LG Wing 5G Review with pros and cons

Ever since I first laid eyes on the Wing, I have had this feeling that the rest of the rectangle slabs aren’t daring enough. LG Wing is a fascinating device unlike any other in the smartphone realm. It is part of LG’s Explorer Project that’s aimed at discovering unique and adventurous smartphone form factors. But, even before this, the brand has had a legacy of designs like the G8X ThinQ, G5, V10, G-Flex, DoublePlay, Chocolate, and VX9400. Now, this lattermost one must have caught your eye in the 2007 Iron Man movie. Well, the LG Wing is believed to be a spiritual successor of it.

o, this phone has got a history of innovation behind it. And when you use it, you could sense that. I’ve been using the Wing for god knows how long and in this time, I’ve known what mobile multitasking could truly be.

Mobile Phone box contents

• The Phone

• Charging adapter

• USB-C Cable

• Headphone connector

• SIM ejector PIN

• Phone Case

• Protection Film

• User Guide and Warranty Card

LG Wing 5G: Design

In one look, the Wing looks like any other smartphone — A rectangle slab. But, it is a chunky one, mind you. At 10.9mm thickness and 260 gram weight, it is cumbersome to carry around. For the same reason, I didn’t take it out on a recent excursion I had. It towers at 169.5mm and all in all, it would have a visible presence in your pant pockets.

Anyhow, when it is out in the open, it looks handsome with its curved and nearly bezel-less edges on the front, and silky matte finish at the back. Ours is the Illusion Sky variant which exhibits a mix of hues from gold to blue depending on the angle of refraction. It does attract smudges but is easy to wipe clean. There is Gorilla Glass 5 protection on both front and back. The frame is aluminum.

Speaking of the sides, there is a shared SIM slot on the left; a mic and a pop-up camera on the top, secondary mic, USB-C port, and speaker grille on the bottom; power key and volume rockers on the right. These buttons are tactile, but rather too petite and at distance for the fingers to reach. The thing gets especially difficult to access when the phone’s in T-mode.

This brings us to the main value proposition: You get to slide the (main) screen from bottom to the left direction, it locks with a satisfying clack and there you have the Wing in its cruciform if you will. The large primary panel and the small secondary screen are perpendicular to each other.

So, in a world where phones fold n’ flip, this one swivels. And lemme tell you from experience, this thing’s really smooth – both design-wise and as a conversation piece. If a conventional flagship merely attracts eyes, in the Wing’s case, people come to you wishing to hold the handset and try that T-form.

Now, coming to use cases, you can

• open two different apps on either screen. Although you can try whatever combination of apps you wish, my favorite has been playing full-screen YouTube on one while running anything else on the other.

• If you don’t want two different apps, you can run certain apps that can leverage the extra half screen for extended benefits. Some examples include YouTube playback controls (on the bottom screen while you can immerse into the video without worrying about accidental touches), Asphalt 9 map (on the smaller screen to keep an eye on the track and rivals while the race takes place on the bigger field), and Gimbal camera mode (more on that later).

You can whitelist 3rd-party apps to work on the smaller screen. This space is usable, even though on-screen elements may appear crammed. As such basic functionality like typing and navigation could prove to be a challenge. But again, it is doable. Now, if you don’t want to do any of the above things, you can use the bottom half as a holder (Grip Lock) or a Touchpad.

The display is Stylus compatible too, but doesn’t come with one. Bummer!

Then there are other quirks that make it intentionally a two-handed device. The in-display fingerprint reader is fast to unlock but since its present on the main screen, it will be remotely located whilst on T-mode. Scrolling is a hassle even if you use the trackpad. And as mentioned already, reaching buttons hidden behind the 90° slab gets annoying at times.

Then there is the concern about durability. Even though I am sure LG has worked a lot on the hydraulic dampener and the mechanical motor mechanism in play, nevertheless it’s a lot of moving components. If it relieves you, the Wing is MIL-STD-810G rated for resistance to shock. LG has also raised the plastic borders across the second screen, possibly to fend off dust and dirt. For even more assurance, it has got IP54 certification for dust and splash protection.

Software, Performance, and Battery

You get Android 10 with LG UX laid on top of the Snapdragon 765G chipset. Yeah, so LG hasn’t made fresh recruits when it comes to the base operating system and processor. And as a result, the animations are rarely but ostensibly slow and choppy. There are a bunch of pre-installed “Recommended” and proprietary apps too. Of which, those that can’t be uninstalled or are of any particular use-case can be tagged bloatware.

However, beyond hardware, software does play a major role in the LG Wing experience. When the wings are lifted, you get the Swivel Home (the macOS dock-like carousal of commonly used apps) on one screen and regular app drawer on the smaller real estate. The aforementioned multi-tasking scenarios are tailored by this software. It is a pity though that only select devs have customized their apps for this purpose.

