Ready for the latest audio innovations? The G7 ThinQ™ is built for bass! Its large speaker size and amazing sound levels mean you can listen to loud, electrifying music—while taking your beats to go. Along with our amazing audio, the G7 ThinQ™also features a 6.1-inch QHD+ FullVision Display, which makes it possible for your screen to showcase all of the amazing video content out there—complete with incredible brightness, contrast, and a whole spectrum of vibrant color. But that’s just the beginning.
LG’s smartphone division needs a hit, and it put most of its eggs in one basket with the LG G7 ThinQ, which goes on sale today starting at $750 from Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.
The LG G7 is the successor to last year’s LG G6 and the second smartphone to bear LG’s “ThinQ” branding, which was previously reserved for the South Korean company’s lineup of smart speakers, connected appliances, and autonomous vacuum cleaners. But just how smart is the G7 ThinQ, really?
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first: The G7 ThinQ is a veritable powerhouse of a smartphone. The Snapdragon 845, Qualcomm’s premium system-on-chip of the moment, sits at its core, alongside 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It has a 3,000mAh battery that lasts a solid 8-10 hours in my testing and charges to 50 percent in just 15 minutes, thanks to Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0+ tech.
There is a USB Type-C connector and a 3.5mm headphone jack onboard, and it has a good, if not great, dual rear camera setup consisting of a 16MP camera with a f/1.6 aperture and a secondary 16MP camera with a f/1.9 aperture and wide angle lens.
It is also stylish, if a little muted compared to the Samsung Galaxy S9 and its curved screen or the titanium Essential Phone. The G7 ThinQ’s glossy, all-glass surface is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but it shines in the light like a freshly waxed car. There is a hollowness to the back cover that is a little disconcerting — if you tap the glass beneath the rear camera, it feels like plastic — but it is deceptively durable, with certifications for both IP68 (it can survive for up to 30 minutes in a 5-foot pool of water) and MIL-STD 810G (which means it can be safely dropped from a height of a few feet).
Predictable performance and battery life
The LG G7 has typical 2018 flagship specs, with a Snapdragon 845 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 3,000mAh battery. That means it performs well, and will likely last you though a full day, though you’ll definitely need to plug it before you go to bed.
The headphone jack may be on its last legs, but LG is valiantly keeping it on life support, both refusing to remove it from its handsets and giving wireless devotees a reason to plug in. The 3.5mm headphone jack is powered by a 32-bit quad DAC, a feature that was missing from the U.S. release of the G6, and it’s one of the G7’s best features.
Anyone who’s plugged a pair of headphones into the V30’s Quad DAC will tell you how stark the difference is between it and a regular 3.5mm jack. It’s not so much that sound quality is noticeably better when listening to a Spotify playlist, but LG offers an unsurpassed set of sound customization options that light up when you plug in a pair of headphones. The G7’s supercharged headphone jack lets you tweak the sound you hear via presets, filters, and balance buttons and sliders, so you get far more granular control over your tunes.
There’s also DTS:X that kicks in when you plug in an external speaker, but the killer audio feature that’s exclusive to the G7 is the speaker on the phone itself. While it doesn’t have true stereo sound like the Pixel 2 or iPhone 8, its down-firing speaker has a 40 percent larger driver than the G6 and uses the space inside the phone as a resonance chamber to deliver deeper bass and louder overall sound. LG calls it the Boombox Speaker, and it’s not a gimmick. Compared to earlier LG phones, the speaker sounds noticeable fuller and louder when lying flat on a table, and because the acoustics change depending on the type of surface, you can experiment with different materials (my ash veneer particle board dining table sounded best to my ears).
Use Google Lens to explore the world around you, find the names of buildings, and even translate text – all right from your camera.
| Operating System | Android 8.0 Oreo |
| Display | 6.1-inch LCD 3120x1440 Gorilla Glass 5 Dolby Vision, HDR10 1,000 nits brightness |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 |
| Storage | 64GB / 128GB (Plus model) |
| Expandable | microSD up to 2TB |
| RAM | 4GB / 6GB (Plus model) |
| Camera (Main) | 16MP (IMX351), 1.0µm pixels, ƒ/1.6, OIS 71° lens, Super Bright Mode |
| Camera (Wide) | 16MP (IMX351), 1.0µm pixels, ƒ/1.9 107° lens, fixed focus |
| Front Camera | 8MP, ƒ/1.9 80° lens, fixed focus |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, NFC USB-C 3.1 |
| Audio | 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC Boombox speaker Headphone jack |
| Battery | 3000mAh Non-removable |
| Charging | USB-C Quick Charge 3.0 Qi wireless |
| Water resistance | IP68 MIL-STD 810G certified |
| Security | Rear fingerprint sensor Face unlock |
| Dimensions | 153.2 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm |
| Weight | 162 grams |
| Colors | New Moroccan Blue, New Aurora Black Raspberry Rose, New Platinum Gray |