LG G7 Complete Walkthrough

After all the LG G7 news that’s been posted across the web, the LG G7 is finally here.

The latest flagship device from LG the LG G7 Thinq (as it’s officially called) is LG’s latest attempt to save the LG G series. So, as is the usual here on my site, let’s try and do a complete walkthrough video of the G7 and see how they did.

If you’re not familiar, a complete walkthrough video on my site is a video where I try and go through every feature I can on a new piece of tech so you guys can be better informed should you decide you might want to go buy one.

LG G7 Hardware

To get started, let’s talk about the hardware.

The LG G7 has an aluminum frame with Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back. It comes in 4 colors: Platinum Gray, Aurora Black, Moroccan Blue, and Raspberry Rose.

The screen is a 6.1″ QHD+ 19.5:9 aspect ratio LCD screen that is supposedly capable of 1000 nits of brightness and is also HDR10 compliant (as are most devices nowadays, by the way).

And, yes, there is a notch.

Thankfully, though for anyone who minds the notch, you can go into the display settings, tap on second screen (now sure how it’s a second screen and not just the notification bar but okay) and customize it to either hide the notch by making it all black, using a gradient color scheme, or even accentuate it with a multi-colored one. You can also control the edges of apps that display to curve down a bit more or less.

In that notch, we have our 8MP f1.9 aperture 80-degree field of view camera.

At the bottom of the front, we have nothing but our small bezel.

On the left, we have our volume buttons and our dedicated Google Assistant button. You can tap the Google Assistant button to, of course, bring up Google Assistant, but you can also hold down on the button to use Google Assistant in a walkie-talkie mode. In this, she only listens when you are holding it down and stops when you let go–something that helps in noisy environments to help her distinguish your voice over the background noise.

You can also double tap the button to open Google Lens which is Google’s AI assisted camera app that helps identify landmarks, helps you shop, etc.

On the right of the LG G7 phone, we have the power button.

On the top, we have the SIM card and MicroSD card slot combo.

At the bottom, we have our USB-C port, our “Boombox” speaker as LG calls it (which utilizes a chamber in the device to amplify the bass), and a 3.5mm jack that has a Hi-Fi Quad DAC for higher quality audio when plugged into a headset.

In addition to the DAC, LG says the G7 is the first device to support DTS:X which can deliver virtual 3D sound up to 7.1 channels when a headset is plugged in or when connected to an external speaker. And Bluetooth headset users will be pleased to know it also supports Qualcomm’s AptX HD for higher quality Bluetooth audio streaming over Bluetooth 5.0.

Inside the device, we have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor paired with 4GBs of RAM and 64GBs of storage.

On the back of the device, we have our center mounted fingerprint scanner, that unlike previous models does not double as a power button. You can also unlock the device with your face and even your voice by saying a 2-3 word phrase of your choosing.

To help the G7 with hearing your voice, it also supports Super Far-Field Voice Recognition (SFFVR) and can supposedly recognize Google Assistant commands from up to 16 feet away with background noise present.

LG G7 Camera

Also on the back of the LG G7 Thinq, we have our dual 16MP cameras. One of these has a more standard field of view of 71 degrees and an aperture of f1.6 and the other is our wider camera that we’re used to seeing on LG phones now with an aperture of f1.9 and a field of view of 107 degrees.

You can switch between the cameras, as usual, using the icons at the top of the viewfinder.

The auto-focus on the camera is super fast during my initial messing with the device, it has optical stabilization (thankfully), and a super bright mode they call it.

The super bright mode utilizes pixel binning (or the combining of multiple pixels into a one-pixel sensor to allow more light but reduce the resolution of the image) and some software processing. In messing with it, I’ve found it cuts the resolution down from 16MP to 4MP meaning it’s combining 4 pixels together to make each pixel for the super bright mode image.

LG also added their own AI scene detection (part of the ThinQ in the name of the device). It can detect 19 scenes and will automatically adjust the camera settings (like exposure, saturation, etc.) depending on what it thinks is in the shot. It has a novel and fun way of identifying the object by showing you some of the things it’s thinking about on the screen in the form of words that fade in and out, but isn’t quite as fast as other iterations of this AI scene detection.

The nice thing about this is that you have to actually tap on the AI Cam option for it to turn on, it’s disabled by default.

LG also added portrait mode to the G7. You can tap portrait mode to enable it and then it’ll detect the subject and blur the background. You can adjust the amount of blur with the slider that appears during this mode.

Google Lens, which again is Google Assistant’s camera app, is also available from within the camera as a shortcut near the shutter.

