The LG Q6 is a smart and small smartphone, which takes design cues from the LG G6, but comes with a budget resume and an attractive price.
The LG G6 was a good smartphone, but it fell short against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the OnePlus 5, especially in the in the performance department. The thing was, the Snapdragon 821 just couldn't cut it against the might of Snapdragon 835 and the Exynos 8895. However, we liked some of the design changes LG brought, specifically the display, and we think LG was listening to its critics. Hence, learning from the LG G6, the company has brought the Q6. The device is a smaller and much more affordable device than the G6, but carries the same FullVision display with 18:9 aspect ratio.
This makes the budget phone one of a kind, and in our opinion the best looking budget smartphone we have seen in a long time. Most of the credit for this goes to the display only, which here is a 5.5-inch IPS LCD panel carrying a resolution of 2160 x 1080. This means the phone is a little taller and narrow. On top of that LG has maintained slimmer bezels, which brings the footprint down drastically and compared to our resident OnePlus 5, it looks rather good and small. The display itself seems quite good and we currently have no complaints with it.
If the skeptic in you just pointed out that phone might be more prone to screen damage, then we would agree with you. However, LG claims this is not the case, as they have used an H-beam frame on the phone, that is made from a “incredibly strong 7000 series aluminum”. Now, in the short time we have spent with the phone, we haven't dropped it yet, but from an initial inspection, it looks quite sturdy, although the back would feel better had it been metal instead of plastic.
Inside, you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 SoC, which we last saw on the Xiaomi Redmi 4. You get 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage on the device, which seems like a compromise, considering the fact that most 15K phones are now rocking 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage options. However, at the same time, you do need to remember that none have such a beautiful display. Anyway, what matters is how it performs and here are a couple of synthetic benchmarks to give you a glimpse of what the phone can achieve.
(L-R) AnTuTu, GeekBench
From the looks of it, it seems the phone should perform reasonably in day-to-day tasks, but the graphical perfomance, may not be up to the category average. We will further test the phone during our full review, but initial results look promising overall.
Moreover, the software will play a very crucial role here as LG’s custom UI does not have a very good track record.
On the camera front, we get a 13MP sensor on the back, which looks good on first impressions, but not game-changing. The few images we've shot so far look decent. Unfortunately, we couldn't click any images in daylight just yet, but the few indoors shots we got, under incandescent and yellow lights seem to have captured most of the details nicely. There is slight noise, but nothing that is not manageable. However, the same can’t be said about the selfie camera, which seems rather dull.
Lastly, the LG Q6 has a 3000mAh battery on it, which seems plenty for a phone with a 5.5-inch display and Snapdragon 435, but then again we would be in a better position to comment on the battery life once we put the phone through the paces.
Follow Us
Hardik Singh
Light at the top, this odd looking creature lives under the heavy medication of video games. View Full Profile
