With the G6, announced today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, LG is changing its own definition of “flagship” phone. Don’t expect self-healing materials, modular add-ons, or a focus on high-end specs; in their place is a straightforward device that might not wow on paper, but may well be the company’s best phone in recent memory.
The guiding principle behind the G6’s design, LG says, was to make a phone with a big screen that’s easy to use in one hand. The obvious way to do that is to reduce the bezels surrounding the screen, which LG has done to a greater extent than ever before, but the company has also changed the shape of the screen itself. The 5.7-inch LCD has a resolution of 2880 x 1440, giving it a taller 18:9 aspect ratio — in other words, it’s exactly twice as tall as it is wide.
By increasing the height of the screen rather than just stretching it diagonally, LG has created a phone with very manageable width that doesn’t sacrifice the ability to display a lot of content at once. The display’s corners have also been rounded off, evoking the softer edges of the device itself, although the curves don’t match exactly. The G6 is dominated by this screen, with the small bezels allowing 80 percent of the front of the device to be given over to the display.
Rounded corners aside, this doesn’t leave a ton of room for industrial design flair — I’d describe the phone as conventionally attractive, if a little nondescript. But the most impressive physical aspect of the G6 is its incredibly solid metal and glass construction. Although it isn’t too hefty at 7.9mm thick, this thing feels like a battleship. It’s also LG’s first G-series phone to be water- and dust-resistant, rated at IP68.