ensure
that the display stays open when it's open and fits snug when it's shut there's no wobble here,
and you can even open it with one hand the lack of solid anchor point can be a disadvantage.
when gaming in landscape mode especially if you're swiping around a lot but most of the time
it's not an issue it's validated for 2000 cycles of use which should cover the phone's life cycle of around 5 years when open you can either have the baby screen on the bottom while watchingvideos so you can chat with friends or google searchsomething but it feels unbalanced because the main screen is heavy alternatively,
the small screen can be at the top which feels more natural but you'll still have to stretch up for it.

it's still debatable whether it's actually, useful but at the very least it's done well, of course, much of the time you'll have it snapped shut so you can use it as a regular phone it's a bit heavy at 260 grams and it's on the larger side as far as its dimensions go the buttons.

on the other hand, are tiny and incredibly hard to use when the phone is open which can get annoying when you're adjusting the volume of a video the frame is made of aluminum and the front and back are made of gorilla glass 5. It has ip54 rated protection so in essence it's splashproof and has a water repellent coating. The phone is also military standard 810 compliant which sounds great on paper that however doesn't mean that it's very rugged or that it should be used in extreme conditions.

In fact, i sort of shudder to think about what would happen if particles of sand get stuck between the sliding components in a nutshell you'll seriously have to take care of this phone and you should really apply the plastic screen protectors included in the box other than that we have to mention this phone is gorgeous it comes in aurora gray and illusion sky colorings and the matte finish feels silky it doesn't pick up smudges easily either oh, and while we're on the topic of fingerprints thanks to the fact that the screen is an OLED one there's an under display fingerprint reader that's speedy and reliable on the front this phone is also gorgeous because the bezels on the top and bottom are minimal and the curved edges make the ones on the sides look practically non-existent there's also no hole punch or notch marrying the display because the selfie camera is a hidden pop-up camera the screen is a large 6.8-inch p- OLED which is rarely used by other manufacturers there are great blacks punchy colors and a 1080p resolution sadly there's no hdr10 support here which would have been nice as this is practically a perfect on-the-go Netflix machine brightness isn't chart topping and it got a maximum of 586 nits in auto mode which is much lower than Samsung’s flagships but more than enough for good sunlight legibility color accuracy is good but also not impressive there was a general bluish tint that got better in natural mode but if you want more punchy colors you'll just have to learn to live with it the baby screen i mean the secondary display is a 3.9 inch LG OLED that also has a 1080p resolution the aspect ratio is strange and looks squarish in person but really, it's 27 by 31. this is actually important because while you can open pretty much anything on the second screen the fact that many things aren't scaling correctly for it means that they look blurry and soft and this is even despite the higher pixel density of the smaller display still, it's not a deal breaker contrast colors and brightness were also not too far off from the main screen which is nice there were 446 nits of brightness in max auto mode you won't find a full set of color modes for the small display so you can't really calibrate it which is a shame since it's far from color accurate considering you'll be using the main display for most content though it is forgivable as far as audio is concerned the phone supports Bluetooth 5.1 which is great for external devices but there is a single bottom firing speaker it's a shame for a video watching powerhouse but it is understandable due to the space constraints it got a below average score on our loudness tests and we weren't impressed with the quality mids are good but the voices are muddled at least you can adjust it a little with the equalizer so, an expensive flashy phone must mean an expensive flagship chipset right well, you'd think that but no the phone sports a snapdragon 765g with a 5g modem built in it's not a top-of-the-line flagship which is annoying considering the price of the phone but in terms of real-world usage it's actually, a very clever move not only is it more cost efficient but it's also more space efficient and energy efficient than a snapdragon 865 the lg wing has a 4 000-milliamp hour battery and we assume that this isn't all that much for a phone with two screens and it got 87 hours of endurance on our battery life tests this is decent but you should know that this was without the second screen swiveled out so, in practice it might be even less charging isn't that speedy either with the quick charge 4.0 plus charger we got 39 in half an hour and a full charge in an hour and 40 minutes the phone sports android 10 with a custom lg UX skin on top like you'll find on the lg v60 or the velvet when closed much of the software is similar to those phones the design of the UI elements is an odd mixture of retro and new elements which is not an eyesore but is strange open the phone up and it's a whole other world the main display switches to a special interface lg called swivel home that looks a little like the menus on old portable DVD players the animations are slow and in general it looks retro and i don't mean that in a good way the second display looks more standard but if you look carefully, you'll notice that the only shortcuts for it are apps that are known to work on it for sure if you want to open up anything else on the smaller screen you'll have to go into settings and whitelist, it takes a while to get used to typing on the smaller display but eventually you can get used to it so you can fulfill the phone's destiny of extreme multitasking you should also note that due to how android works if you're watching a video on the main screen and chatting on the smaller display the chat might not be updated if you're not actively interacting with it there is a virtual trackpad that spawns a mouse pointer on the screen and there is also extra camera controls that will allow you to take advantage of a wide host of options actually while we're on the topic the phone has a triple camera setup with a 64 megapixel main sensor with ois a 13-megapixel ultrawide and a second 12 megapixel ultrawide lg is calling this last camera the ultrawide gimbal motion camera and it does exactly what the name implies it shoots video footage with some pretty impressive gimbal capture modes the camera itself is rotated sideways which is why it shoots horizontal video when you're holding the phone vertically lg has long had a focus on their videography much more so than other brands you can shoot videos in 4k with the main camera and the 13 megapixel ultrawide if you wish and there's the option of eis for both of these cameras with the main camera 4k footage is nothing short of flagship worthy details colors and sharpness are great though you can see a bit of noise if you pixel peep the dynamic range isn't class leading but it holds its ground if you zoom in the video is surprisingly good sharpness doesn't take a big hit and overall these videos are perfectly usable if you use the ultrawide snapper footage has plenty of detail natural colors that look similar to those from the main camera and very sharp corners which isn't something that we see on a lot of ultra wides now if you want to take advantage of the wing special gimbal mode you'll have to flip out the second screen then you can use the joystick control to actually pan around much like on a real gimbal and there are a couple of ways you can use this system there's a follow mode that corrects for vertical motion and allows you to track an object which is going up and down but have it centered in the frame there's also a pan follow which is the same thing but with horizontal motion finally, there's a first-person view mode which is intended for when you're moving and want to correct all the tilts and out-of-frame instances that come with it LG has included so many options that it's a little overwhelming going through everything so, video lovers will have a fun time experimenting with this one of course, the phone is also very capable when it comes to stills photos captured with the main camera are outputted at 16 megapixels by default during the day photos look very pleasant they're flagship grade and have excellent levels of resolved detail and sharpness the dynamic range is wide especially with the help of auto hdr and there are good colors though they're not exactly what we would call vibrant if you want to capture two time-zoomed images you should know that since there is no dedicated telephoto they're cropped from the main camera and then upscaled back to 16 megapixels still, they look fairly sharp clean and M had less noise than we expected if you want ultrawide photos you'll be using the regular 13-megapixel ultrawide snapper photos were okay in quality details are soft when you zoom in just like on the lg velvet but the colors are nice and punchy like those from the primary camera of course the dynamic range was no match between the two but that's often the case with ultrawide if you're into taking portraits then you'll have a wide range of modes and effects that you can experiment with the subject separation is not perfect.

