Hands On: LG X Cam and LG X Screen Phones

BARCELONA—LG's MWC booth is a wonderland. The smartphone maker's MWC releases are pleasant surprises, from the modular LG G5 to the LG X Cam, LG X Screen, and to a lesser extent the 1000 Stylus 2.

MWC Bug Art The X Cam and 10 Screen are this twelvemonth'due south midrange LG models, and they're real standouts. They're both lightweight plastic phones, but the finishes have some internal sparkle to them that takes them abroad from the standard matte black. The 10 Screen unit we saw, especially, has a shiny black dorsum that makes it look like a OnePlus 2 or a Sony Xperia Z5. Very nice.

Oddly, they're supposedly the exact same size—5.6 by two.8 past 0.28 inches—but the Screen feels smaller. That'due south considering its screen is smaller. It has a 4.9-inch, 720p display to make room for the trivial "second screen" panel at the superlative, which shows quick tools similar a flashlight, notifications, app shortcuts, or a 'signature' message. In that location's a thirteen-megapixel camera on the back and an eight-megapixel camera on the front.

LG X Cam The Ten Cam'southward special feature is dual rear-facing cameras—1 regular, i wide-angle, similar on the G5. The regular camera is xiii megapixels and the wideangle i is 5 megapixels. Past tapping a "broad-angle" push button in the camera app, you zoom between the two modes; the upshot is fun and compelling, as long as you lot're willing to put up with some fish-eye in the wide-bending manner.

Otherwise, it'south a super-slim, relatively easy-to-hold midrange Android phone with a 5.ii-inch, 1080p screen. It's ii.83 inches wide, so narrower than the Samsung Galaxy S7, and it comes in grayness, pink, white, and gold; I saw the pinkish model, and it's pretty darn pink.

Unfortunately, both models take LG's new Android pare over Marshmallow, which kills the app drawer in the proper noun of "simplicity." The skin takes upward 5GB of the X Cam'southward 16GB storage, and v.8GB of the X Screen's. Both phones have memory menu slots.

These are two phones that feel much ameliorate in real life than they await on screen or spec sheets. I'm used to LG's successful midrange lineups, devices similar the Leon, being pretty nondescript. Just the 10 series are super-slim and calorie-free, which makes them highly-seasoned to concur, and they each have a real personality characteristic—one special thing which sets them autonomously.

LG G Stylus 2 I was less impressed in person with the K Stylus 2. It took me a infinitesimal to figure out why, but it was correct in front of me: nowadays, a 5.7-inch, 720p display just looks dim and grainy. Yes, it's an cheap phablet, and information technology's besides pretty low-cal at 5.1 ounces. But the 258ppi display depressed me a piffling, especially later looking at the brilliant, tight little screens on the 10 series. The G Stylus 2 has 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel cameras, and a stylus that tightly tucks into a slot in the upper right-manus corner.

Like on the original Thousand Stylo, the stylus isn't pressure-sensitive like the one on the Milky way Note series. It'south just a capacitive stylus. I drew on the screen in LG's notepad app with no lag, and so LG has programmed stylus input well. Merely that screen couldn't bring me much past eh.

None of these 3 phones have been announced for the U.Southward., and the Grand Stylus 2 model was specifically dual-SIM, which is verboten at U.Due south. carriers. But given LG's splendid track record in our market, I think the X series will observe happy homes here.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.