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LG G2 mini Review

Price
Euro160

LG G2 mini Review

LG G2 mini Review

Introduction

The LG G2 Mini is a somewhat smaller version of G2 with reduced specs. The design and materials are almost identical to the G Pro 2, however, there is removable battery. LG is following the trend set by Samsung with its S3 and S4 mini versions that have also been adopted by HTC as they released One mini. The LG G2 Mini keeps the general shape of the flagship along with the signature keys on the back. On the opposite side, it sports a 4.7” 540x960 pixels display, a basic Snapdragon 400 processor, and an 8 MP camera. But, the good news is that the LG G2 Mini runs on Android 4.4 KitKat whereas the G2 is still stuck on Jelly Bean for now, though the company has put its own skin over the top.

Unboxing The LG G2 Mini

The retail package of the LG G2 Mini contains nothing but the basics only. When you unbox the phone, you will find following items:

  • The LG G2 Mini
  • In-Ear Stereo Headphones
  • Wall Charger
  • MicroUSB Cable
  • User Manual and Guarantee Card

Design

There is a general resemblance in the shape and chassis design between the G2 and the G2 Mini, however, when inspecting closely, you can notice that Mini looks less refined with the wider side bezels and lower quality of plastic feel. Plus, it is thicker as well. However, the LG G2 Mini is quite comfortable to operate even with one hand, the only problem arises with its keys on the back that are awkward to use with this placement. The LG G2 Mini has a removable back cover allowing you to easily swap the battery, or add more storage via a microSD slot.

Thanks to the coarse pattern on the back to prevent the phone from slipping, the phone is pretty comfortable to hold. The power or lock key on the back as well as the volume rocker are very oddly placed making it somewhat clumsy to use them. Rather than placing the rear buttons right under the index finger, they have been placed in such a way that you need to bend the digit significantly, and search for the lock key each time. The volume rocker, on the other hand, is not flush with the surface, rather it protrudes slightly at the ends so it is easy to feel and press it without even looking. The back keys feel tight and sturdy, with a nice clicky feedback to them.

There are two elliptic openings at the bottom of the LG G2 Mini that are covered with speaker grill and the microphone. An infrared beamer is also present at the top that can be used to control TV or other home electronics via the accompanying application.

Display

Except pixel density that leaves something to be desired, the other characteristics of the IPS LCD panel are good enough. The 4.7” panel sports 540 x 960 pixels of resolution which gives 234ppi pixel density. Though, this is acceptable for general usage but those of us spoiled by 720p or 1080p display will likely to notice the difference in detail presentation.

The interface elements with its individual pixels visible enough may look cruder. For a phone with this price tag, we would like to see an HD 720p display with respectable 330ppi. But here, you can notice that screen colors are somewhat off in the red and light blue departments. Nevertheless, it is quite acceptable considering the price tag.

Talking about the display brightness, we can rate it being average, though the screen would not be much visible under sun light. The good news is that being an IPS-LCD screen, the G2 Mini display sports very good viewing angles from all sides.

Interface And Functionality

The LG G2 Mini runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat which is LG’s own deeply customized launcher dubbed Optimus User Interface. With LG G2 Mini, the company enabled more than skin deep customization that includes themes, icon sets and several other effects. Since, it runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat, the phone naturally is coated with the newest Optimus UI overlay of LG that gives you lots of options to choose from. For example QMemo functionality that lets you doodle on any homescreen with your finger, QSilde floating apps set that can hover a calculator or a video player on top of everything else you are doing.

There is also a double tap to wake functionality as well that lets you lock the screen with two taps on an empty space on the homescreen. Apart from that, LG’s newfangled Knock Code is here for security oriented that allows you create a combination of up to 8 taps in each quadrant of a frame drawn on the lock screen. The Knock Code execution itself is pretty straightforward, and it didn't fail once on us, even if you don't tap right smack in the corners each time, you just have to hit the respective quadrant.

Processor & Memory

The LG G2 Mini comes with the basic Snapdragon 400 CPU which is adequate enough for Android’s needs, however, the LTE version of the Mini gets somewhat funky with an exotic Teqra 4i chipset. It also sports Adreno 305 graphics crunching unit with 1.2 GHz quad-core processor which gives satisfactorily performance. There is no chopping movements and annoying lags in interface behavior, though it is not butter smooth as well.

The phone is shipped with 1 GB of RAM which is adequate enough to keep few apps in memory at the same time. Internal storage is 8 GB out of which 4 GB is user-available. There is an option to expand memory through microSD card slot, so no worries.

Internet & Connectivity

Now, let’s talk about the internet and connectivity features of LG G2 Mini. The LG G2 Mini comes with a plethora of connectivity options such as quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global roaming, dual-band 3G with HSPA and a dual-band 4G LTE for fast mobile Internet. The Mini offers a version with 4G LTE connectivity or up to 21 Mbps HSPA+ download speed, provided if the carrier can supply those.

