LG X Screen

With the smartphone market flooded with dozens of budget, mid-range and premium phones, it’s getting harder for manufacturers to produce devices that stand out. Nowadays, almost all of them have the same rectangular slab design and large screens. With the release of the X Screen, LG hopes to increase their base with the addition of a secondary screen ticker.

At first glance, the X Screen doesn’t look too different from other smartphones. It sports rounded edges and a polycarbonate body with a faux-metal finish to the edges. Despite the budget materials, reviewers were impressed with the overall fit and finish of the phone. In addition, they found the smaller size (4.93 inches tall and 0.27 inches thick) made it perfect for one handed use. Plus, the lightweight of 120 grams allowed them to use it with zero hand fatigue.

Of course the biggest feature of the X Screen is its dual screen. The main screen measures in at 4.93 inches and has a resolution of 720pixels. Despite the lower resolution, experts actually had no issue with its sharpness as the smaller screen size actually leads to a higher pixel density. And since it is using IPS LCD technology, it provided them with excellent viewing angles and balanced colors. With that said, they did notice colors looked a bit washed out and it had poor sunlight legibility due to the low maximum brightness.

The dual “ticker” screen is always on and sits atop the main screen. It measures only 1.8 inches diagonally and provides a resolution of 520 x 80. While not sharp, it is only meant to display important information such as the date, time, battery level and relevant notifications. While the resolution wasn’t a deal breaker for experts, they did find the screen far too dim in sleep mode, making it difficult to read, defeating the purpose of the ticker. While a good idea in theory, most consider it superfluous as it only takes a couple seconds to wake up other smartphones.

As far as speed goes, this cannot compare to many mid-range or premium phones. Still, the 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM provided a decent enough experience that reviewers were able to multitask with no stutters or lag. Gaming, however, is another story. While they were able to play less demanding games, some of the more intensives ones suffered from low frame rate. Battery-wise, the X Screen managed to last a full day with moderate use.

Unsurprisingly, the 13MP main camera did not impress experts. Their shots, while generally color accurate, were often grainy and lacked detail when cropped even in good lighting conditions. Images became much noisier indoors or in other low light situations. They also noticed fairly high levels of lag in between shots, leading to missed pictures.

Overall, critics have a hard time recommending the LG X Screen. NDTV states, “Besides the good design, battery life and the second screen, it’s far too underpowered to properly handle Android Marshmallow…and overall camera performance is quite underwhelming.” Android Pit adds, “…the mediocrity of the X Screen is apparent. The display is always a bit too dark and the processing performance is just sufficient.”