LG G Flex review: Ahead of the curve

Great organizer

The G Flex comes with the usual set of organizing apps and Polaris Viewer 5 document viewer. Unfortunately, you'll have to pay extra for the document editing version of Polaris Office package.

So, you can view documents - Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and PDF files are supported.

The Polaris Office app does a splendid job

The G Flex could become the essential presenter tool with SmartShare. It can stream content over HDMI (via the SlimPort) or over Wi-Fi (Miracast) and audio over Bluetooth so you can run the presentation from your G Flex. The app can also push content to compatible LG devices with Beam.

The calendar app has a split screen interface - the top part is reserved for the monthly calendar and one on the bottom for the agenda/daily/weekly view. This way you will always have your monthly view visible. The border line between the two sections is not fixed and you can easily move it. You can hide the monthly view completely, but you can't do the same with the other section.

The Calendar app

The calendar supports QSlide so you can check your schedule while writing an email without having to switch between apps all the time.

In case you want to enjoy the calendar full screen without any additional views, just turn the phone landscape. The G Flex is syncable with multiple online calendars.

Going landscape • adding an event

The LG G Flex features an alarm clock application, which lets you set multiple alarms, each with its own start and repeat time, and ringtone. You can enable application autostartup, so the calendar/email/music player/ tasks/weather app launches when the alarm goes off.

The alarm app now features application link

There's also a clever feature called puzzle lock, which will make you solve a simple puzzle to disable the alarm. This way you will only be able to stop the ringing when you have properly woken up.

The Timer, World Clock and Stopwatch features are also part of this app.

The timer, world clock and stopwatch

The organizer package also includes a useful voice recorder and a nicely touch-optimized calculator. The calculator is QSlide enabled to be always at hand.

There's voice recorder and calculator preinstalled as well

The Memo app allows you to take notes and add media to them, such as images, audio, or location.

The Memo app

Notebook is more advanced and lets you create books with multiple pages, add multimedia, draw and eventually export as PDF and email them.

Notebook creates beautiful multi-page "books"

There's also a nice animated weather app that can show you the forecast by the hour, for the next four days week.

The weather app

There's also a QTranslator app, which uses the camera to scan text (a word, line or block at a time) and translate it from one language to another. It's a bit slow and requires a data connection, but it can help you out if you're abroad and don't speak (or read) the language. The OCR (scanning the text) sometimes runs into trouble and produces garbage, but the translations are fairly good by automatic standards - that is to say, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

QTranslator in action

Google Maps and Navigation

The LG G Flex managed to get GPS lock in about a minute from cold start without A-GPS. A-GPS can speed up the lock (but it involves data traffic). Cell-ID and Wi-Fi positioning are also available if all you need is a rough location, but they need a data connection too.

Google Maps

Google recently revamped the UI, but the basics are the same. Maps offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere. You can also plan routes for bicycles and public transport. A nice addition in the latest version is that Maps shows you a couple of alternative routes like the desktop version of Google Maps.

For navigation, the map will cache the data it needs and will reroute you offline (so you don't need a data connection along the way). The Navigation app itself had its UI polished to match the rest of Maps.

You can also search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View.

Plotting a course • Street view

Popular places around the world feature pictures and reviews by people. Street view isn't available everywhere, but it is growing in coverage and is the coolest thing we've seen on a Maps app to date (that includes Aerial view in iOS).

You can save maps for offline view, which caches them on your device's storage, but keep in mind that not all map info is saved (meaning not everything down to street level like businesses, POIs, etc.).

Google Play has plenty of apps

The Google Play Store features several scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. You can also check out the Play Picks, Apps to Watch, Apps Highlights and Editor's Choice categories on the Home tab for more curated app lists. The Recommended for you list is based on what apps you've installed and what your Google+ friends have liked.

Apps usually have several screenshots (many even offer a demo video) so you can get an idea of what the app looks like before installing it.

You can also check out comments and ratings, as well as the number of downloads and so on, to help you decide if the app is worth it.

The Play Store will give you access to hundreds of thousands of apps

The Google Play Store is full of all sorts of apps, but in some countries it also offers music, movies and TV shows, books and magazines.

The LG SmartWorld app store is also on board. It's similar to the SamsungApps market - there you can find various content and promotions exclusive to LG users.

LG SmartWorld