Does the LG G8X Software SUCK? By C4ETech

Hey guys ash here from c4e tech. A few years back, I used and reviewed pretty much every lg flagship, available g series check g pro. Remember the pro check the flex, the v series, but then in recent times lg has been pricing themselves out of reach, and they've also been launching pretty late in India. Sometimes they miss out entirely on Indian launches, so the interest in lg phones, it's kind of waned amongst the public, and so I've not really covered a lot of lg phones. In the recent past, lg, though, has turned a lot of heads uh with the big billion days, sale uh, the g8x. It's been priced insanely me.

Personally, though, I am one of the sorry few who ended up buying this phone before the big billion-day sale, and it's not like I bought it a year back. I bought it one month before the big billion-day sale, so I paid 52 000 rupees for a phone. That's currently uh being sold at 22. Even by scalpers, it's been it's being sold at 25, so I could have literally bought two okay. I'm not going to go on that rant because that could be a sad story.

I can talk about it all night, any which ways now uh I've gotten a chance to spend a considerable amount of time with this phone, because I've been I've had it with me for over a month, I've used it as my primary for about a couple of weeks, so the big question I had going in was: does the software suck, because the last time I used lg, the software I wasn't, a big fan of the hardware has always been decent. The software was a little all over the place, so does the software still suck or have they actually changed? Things around? I mean turn things around well. That is what we're going to talk about in today's video. So first impressions lg seem to have come a long way gone are the cartoonish icons and wallpapers. Now, let's jump into settings and yet that segmented settings menu that's gone as well.

I'm happy about that. In fact, the lg g8x that's being sold in India for the big billion-day sale. It actually comes with android 10 on board, as well as the latest security patch for September 2020. Now, of course, that is the question of updates, and I'm hoping that lg would give the g8x at least the android 11 updates, especially now that they've managed to sell so many units here in India it did launch with android nine. It's got an android 10, so 11 for a phone that launched as a flagship.

It seems sensible, but beyond that, though highly doubt it as even uh, even for flagships that end up selling only at flagship prices, most OEMs only end up offering uh two android version upgrades the lg g8x, like I said it's already received a 10. , not 10, updates, android, 10, sorry, bad joke anyways. Coming back to the software experience, lg has actually stepped up their game. There are a lot of cool features involving that secondary display. So let me go through a few of my favorites here.

If you've not actually gotten your hands on lg g8x now, unlike say the Microsoft deal or any other dual screen phone, this is not a dual screen phone. What you get is a case with the second screen, so you can actually plug the phone in and boom you've got two screens now. I actually think this is such a nice feature that maybe other brands could actually sell a second screen case. Think about it for a minute, a Galaxy Note 20 with a second screen case. That's also built out of plastic.

Wouldn't that be um. Okay, you know what note 20 ultra with a second case a second screen case. Wouldn't that be something you'd want to use, and maybe there they'll have a problem with s pen usage but say, for example, the s20 or an iPhone having a second screen case might actually be something other brands can also adopt, because it was very useful in my time with it. Now, of course, we can turn off the dual screen, because it's only a 4000mah battery life is okay. Talking about battery a lot of you guys have been looking for fast chargers for your device, because this festive edition phone does not come with one in the box, so basically any 18 watt fast charger should be good enough.

Uh, that being said, the g8x can charge it up to 21 watts, reportedly so for maximum charging speed. I recommend going with the 27 watt sonic charger from Xiaomi. Oh, and there is support for wireless charging as well any reputed wireless charger, or rather any wireless charger for the matter. Anything uh that supports the QI standard should do the trick. I have left a link to a few in the description below so use them.

If you find it helpful. Okay, back to software, we get the option to swap the main and auxiliary screen. We can also set a certain app to open up whenever we flip open the phone. So if you have any certain priorities, you can preset it and every time you open your phone, that is what you're going to be seeing now. All of this is controlled by this floating button, and we can even change the positioning of that as well.

Of course, there is the three finger swipe, which was super intuitive swiping with three fingers on any app will swap it over to the other screen, and this was not a limited feature. It literally worked with 99 of the apps, sometimes with certain apps, where the camera is involved. It wouldn't work, but most of the time it worked, and it was very intuitive. I actually liked using it now. Most of the special software features here are centered around that dual screen.

Of course, it has a ton of productivity functions with some apps, like chrome, even supporting a white tablet mode. Now these modes are restricted to certain apps that have been already programmed to take advantage of the second screen for other apps, though we can, of course, multitask so play any video. You want, I'm just leaving it at that on. One screen take notes on the other, there's even support for split screen if you'd want to take multitasking to that next new level, or you could like me, put a boring meeting a hangout called a Zoom call on the second screen. Well, we have one screen free to message, friends and maybe even play a game of amongst us speaking of gaming.

That brings us to this. Yes, we can use the lg g8 x like this, with the secondary screen, acting as a game pad. There are a few pre-made game pads to choose from, so basically there's one that mimics a console one. That's like a joystick one for arcade and fighting style games and, finally, a driving wheel. That's set up for games like asphalt.

We can also create a custom game pad, like we've done here, for Call of Duty uh. Now one more thing that I love is. I can see the screen exactly at any angle. It is doesn't lock to a few preset angles. You set it at any angle.

