Home Tech Reviews LG Q6 Review: Tiny Device With a Beautiful Display

LG Q6 Review: Tiny Device With a Beautiful Display

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LG has seen the launch of three midrange additions to its Q series last July, as the mobile company aims to pick back up after the launch of the LG G6 last March and release a stripped-down version of its flagship phone.

Nonetheless, is the Q6 just as equally great as its older sibling? Is it worth its price? Let’s find out.

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Display

The LG Q6 has a medium-sized 5.5-inch IPS LCD display covered in Corning Gorilla Glass Display 3, which grants it a certain degree of protection, even without screen protectors.

What makes the Q6 stand out is the high resolution in such a tiny device, where LG somehow crammed an astounding [2160 x 1080] resolution display, which is further powered by the Adreno 506 graphics card. I noticed the difference in the Q6’s default wallpaper; the tiniest details were further emphasized and it does make a great display, especially for a non-phablet sized phone.

Unfortunately, the Q6 is not water or dust resistant unlike most phones in today’s market, which I hope LG would add in future releases.

Design

With its metal unibody and curved edges, the 149-gram Q6 feels just right when it sits in your hand, although it does wobble a bit when you set it down. However, we discovered that its back casing is easily prone to attracting both fingerprints and scratches, so if you’re planning to get one, you might need to consider getting a physical case for it.

Unlike most phones nowadays that use physical fingerprint scanners for security, the Q6 has none of that and relies on Face Recognition instead to unlock your phone. We discovered that the facial recognition feature doesn’t work as effectively as it should when you use it in the dark.

Found on the upper portion of the Q6’s front panel are its 5MP front camera single lens and LED flash on either side of the earpiece.

Its left side contains the physical volume buttons, along with the microSD and dual sim slots, which are only removable through the use of a SIM pin, while its right side has the Power button.

The Q6’s function keys are found onscreen, so you can only use them when the device is on.

As for the back cover, the 13MP rear camera sits at the upper-left corner of the Q6, with the flash placed on the right side of the lens.

Overall, its curved edges and compact size feel just right for carrying around, and if you have small hands, it feels great.

Camera

The Q6 has a 13MP single lens rear camera and a rather small 5MP front camera, both of which possess f/2.2 aperture rates. With a higher aperture rate, however, this means that the Q6 wouldn’t adjust well to low-lit environments. We noticed this when we tried taking photos of objects in the dark, where the Q6 took a while adjusting to different colors before it finally settled with one saturated color.

Taking outdoor photos with the Q6 is pretty much okay, although the hues seem slightly darker.

If you’re also fond of gimmicky features and you’re the type that likes taking photos without having to press something, the Q6 has the option of taking photos by saying words such as “Cheese” or “Smile”. We noted that the Q6 responded pretty well when we tried saying “cheese”, though the Q6 doesn’t always immediately respond to these names and we found that you’d have to clearly say “kimchi” or “cheese” in a certain way before it finally takes your photo.

Performance

The Q6 runs in Android 7.1 Nougat using Qualcomm Snapdragon 435, which means it will help you load up videos at most. It uses LG’s one-year old UI 5.0 Marshmallow interface, which works pretty smoothly without any lags, but don’t expect it to run high-performance games.

Using the following benchmarking tools, we received these results in the process:

Benchmarking Results LG Q6
AnTuTu 41856
Geekbench (single-core) 622
Geekbench (multi-core) 2092
PCMark 3.0 3385

Benchmarking results are pretty average at best, which isn’t at all surprising with its processor. But if you’re planning to use the Q6 for ordinary phone use, LG’s tiny device works pretty well.

Battery

The Q6 has a non-removable Li-ion 3000mAh battery, which isn’t much of a surprise, considering its size.

Using our ManilaShaker Battery Rating, we can confirm that you can draw 33 hours and 16 minutes out of the Q6 at most, which is a pretty small amount for a budget phone.

In terms of battery power, we measured the following results from the Q6 and compared its battery life to other competitors:

Device Hours
Oppo F3 45 hours and 20 minutes
ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro 32 hours and 56 minutes
LG Q6 33 hours and 16 minutes
Sony Xperia XA1 Ultra 31 hours and 12 minutes

Unfortunately, the Q6 does not support fast charging. But for a phone that doesn’t have that feature, an initial charge of the Q6 from 0% to 100% took us one hour and forty minutes, which surprisingly isn’t bad.

Sounds

The tiny Q6’s speakers are found at the bottom half of the phone. Speakers placed at the bottom are usually ideal for viewing movies and videos, which I guess LG is banking for in tandem with its gorgeous display.

These speakers, however, are not exactly spectacular, even for the purpose of viewing videos with a small screen, and even at maximum volume, the audio is not exactly as loud, which may pose a problem when you have to take phone calls in noisier settings.

For casual listeners, the Q6 also has a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom left side of the device, next to the microUSB port, so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting the right earphones for it.

Capacity

The Q6 comes in 32GB worth of internal memory, with 3GB of RAM, which you can expand up to 256GB with microSD.

Verdict

Ultimately, despite losing the fingerprint scanner, the Q6 is pretty much okay if you’re the type that wants beautiful graphics in a phone under P15,000.

However, if you want a simple phone that can give you that (and if you want a less-expensive LG G6 without the fingerprint scanner and dual lens rear camera), the Q6 is a pretty good stripped down version of its more expensive counterpart. It may not be water or dust resistant and its unibody still needs some sort of protection for it to look good all throughout, but it should satisfy you enough if you’re looking for a good phone that can fit into your budget.

LG Q6 Comparison, Full Specs, Philippines Pricing

SPECS LG Q6
Display [2160 x 1080]
5.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive display, 442ppi
Size 142.5 x 69.3 x 8.1mm, 149g weight
Design Metal unibody, Corning Gorilla Glass Display 3
Colors Astro Black / Ice Platinum / Mystic White / Terra Gold
Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 435
Processor Octa-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53
Graphics Adreno 506
Memory 32 GB internal, 3GB RAM (expandable up to 256GB with microSD)
Main Camera 13 MP, f/2.2, autofocus, LED flash
Multimedia 1080@30fps, HDR
Front camera 5 MP, f/2.2, 1/5″ sensor size, 1.12 µm pixel size
Connectivity Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 4.2 / NFC / microUSB 2.0, dual-sim
Security Facial Recognition
OS Android 7.1 Nougat, LG UI 5.0 Marshmallow
Battery Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery
Ports microUSB 2.0, USB On-The-Go, 3.5mm headphone jack
Official Price PHP 13,990
Availability date July 2017
Where to buy Local and online authorized retailers

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