LG Q7

LG Q7 enters the flagship market bringing some necessary changes to its design. Priced at Rs. 15,990, it a mid-range phone that may look weak, but packs reasonable power for a mid-range flagship.

LG Q7 does not have a premium build, despite modifying the Q6 and adding the needed fingerprint reader and the waterproofing design. However, it has satisfying internals that make it a capable mid-range phone.

As a mid-range phone, LG Q7 is quite lightweight at 145g. While it is not as slim as the G7 ThinQ, it remains slim at 8.5mm, a measurement similar to Samsung Galaxy S9. It has a matte finish which feels smooth and good in the hand and is quite ergonomic, especially with the fingerprint sensor at the top-centre on the back panel making it easily accessible with your index finger. The fingerprint scanner is a significant update from the Q6, on which it was missing. While the phone is light, it also has a plasticky body, which makes it feel less sturdy.

On the whole, LG Q7 feels good, is easy to handle but it does not look premium. It comes with the headphone jack and USB-C charging, which are great additions for a mid-range phone. Another required update to the Q6 is the IP68 waterproofing of the phone.

LG Q7 comes with a 5.5-inch screen and 18:9 display which would have given you a lot of screen space to play around, but it also has thick top and bottom bezels which limits the screen space. It features LG’s FullVision display variant which gets up to 2160×1080 resolution with a pixel density of 442ppi. It has crisp colour reproduction and sharp colours. Movies on this phone can turn out to be an immersive experience. Since many of the mid-range phones continue to hold back at 720p, Q7’s higher resolution is a delight to experience. However, it may not be the best phone to take outside as the sunlight legibility is not that great and it may have reflections on the screen.

LG Q7 has a Mediatek MT6750S chip, partnered with a Mali-T860MP2 GPU and a 3GB RAM. It is quite a powerful chipset, especially when paired with GPU, and can run many graphics-heavy games efficiently, where other mid-range phones struggles. However, its performance remains mid-range. There can be frame rate drops in some games, and you might have to go down to lower settings for a better gaming experience. Multitasking, however, is a breeze and the phone can handle multiple apps without a problem. On benchmark tests, Q7 scores a decent 54,500, similar to many mid-range flagships.

The LG Q7 has a 13MP rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture. When the camera is used in good light, it performs quite well, producing quality images with good contrast and using vivid colours. The performance of the camera is quite satisfactory and at par with most of the flagship mid-range phones. However, low-light situations tend to struggle. In low-light, the pictures produced will have a loss of details, with washed out colours, which appear dull. It is the same problem present in most mid-range flagships, and LG Q7 does not have the worst low-light performance in the mid-range segment. LG Q7 also arrives with an 8MP selfie camera. It produces decent photos which can be used in your daily social media updates. There are also some AI features present in the app, including beautification, which is not always aggressive.

LG Q7 sports a generous 3,000 mAh, non-removable battery. Subjecting it to light use can get the user a full day’s work without a problem, and heavy use can get you about 9-10 hours of life. Continuous web-surfing on this phone found that it could run for an adequate 10 hours 20 minutes, quite an achievement for a mid-range phone. This time is only beaten by phones which have a larger battery capacity. Fast charging is also present, with 30 minutes of charging getting the battery up to an appropriate level for 2-3 hours of user or more.

LG Q7 has a decent design though it might appear a bit cheap. However, the internals is designed to be mid-range with above-average performance, good display and a decent camera. Comparing it with the pricier model, LG G7 ThinQ will make it a disappointment; however, as an update of the Q6, it does arrive with its own set of improvements: a much-need fingerprint sensor, a better selfie camera and waterproofing. It is an excellent phone for any user trying to go up to the mid-range brand from an old budget phone.