The LTE version is very interesting because it sports a Tegra 4i Grey chipset which essentially upgrade the G2 Mini for LTE markets. The handset offers the usual set of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, DLNA and NFC connectivity. Furthermore, there is an IR blaster also included that can be conveniently handled by the supplied QRemote app, which has a number of TV and set-top box brands and model presets in it. QRemote can be tucked handily in the status bar. Alternatively, you can have it on the lock screen too for quicker access to its commands.

The LG G2 Mini comes with the default LG browser and the only complaint we have towards the browser has nothing to do with the performance of the browser rather it is the pixel density of the handset that creates minor annoyance. The web browser works well when it comes to scrolling, panning and zooming. Though, the text looks somewhat distorted when zoomed out, and a bit pointed when zoomed in.

Camera

The LG G2 Mini comes with a decent 8 megapixel camera that is present on the back of the handset with an LED flash next to it. The camera is able to take photos with a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 and 1080p videos at 30fps. The interface is governed by the customary Optimus UI camera interface and gives you a typical set of options to play with. The camera app lets you say things like “Whisky” or “Cheese” to take a picture from far away. The camera app includes options such as Panorama, Time Catch, Dynamic Tone (HDR) and night scenes, plus a few color effects thrown in for a good measure.

The focusing process is really fast, it takes only a second or two to focus and camera can also take pictures in adequate lighting. However, if you choose HDR mode, it takes 4-5 seconds to finish the process during which you need to keep the phone very still to avoid blur pictures. Volume rocker button can be used as shutter key.

The picture quality is fine but the LG G2 Mini produces photos with a little more intense colors than they actually are, but nevertheless they still look pleasant. The photos appear somewhat underexposed resulting in a slightly dark photos, but this should not be much of a worry because it gets better when you shoot in HDR mode. On the whole, the quality of photos taken with the LG G2 Mini is quite satisfactory, though, the level of detail is somewhat lacking if you compare with other 8 MP cameras.

When taking indoor pictures, the camera does perform in the same way, that is, captures slightly underexposed photos. Furthermore, when you shoot in lower light, noise gets quite more visible, and photos appear to be somewhat soft lacking enough details. On the other hand, the LED flash performs an excellent job in illuminating the scene from standard five feet distance, spattering the light in the center of the frame, and blotting out the edges.

The LG G2 Mini is capable of 1080p videos recording at 30fps. There's also a 720p shooting mode, but it too is at 30fps. Sadly, the G2 Mini is unable to shoot slow-motion videos. Moving objects smudge a bit too much, though, and the footage is overly soft and dark. For outdoor shooting, it does what it says on the tin, without skipped framing or visible artifacts.

Multimedia

The multimedia features of the LG G2 Mini is just adequate enough for a mobile phone with this price tag. The Optimus UI Gallery comes with a standard thumbnail grid view that can be pinched to zoom in and out. Furthermore, plenty of rich editing features are also included as built-in features such as color effects and drawing capabilities.

The music player is jam-packed with loads of useful features and also supports an extensive range of file formats, for example, .FLAC, and .WAV. The music player is also capable of taking you to YouTube video of the current song with just a touch of a button. Video playback is impressive, expressly bearing in mind that it's proficient in playing almost any file easily - including the more obscure DivX and AC3 codecs. .MOV files were the only video format that the G2 Mini refused to open.

Audio output is also quite impressive. Its volume levels should be suffice for the majority of users. Plugging-in headphones creates some degradation but it is barely noticeable.

Call Quality

The call quality of the LG G2 Mini is quite sketchy in the earpiece and this is one of the biggest weak points in the LG G2 Mini. The earpiece of the G2 Mini sounds fairly bad on all counts. It is not adequately strong for noisy places, sounds echoing, and the voices even at lower volumes come out distorted. On the other hand, we had a little better experience with the single microphone where our voice is quite audible to the other side, but it does lack in clarity and strength.

Battery Life

The LG G2 Mini comes with a fairly generous 2440 mAh battery that LG claims as the largest in its class and we are inclined to agree with it. The battery gives phone endurance rating of 76 hours that is considered to be the best score for any mid-range phone. This suggests that you can easily get two days of 1 hour web browsing, video playback and 3G talk each in a single charge.

Should I Buy The LG G2 Mini?

With the LG G2 Mini, the company managed to make an appealing midrange proposition that share lots of DNA with a great smartphone. But, the phone lacks in many important counts such as chubby body, sketchy call quality, poor screen resolution and average camera performance. Although, these weak spots are masked by its visual resemblance to the flagship.

On a positive note, the quad-core Snapdragon 400 does a pretty good job on 1GB of RAM, which suggests that any more screen resolution would have put too much strain on it resulting in compromised HD performance. Furthermore, the interface responds quite well without any delay or lag. Above all, there's a lot going on in the G2 mini's custom-made Optimus UI that sits on top of Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

On the software side, the LG G2 Mini has adopted many software features from the LG G2. These include the cool Knock Code, double-tap-to-wake gesture, QSlide apps, QRemote, a single-handed keyboard and other user interface customizations.

In this price range you can get many phones that are much better. The G2 Mini has to vie not only against last year's “mini” versions of the brand name flagships, but possibly with an S5 mini or a One (M8) mini.