- [Mr. Mobile] This video is sponsored by Qualcomm.
LG is the phone company that tries new things.
It's the company addicted to the ultra wide angle camera.
It offered replaceable batteries
when others has phased them out.
It even made a whole line of phones
for, well basically, for YouTubers.
So I shouldn't be surprised that LG built a phone
that works on weird wizard magic,
but I kinda am, and I kinda think it was a mistake.
(upbeat music)
Of the five or six new smartphones I've seen this month,
the LG G8's design is the most forgettable.
I had similar criticisms about the Galaxy S10
and the latest round of iPhones,
but Samsung and Apple started from a better
fit and finish to begin with.
The G8 just continues a trend LG started with the G7.
Big notch, chin, wide radius corners.
It's a 2018 phone for 2019.
That is until you fire up its new feature.
Alongside the front-facing camera
is a time of flight sensor array called the Z camera
and it's very good at discerning how far away something is.
Now, if you think that should make
for better portrait selfies, you're right.
But another way cooler thing it can do
is scan your veins.
See, the hemoglobin in your blood reflects infrared light.
So when the Z camera shines its IR beacon at your palm,
it can recognize the way your veins are laid out
and use that to authenticate you.
LG calls it Hand ID, and if you think it looks like
a weird way to interact with your phone,
well tell 'em, Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
♪ You ain't seen nothin' yet ♪
See, as you may have figured out,
if the Z camera can see your blood,
it can also see your hand very well.
So LG came up with a way to use your phone
without touching it called Air Motion.
You can launch an app, skip a song, or change the volume
entirely with hand gestures.
Before I talk about the several ways
this really doesn't work, I want to say
that I was using a pre-production phone,
so it probably will improve before release.
And also, I do appreciate LG
actually trying to solve a problem here.
You've been there, shaving or washing dishes,
you want to change the volume or skip a song
without getting your phone wet,
and Hand ID addresses one of the biggest criticisms
of rear-mounted fingerprint sensors,
like to one on the G8.
They're useless when the phone is on a table.
So kudos to LG for trying something new.
But even the greatest idea loses its luster
when the execution is this
awkward.
First of all, Hand ID needs your palm to be
specifically placed.
And the steering cues it gives you to line you up,
well, they're usually blocked by your hand.
The Air Motion interface is better
because it's at the top of the screen.
You hold your hand over the Z Camera,
wait for the little bar to pop up
and then you kind of scoop up a fistful
of invisible spaghetti to call up the menu.
The UI is pretty cool.
You get this graphical representation
of how your phone sees your hand
and it is super fun to twist an invisible knob in mid-air
to change the volume on a YouTube video.
People say a lot of things remind them of Minority Report,
but this is as close as I've ever gotten.
But it's finicky.
You get stuck in the volume mode
when you want it to pause.
Or it loses sight of your hand.
Or you turn it one way and sometimes the volume
goes the other.
Sometimes it doesn't even activate
until the third or fourth time you try the pasta pull.
Yeah, practice makes perfect,
but you shouldn't have to do this much work.
I'm almost like 30% proficient.
(cackling)
Samsung's Galaxy S4 had a similar feature back in 2013.
You could scroll websites, slide photos,
accept calls with gestures.
It was much faster, it was much simpler.
And you know what?
I still never used it because it's a gimmick.
Folks, just touch the screen.
If you get shaving cream on if, so what?
It's waterproof.
All right, let's use that as a segway to the good stuff
before we wrap it up.
Making the G8 more waterproof was LGs stated intention
for removing the earphone.
See, there's no grill up there.
Instead, there's a piece of electric actuator
that vibrates the whole OLED panel
so the display serves as the speaker.
Outside in city noise and wind,
I could still hear callers clearly, even on speakerphone.
Also, the boombox feature I liked from the G7
has been retained.
So you put the phone on a hard surface
and it will be louder than most.
The display is beautiful and very bright
under its Gorilla Glass 5 cover.
While Gorilla Glass 6 on the back means
you can charge wirelessly.
The rest of the spec sheet from the silicon
to the wireless charging to the battery size
is in line with what you'd expect.
And if you've been following LG phones,
you will also expect the bonus for the headphone jack
and hi-fi quad deck.
Go ahead and celebrate, audio gang.
For more optically focused folks,
the standard LG duo of wide and ultra wide cameras
is accounted for, too.
In the past, that ultra wide camera alone
would have me jazzed to spend a week with the latest LG.
But now, Huawei, Asus and Samsung are doing it, too,
and bringing more features to boot.
When you see the competition also bringing
the same or better specs and universally,
if only slightly more interesting designs,
all the G8 has to help it standout at first glance
are two gimmicks that U can't see myself ever using.
So I think the G8 will need a competitive price point
to stand out in 2019, but exact pricing and availability
remain TBD.
Subscribe to The Mr. Mobile on YouTube
so you don't miss my full review when it lands, folks.
And if you want to hear about the 5G LG phone
I wasn't even allowed to photograph,
stay tuned after a word from my sponsor.
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So 5G fans, that 5G phone I teased is the LG V50
and it's basically a bigger G8 with a third camera,
round pack and a larger display, larger battery,
and big vapor chamber to cool that 5G radio.
This would seem to be the phone teased last summer
as an exclusive to Sprint, at least at first.
Looks like we should expect it sometime
in the first half of the year.
Let me know in the comments what you think
about LGs latest offerings.
I'd love to hear from fans and skeptics alike.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.
(upbeat music)