Camera Modes

Now, let’s go through all of the camera settings besides the usually auto mode:

• Filters: You can either add filter effects to the entire shot (think Instagram) or facial tracking stickers (think Snapchat).
• Manual Photo: This allows you to control things like exposure, ISO, etc. manually on the screen for photos.
• Manual Video: This allows you to control things like exposure, ISO, etc. manually on the screen for video.
• Cine Video: This mode we first saw on the V30 and it essentially records video with a certain color setting that you can then use different looks (which are using LUTs or Look Up Tables) after the fact (or during by tapping the film icon) when editing to completely change the video’s color grading, etc.
• Food: Basically ups the saturation for food shots but also provides a slider for color temperature (colder or warmer).
• Slo-Mo: Records 240fps video that you can then play back as slow-motion.
• Panorama: What we’re used to on cameras that allows you to take a photo then move the camera left or right to have it stitch them all together to get a wider, panorama shot.
• Flash Jump-Cut: This makes a gif. It’ll either take 4, 8, 12, 16, or 20 shots–one every 3 seconds–and stitch them together for you automatically into a gif file.

Something noticeably absent that was on the V30 is the ability to shoot in log (although I have a feeling that Cine Video, before being edited, might be a version of log, I’ll confirm that later).

Now, let’s go through the settings on the camera really fast.

Camera Settings

• Super Bright Camera: You can turn this to off, Auto, or Manual. Auto will do enable the mode whenever it decides it is dark enough to need it and manual pops up a button whenever it thinks it’s dark enough to need it but you have to tap it to turn it on.
• HDR: Turn High Dynamic Range on, off, or Auto. This is just for photos, it’s not HDR10.
• Steady Recording: This turns on electronic stabilization to help with motion blur in videos. Doesn’t work on 4K.
• Live Photo: Same as live photos on iPhone. Records a bit of video before and after a photo.
• Cheese Shutter: Let’s you say, “Cheese”, “Smile”, “Whiskey”, “Kimchi”  or LG to take a photo.
• Tag Locations: This adds location metadata to photos.
• Grid: Turns on a rule of thirds grid.
• Add Signature: Allows you to add a small piece of text in any of the installed fonts on the device to the bottom right corner of every photo to watermark them.

Now, if you change modes you get other additional options specific to those modes.

Manual Photo Settings

• Graphy Photos: Graphy is an app that allows people to save camera settings as presets that you can then apply to your own photos. You can turn this off or on in the settings when you have the mode set to manual. To use them you can tap the Graphy icon at the top right of the screen, then choose a preset or tap the download icon to get more from the Graphy app on the Play Store.
• Save as RAW: This lets you save the photo as a JPEG and DNG RAW file for more professional editing if you wanted.

Manual Video Settings

• Frame Rate: Set the frame rate for the video from 1, 2, 24, 30, or 60 fps. If set to 4K, 60 fps is not available.
• Bit Rate: This is the data rate for the recording, higher is better quality but larger file size.
• Hi-Fi: This allows you to record higher bit rate audio with the video. Sounds better, but makes the file size larger.
• Save as HDR10: You can record in High Dynamic Range for video. Without getting too technical, it’s the ability to record a lot more contrast, colors, and shades of those colors. If 4K is higher resolution to 1080P and everything is sharper, this is the equivalent of better colors if that makes sense.

And that’s it for the camera (expect camera comparisons coming ASAP).

LG G7 Software

The device is running Android 8.0 with LG’s skin on top of it. Now, it probably doesn’t make sense for me to go through every single thing of LG’s UI and it’s the same as it is on most other phones so really quick, I’ll just go through all the non-standard apps LG has pre-installed on this device. Keep in mind that this is an unbranded, carrier-free model so expect carrier bloatware in addition to these if you buy one from a carrier.

• QuickMemo+: LG’s note-taking app.
• Music: LG’s music player with built-in equalizer.
• LG Health: LG’s version of Google Fit. Records steps, has automatic activity recording, weight recording, ranking system, route tracking, etc.
• HD Audio Recorder: A sound recording app that takes advantage of specialized microphones on the device.
• Update Center: LG’s custom app to check for app updates and system updates.
• Smart Cleaning: An app that lets you clear out caches, free up storage, RAM, test hardware for faults, check battery usage, etc.
• LG Mobile Switch: This app lets you transfer messages, photos, home screen settings, etc. from an old device to a new one via USB cable, Wireless connection or MicroSD card.
• LG Smart World: LG’s own app store and news center. Allows you to do some interesting things that the actual Play Store can’t like download themes for the LG home screen, fonts for the system, Hi-Fi audio, etc.lg g7 price

And there we go, a complete walkthrough of the new LG G7 ThinQ. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions about the device and I’ll try and answer them while I have the device still.