Anyhow, whatever works, they are fun nonetheless. Speaking of which, I had a good time racing on the Asphalt 9 roads; shooting down enemies on COD Mobile (Max frame rates) and just adventuring through Genshin Impact. Meanwhile, it was handy to have the Game Tools on the small screen. A cool feature it offers is to jump straight into the Gameplay Walkthrough of the current play on YouTube. How convenient, isn’t it?

The underlying 4000mAh battery endures surprisingly well. It should last a day, provided you limit the fancy gimbal mode usage. Moreover, it charges back full in around 1½ hours.

Display, Audio, Connectivity

The main rotating P-OLED screen stretches 6.8 inches diagonally and presents FHD+ resolution. On the other half, there is the 3.9-inch secondary G-OLED display. Both are adequately bright both in and outdoors, with decent viewing angles, and wide color coverage. In the display settings, you get to switch between Natural, Vivid, Cinema, and Custom profiles. I preferred the former for its authenticity, even if the results looked relatively paler. I had the Video Enhancer option on for the extra punch-in motion pictures. I watched Oscar-nominated The Father starring Anthony Hopkins, and it was an endearing watch. A notable scene to depict the display quality was the crystal clear floating dust particles at the 3-minute mark into the film. You can also stream HD content from Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. There is no HDR/HDR10 content support though. Another quibble is about the failing touch registry on the edges, a common bane of curved screens.

Moving to music, I found the LG 3D Sound Engine equalizer oomph the sound well. But whatever good it does can’t equate to a quad DAC. So, as you prolly know, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack on the Wing. Sorely missed! The speaker quality is just serviceable.

In a similar vein, there is no carrier aggregation, WiFi and Bluetooth standards aren’t the latest either. When it comes to call, I didn’t face any problems. You can enable WiFi calling. Other connectivity options include USB Type-C 3.1, NFC, dual-band A-GPS.

Camera Performance

Much like everything else, LG Wing has an unconventional camera setup too. The 32MP selfie shooter is tucked inside a hole up top. There is a primary 64MP Samsung ISOCELL Plus sensor with PDAF and OIS, a 13MP ultrawide with 117° FoV, and again another 12MP ultrawide snapper with 120° FoV. So,

no telephoto/macro/depth/monochrome lenses here. Instead, that third one lets you use this handset as a gimbal shooter, but only in the swiveled state. We’ll get to that in a second, but first here are the main two sensors’ samples

The shots from the main camera are attractive with convincing details, dynamic range, and exposure control. Color processing sticks to nature. The shutter speed is snappy. But autofocus isn’t up to the mark. It fails to lock up-close subjects and doesn’t always quickly switch between transitioning subjects in the frame.

Even indoors, the photos were plenty good.

0.5X

1X

2X

From the main screen of the camera app, you can easily toggle between 0.5x/1x/2x perspectives. Colors were nigh identical between all three. The barrel distortion in ultra-view mode doesn’t spoil the fun either.

Night-Mode-Off-Ultrawide

Night-Mode-On-Ultrawide

Night View is stowed away in the more section. That placement was irking as you want that feature handy when you need it. You get to employ night mode across all sensors. This mostly endows better metering and sharper details. But sometimes, while tamping down the noise, it inadvertently softens the important details in the frame. Another noticeable effect was the cooler color balance. The processing is also fast.

As for videography, you can record up to 4K 60fps from the back cameras and 1080p 30fps from the front. Both Steady Cam and Steady recording aids more stability to the footage.

Other goodies in the mix are Cine Shot, Slo-mo, Manual Video, Google ARCore stickers, CineShot, 360° Panorama, YouTube Live direct-shortcut, etc.

Now, last but definitely not least – you have the six-axis (Hexamotion) Ultra Wide Gimbal Motion Camera. In the swivel mode, you only get to work with this sensor and there is no way to shoot using others.

LG Wing 5G Review: Does The Wing Fly and Should You Buy?

As I called it in the beginning, LG Wing is a fascinating device that has its foibles. It has got a grandstanding design that enhances multitasking on a smartphone. This is backed by some durability certifications and ratings. The display is palatable, the battery lasts fairly long, and two of the main cameras do their part pretty well, barring edge cases. As for the gimbal camera which promises to help you get a grip on the wacky world, alas the experience isn’t up to the snuff. Then there is the long aspect ratio, the heft, and a slippery back all of which make it a two-handed device. Also, I’m afraid the processor won’t age well and isn’t flagship-y for the price.

LG Wing is currently available for around ₹60K or even north of that in India. I get the difficulty of pricing a neoteric design considering the engineering costs. After all, while the competition folds, the Wing aims to fly. More power to LG for daring. Now the question is, would you?

Pros

• Mesmerizing design

• Great for multitasking

• Palatable display

• Fairly long battery life

• Appeasing main and 117° ultrawide camera

Cons

• Gimbal mode video quality isn’t as impressive

• Two-handed device

• Underpowered for the price