You want and it stays there. So we can play the game at whatever angle is very comfortable for us and last but not least, lg lets us swap screen so that we can have the game pad on the other screen uh. If we actually want to do that, and there's also the option to turn haptic feedback on and off. Personally I like leaving it on, but hey you have a choice. I was also impressed with lg's game launcher that offers quite a few options, including letting us stream right from the app itself.

We can also bring up this in-game menu that lets us do things like disable alerts, turn surround sound on and off, adjust the frame rate and graphic quality and, of course, take a screenshot there's one more feature in here: that's called: take a break which dims the screen so that we can conserve battery life when we are AFK or AFS. You know away from screening your screen. I don't know whatever it is as long as you're away from your phone. You know you can conserve battery life. It is a cool feature to have honestly with all these gaming features on board.

I think the lg g8x could have been a really great gaming phone. After all, we do have Qualcomm snapdragon, 855 chips, six gigs of ram and even dual stereo speakers, and yes, they do sound great. I just wish lg had thought of maybe putting in a 90hz OLED panel here, but hey for 22 hertz. That's asking way too much, and this is one of the very few phones that still retain a headphone jack and not just retain a headphone jack they've got a quad DAC. So from an audio perspective, this has probably the best audio output possible.

So if you're someone who likes listening to high fidelity music but don't want to invest in a DAP, then this is gonna, be your best uh jack of all trades. Now a lot of you had been post, posing a few questions about the cameras, uh. Well, the pictures. They are good if you're gonna look at it as a. How good are these pictures for 22 000 rupees, I'm going to say they are excellent, they're best in class, but if you're gonna look at it as a flagship phone or a last year, flagship uh, do they compete with the s10? Do they compete with the note 10? Then they don't really measure up.

I mean they're they're good, but they're, not just there uh anyway. The camera does have a few tricks here, for example, the tilt screen mode, basically mirrors the camera viewfinder and shadow button on the secondary display. Now, lg pitches, this uh kind of like the swivel feature on the ASUS before 6, where we can bend the phone with the primary cameras on the back and manage to take shots from cool new angles. We can also fold it all the way and use it for selfies. If you want to show someone on the other side, have your selfies look? No.

I have no idea why you would want to do that or why somebody would want to take a look at your selfies while you were shooting them, but hey again, if you want it, the option is there. The much more useful option is where we can half-fold the secondary display and then use it as a giant flash or reflector, while taking selfies in the dark tapping on the flash button twice activates this feature. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of selfies in the dark, but I'm guessing. If you need to do it, then this is going to be. This is going to be coming in handy, especially since we even get a slider that lets us play around with the color tone.

The color temperature of the flash and when it comes to viewing those pictures, the stock gallery app, can make use of both screens. So we have the picture grid on one side and the full screen view of uh said snap on the other. Now generally, as soon as I get a phone, I swap keyboards, I move on to swift key, sometimes board. If I'm going to be narcissistic enough to wanna. You know post my own gives, which, admittedly, sometimes I am then board has tenor and tenor has my gives.

So I end up switching to cheaper times, but here lg's keyboard it had some special features built in that made me stick to it, the first being this button that lets us easily take a screenshot of the second screen. It's very handy. By the way, there is a dedicated button for it on the notification shade as well, but I find the keyboard shortcut much more convenient than there's this second button that in certain apps transforms the entire second screen into a keyboard. We can then prop it up and use it just like a laptop or if you are a thumb typist, you can even go ahead, split the keyboard into two, and that would make things easier for you now speaking of laptop mode. We have a tent mode here.

Yes, the hinge is strong enough, or at least lg thinks it's strong enough that we can set it at any angle, so we can put it up like a tent change, the orientation of the second screen, and now we can actually be doing something on one screen and stream, the ill to other people who are watching on the other screen. I mean not that you probably shouldn't watch the ill this year. It's all fixed, okay, I'm just being sour grapes. Okay, I'm so sorry I got distracted talking about the ill makes me super, super sad, any which ways uh now coming back. We can also choose what happens when we flip the secondary screen all the way back.

Sometimes I find it. I find it's more convenient to text that way, so I've selected to turn it off. We can also control the monochrome glance screen up top and yes, if you haven't noticed it yet, the g8x actually gets three screens, or rather the case, gets two screens and zero one uh. Now one of the features that I've always loved with lg devices is their double tap to wake or lock implementation. Lg calls it knock knock, but a tap works, just fine as well.

So what are my overall impressions about the lg ux9? Well guys I came in um, I came in expecting it to honestly suck okay, but it has evolved quite a bit. This is what I was most wary of when I bought this phone uh it is. It is chock-full of features right now, but they aren't overwhelming uh or in your face the UI seems to have taken some design cues from Samsung's one UI, and frankly I like how it looks and functions now the shape of those app icons. They mean they need a refresh. They do, but overall guys.

I honestly am quite impressed with what lg has done here so to answer. The initial question: does lg's UI suck? No, it is actually quite good. I just wish they'd polish the aesthetics a bit anyway. That's all from my side time for you to. Let me know what you think about the g8x and its software like.

Do you love it? Do you hate it or do you have more complex emotions about it? Let me know in the comments below and also as always, share subscribe and all that and now turn on notifications by hitting that bell icon. If you haven't yet thanks a lot for watching till next time, my name is ash. You've been watching c4 retch, and I'm signing off. For now. You guys have a great day bye.

Source : C4ETech