The LG G Flex, one of the first curved smartphones along with the Samsung Galaxy Round, is now available in the U.S. Although the curved screen has real visual benefits, the display has an inherent fuzziness that impacts image quality.
Flexible OLED display technology makes the G Flex's eye-catching curved design possible.
The curved design aside, the LG G Flex's biggest problem is overall display quality. The screen has a noticeable graininess that's distracting when there's any movement on the screen, a serious problem for watching video.
The curved design feels better in the hand for actual phone calls since the phone better matches the contours of a face.
LG suggests the curved G Flex sits well in a back pocket, but its immense size as a "phablet" makes this a non-starter.
The G Flex has a durable design that can withstand being "flattened" if you push down on it while it's face-down.
Although LG says the coating on the back of the phone is scratch resistant, anything more than a light ding will result in a permanent mark.
Phone receivers have been curved for a long time, so the G Flex is arguably more a natural design for any voice-powered activity.
Like the LG G2 flagship phone, the back of the phone has the camera as well as buttons for volume and power.
The left side has the SIM card slot.
With volume and power controls on the back, the right side of the phone is bare.
Only a microphone port is visible on the top.
The bottom has the microUSB charging port, another microphone port and the headphone jack.
As a "phablet," the LG G Flex is often difficult to operate with one hand, so LG gives you the option to have the keyboard and onscreen buttons shift to one side or the other.
Like the keyboard, the dial pad can shift, too.
As the first phone with a curved screen to go on sale in the U.S., the LG G Flex commands attention. It screams, both as an object and as a new kind of device, "Hey, look at me!" Once you do, the implied follow-up is, "Do you like what you see?"
Uh, kinda? I've spent a lot of time with many different smartphones over the past few years, and never once have I thought, "You know what this phone needs? A curved screen."
I have, however, occasionally longed for a bendable phone that I could fold up into a sugar-cube-size device. That would truly be amazing (not to mention useful) and curved phones are a stepping stone toward that magical future. Some variation of that vision is probably why LG reportedly spent years designing the device.
That's not to say there's no benefit to giving your smartphone a little twist. A curved screen can bestow a visual benefit to what you're looking at by cutting down reflections. It's also arguably more ergonomic, better matching the irregular contours of the human body. And sure — it's pretty cool.

The LG G Flex isn't just a curved screen, though. It's a complete, finished product and must be judged as a smartphone in its entirety. The screen, in addition to being curved, is huge: a 6-inch OLED display with 1,280 x 720 resolution. It surprising that LG didn't opt for a full HD display for its first foray into curved phones. If that were the only disappointment, the G Flex would be in good shape, but sadly it's not.
I'd played around with the Korean version of the G Flex last fall, but that was only for a few days and I was basically just looking at the curve and what it does for you. This time around, I was reviewing the T-Mobile version of the phone (no money down with 24 monthly payments of $28), examining it as a day-to-day smartphone.
Shortly after I'd first turned the G Flex on, I noticed something: The screen looked strangely grainy. It was particularly bad on bright backgrounds, introducing a slightly rough paper-like quality to everything on the display.
I checked to make sure I had removed all the sticky plastic adhesive, and I had. This, unbelievably, is how the screen was designed to look. It's particularly noticeable — and irritating — when anything on the screen moves, like when you scroll or, i don't know, in every video ever made.
This is beyond crazy. It's incomprehensible, particularly because LG reportedly collaborated with LG Display — a separate company that's in the business of building displays of all types and sizes — to create this phone. They're supposed to be the experts.
The screen quality problem immediately transforms the G Flex from promising oddball to complete fail. A smartphone, particularly one with a big screen, is a person's primary window into their digital life. Screen quality is quite possibly the most important aspect of any phone or tablet, right up there with touchscreen response. To create a smartphone display that's fuzzy by default is like building a car with flat tires.
There's a semi-effective workaround for the screen problem, but your battery isn't going to like it. If you turn up the display brightness to the max, the grain fades to the point where it's barely noticeable. Hardly a "fix," but it'll get you by.
Putting aside the screen quality, the G Flex's curve actually does improve your visual experience. As display experts have pointed out, the curve does reduce the effect of reflections and the resulting glare. Especially if you're in a well-lit room or the bright outdoors, the G Flex display has noticeably less glare than watching on a non-curved phone.
I saw the effect as I watched Joss Whedon's Serenity on Netflix. The scene where Summer Glau's River Tam tears apart an interplanetary cantina is on the darker side, and the G Flex picked up a lot less of the bright, fluorescent lights in the Mashable office than I could see on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 I used to compare a "flat" experience.
Of course, changing your position can usually reduce glare effects on flat phones, but with the G Flex you'll be saved that inconvenience.
LG claims the curved screen bestows a couple of ergonomic benefits as well. First, the curve better matches your face when you use the G Flex as an actual phone. No dispute there — after all, traditional landline phone receivers have always been curved. The benefits are unquantifiable (and having the microphone marginally closer to your mouth has virtually no effect), but holding a curved phone to your face just feels "right."
Second, the curve makes the G Flex more suited for holding in certain pockets — namely, the rear ones. LG even suggests this. However, slipping the G Flex into your back pocket is ludicrous in practice. Not only does it fly in the face of years-ago-established norms of smartphone carrying, but the phone is so physically enormous it peeks out the top of all but the roomiest pockets, amplifying the danger of it slipping out.
At least, if you do opt for the backpocket solution, the phone is durable enough to endure the crushing power of your derrière. LG built the G Flex to take punishment: If you place the phone face down on a tabletop and push it down the "flatten" it, the phone will bounce back into its curved shape as soon as you let you, with not a scratch, crack or blemish on it. It ain't called the Flex for nothing.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

