LG G Flex Listed Online for Rs 69,490: Is It Really Worth That Much Money?

By Prarthito

| Published: Tuesday, February 4, 2014, 16:29 [IST]

LG latest offering in the already crowded smartphone market is the new G Flex handset. This, without any real doubt, has to be one of the biggest ventures the company has ever taken in a bid to claim a place in the hotly contested smartphone market that has a number of big names such as Apple and Samsung.

And while the international market for the same has seen a rapid rise in just a year with the amount of new smart devices that are making way into it almost everyday, the Indian domestic market, in recent times, has also been bombarded with a number of new manufacturers such as Micromax and Karbonn - apart from the regular Samsung and Apple.

LG G Flex Listed Online for Rs 69,490: Is It Really Worth That Much?

The one biggest rule pertaining to the Indian domestic market involves the price of a device. It is to be said that customers look for a device that will look to offer them the maximum features at the lowest price possible. Users basically look for a device that will help them carry out their day to day operations which involves a decent camera specification, the ability to store songs and images, and importantly, 24/7 access to Facebook.

But then again, the price remains to be big factor.

Heading back to LG's newest entry into the market, it needs to be said that while the device is the first of its kind by offering a Curved Plastic OLED display from LG Display - which has Real RGB sub-pixels for better colors with the display vertically concave from top to bottom with a radius of 700mm - the device's massive price tag might prove disastrous to its overall financial expectations.

A device sporting a curved display may have released just now, but both LG and Samsung have teased curved displays for years now at innumerable trade shows. The new G Flex, while being almost as big as Nokia's massive Lumia 1520, may offer comfort while using the device due to its curved nature, but the inclusion of a volume rocker and power buttons on the backside may not be something fans will be much interested in - and that's a huge blow considering you invest about 70k on the device.

Next is line is the "P" in the device's P-OLED offering. The "P" here stands for Polymer - or in simpler words, plastic. Now for a device that's around 70k, offering plastic on the body of the device is a whole lot less than what fans expect and deserve. And due to this plastic layout, automatically, the pixel count also goes down. What this means is that even though the G Flex has a large enough screen, the pixel amount is only stuck to 245 pixels-per-inch (ppi), which is quite low for a device with that big a screen.

Interestingly enough, for all those music buffs out there, the device just supports a single speaker hole. So expect the output to be a bit strained. And while the speaker will be enough for conducting video calls or putting the phone on speaker, using it as an amplifier might not be that good an idea.

Lastly, for a device worth so much, the least you can expect is the latest version of Android - at least Android Jelly Bean v4.3 (if not the new KitKat). Sadly enough, the device runs on a somewhat skinned Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. And there's no saying as to when the device might receive a new update for an upgraded operating system.

The LG G Flex, currently listed online for Rs 69,490, might look good on papers, but as far as user experience is concerned, we are guessing that most of the customers, provided they have access to that kind of money, will easily shift to devices such as Nexus 5 (whose 5-megapixel shooter is better compared to the new LG device that's offering a 13-megapixel camera) and get the latest version of Android.

We are even expecting a potential price cut from LG for the device in the future to at least reach near the expected sales figure the company has chalked out for the device.