LG 2015: LG Watch Urbane, LG Magna, Spirit, Leon, Joy hands-on

LG Magna hands-on

The LG Magna is an mid-range phone with premium aspirations - it's curved like the LG G Flex2 and has a metal-like plastic back, similar to the LG G3. One model has LTE connectivity, while the other offers dual-SIM instead.

The curvature is very slight - not enough to affect usage, but it still earns you some bragging rights. It just looks cool.

The slightly curved LG Magna

The screen is a 5" LCD with 720p resolution, getting it within spitting distance of 300ppi. The screen is sharp-enough, though the overall image quality is fairly average.

5" 720p screen

Above the screen is a 5MP camera that can use the screen to light up your face better. The gesture shot recognizes a hand gesture from 1.5m/3ft distance for hands-off selfies. Gesture view lets you preview the last photo when you move the phone.

The main camera on the back is an 8MP shooter. There's an LED flash next to the camera and G-style volume and power buttons below the camera. The removable back panel is similar to the LG G3. It imitates brushed metal and is quite good quality-wise.

LG Magna borrows the LG G3 back design and material

The sides of the LG Magna are free from controls since they were moved on the back.

Nothing on the sides

The phone runs Android 5.0 Lollipop with LG's usual customizations, including a fourth on-screen button to switch between SIM cards.

The LG Magna is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM. It comes with 8GB of built-in storage, expandable via microSD cards. The battery has 2,540mAh capacity, comparable to other similarly-sized phones and can easily be swapped out by the user.

LG Spirit hands-on

The LG Spirit is the other premium mid-ranger from LG. It's sort of a mini version of the Magna, with a slightly curved body and a smaller 4.7" IPS screen. The display keeps the 720p resolution, which pushes the pixel density a touch but the difference is hardly noticeable. The image quality is similar to the Magna, which is to say average.

LG Spirit is a smaller Magna

The handset is coming out in Asia and there it's priced the equivalent of $160. Basically, Moto E (2015) beware.

The LG Spirit is powered by a Snapdragon 410 chipset with a 1.3GHz Cortex-A53 quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM and runs 5.0 Lollipop. It also has 8GB of storage with a microSD card. The battery is smaller though, 2,100mAh.

Nothing on the sides • you can easily pop off the back

The main camera will be 8MP or 5MP, depending on the region, both record 1080p video. The camera will support Gesture shot and Gesture view like its bigger sibling. It also has the screen as selfie light too, but the camera is only 1MP.

The back has the same LG G3-inspired look with the central Volume and Power keys and the pseudo brushed metal plastic.