It’s easy to see what makes the G Flex stand out. It’s the first curved-screen smartphone available in the U.S., and it flexes. It can be bent flat up to 180 degrees for a limited period of time.
The curved 6-inch phablet, launched early this year in the U.S., follows the contours of the human face, reducing the distance between a user’s mouth to the microphone to improve voice and sound quality. The curved shape is said to increase the sound level of a user’s voice by 3dB compared with flat smartphones.
LG also promotes the curved plastic OLED (P-OLED) display as offering “a more reassuring grip” and a fit that is more comfortable in a user’s back pocket. In landscape mode, the display is promoted as offering an “IMAX-like experience” and providing a more comfortable viewing angle for watching videos or playing games.
The LG-made P-OLED display was developed and mass produced specifically for smartphones. The display and curved OLED panel use plastic substrates instead of glass, giving LG G Flex its shape and durability. The P-OLED display also sports high brightness and improved color accuracy thanks to Real RGB technology, which contains all three red, green and blue sub pixels in one pixel.
The battery, also developed by LG, features the world’s first curved battery technology.
The Android 4.2.2 device also comes with a user interface designed to take advantage of the curved form factor.