On top of that, LG coated the back of the phone with a resin that's more or less immune to scratches, or so the company claims. In reality, anything more than the most casual of scrapes (think keys rattling in your pocket) will still leave a permanent scar, so don't think your fancy new curved phone is Wolverine.
As a smartphone — which is to say, the device that brings you digital experiences — the G Flex has some serious hardware chops. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor ensures you're not waiting any longer than necessary for Netflix movies to load, Evernote notebooks to sync, or Angry Birds to go flying into teetering barriers.
As nimble as the G Flex is, it suffers in one department that its competitors do noticeably better: voice commands. LG's Voice Mate takes a few seconds to launch whereas Apple's Siri and Samsung's S Voice start listening immediately. The results aren't nearly as good, either; for example, the service relies on Maluuba for its restaurant results, which introduces yet another delay, and the resulting list of venues doesn't have as many options, such as one-tap calling. Voice Mate simply isn't as fast or as integrated as its competitors — there's lots of room for improvement here.
I reviewed T-Mobile's version of the LG G Flex, and as an example of the carrier's relatively new LTE network, there's room for improvement there, too. I never got more than 10 megabits per second download speed, which is possibly worse than even T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. By comparison, a Verizon LTE iPhone tested in the same area (New York City's Flatiron district) got about 40 Mbps. Call quality was fine.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile is one of the worst offenders for bloatware on Android phones: Out of the box, the G Flex has no fewer than five T-Mobile-branded apps, and it annoyingly puts them both in your app list and on the home screen. They're easy enough to remove and banish to a folder somewhere, but you can't delete them.
The G Flex's camera leaves a lot to be desired, although it's easier to operate than other phone cameras. As a large-screen phone, it's inherently unwieldy, but the curve actually helps a smidge in keeping the device balanced while holding it in landscape mode in one hand.
The 13-megapixel camera in back captures passable photos. Don't expect great color or razor sharpness or even a pleasing UI. Everything was pretty much average — indoor pics get hazy the moment you zoom in on anything, action shots are almost always blurry, and colors don't pop, not even on external displays. In short, it's a cellphone camera.
The LG G Flex is more than a smartphone. It's an ambassador. It's come to convince us, the smartphone-buying public, that curved phones deserve a place on our shortlist when it comes time to get a new phone. Beyond that, it's here to open negotiations for curved screens to have a seat at the table in consumer technology.
In that role, the G Flex may have done a worse job than if it never showed up at all. The grainy screen, hard-to-handle size (half-heartedly mitigated by some settings adjustments) and so-so extras make for a pretty lousy experience as smartphones go today. If the LG G Flex is the best curved smartphones can do, they're destined to be a curious cellphone sub-species rather than the future of mobile.
What's Good
Holy cow! It's curved!
Less reflections and glare
Durable design
What's Bad
Very poor display quality
Hard to operate in one hand
Mediocre camera
Bottom Line
While its curved screen is more than just a gimmick, the LG G Flex misses on other features and falls down completely when it comes to display quality.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

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