but it's still impressive and the quality of the effects are top-notch so we were really pleased with the entire experience when the light got low the main camera continued outputting excellent snaps details are plenty the hdr worked well noise was low and there were some noticeable traces of sharpening in the frame the camera app often triggered night mode and determined a good exposure time for best results night mode shots appear to be a bit sharper but only if you're into pixel peeping other than that they look identical to the photos produced in the regular mode the ultrawide suffers the most in darker conditions but the dynamic range and exposure are quite good for an ultrold camera night mode again doesn't add much to the quality of photos some details appeared a bit sharper but that's about it the normal photos are already quite good as a whole the mechanical parts of this phone are really well executed and the motorized pop-up selfie camera is no different selfie shots were flagship grade with detail plenty pleasing colors and very respectable dynamic range there's no autofocus but the focus plane is deep and you'll have sharp shots in most cases you can also shoot 4k videos with the front camera and if you plan on walking around and vlogging you'll definitely want to take advantage of the stabilization it cuts away a good chunk of the frame but the smoothness of the footage is worth it there is also a dual recording mode this allows you to use the front snapper and the back ultrawide gimbal camera simultaneously you can choose between different compositions like side by side or a small floating window we've seen this feature before on other phones but it's nice to see here especially since the phone is a powerhouse for videography despite

how experimental the LG wing is it has a surprisingly polished user experience yeah, the baby screen is far from perfect and there are some definite challenges to be had but for a first-gen device and a brand new idea this is really well done and it's surprisingly usable there are also some really good innovations in the camera department that we'd love to see on other phones now should you buy it well first it's a little bit difficult to find and second it's a lofty 1000 bucks for that sort of money you can get some really good flagships that have some very good support that said this is not your regular smartphone it's a conversation starter and it's for those that want to risk their money on the experimental side of tech if you're the sort of person that wants an experience that pretty much nobody else has and you really value that then maybe you should consider this for the rest of us though there are too many good options out there for us to take this risk so we're going to hold off and see where LG goes with this before we take the plung