This year was a change in pace for LG. The company's "mainline" flagship device, the LG G7, was released a couple of months later later than in years prior, hitting the market in the early summer rather than the more traditional spring.
And while this may sound like a trivial distinction, it's actually more meaningful than it may first appear. The tight schedules in the smartphone industry mean that time is often the most valuable asset a manufacturer can have. In this case, scheduling the G7 for a bit later in the year gave LG an opportunity to try to raise its build-quality and to offer a well-rounded smartphone, in order to produce a more viable competitor to the fierce competition that are the other flagship handsets.
The biggest impact of this shift comes in the form of the SoC – the heart of the phone. Unlike last year's LG G6, where LG opted to use a prior generation SoC, for this year, the G7 avoids such a compromise. Instead LG is packing the phone with the latest internals, and at least on paper, it looks to be a competitive offering for 2018.
LG’s been in a relatively rough spot in the last couple of years, as we’ve seen the company stumble in terms of product execution. The LG G4 suffered from performance and battery issues due the Snapdragon 808/810 issues for that generation. The G5 promised great innovation through its modular design, however this again didn’t exactly pan out in terms of commercial success, mostly due to the phone’s weaknesses such as the display as well as a compromise in build quality due to the modular design.
The G6 overall was probably LG’s most solid phone over the last few years and it didn’t have any deal-breaking issues, other than it being a S821 device in a year of S835 alternatives. 2017 has been probably the year where the V-series actually seemingly has outshined the G-series as LG’s top-tier flagship line.
The V30 has been an excellent device, however I’ve been abstaining recommendations of phone due to the fact that my review unit had really bad uniformity issues, as well as bad low-brightness picture quality on the display. Newer units we've been sampled have offered better uniformity, but both were still not quite as perfect as you'd find from Samsung alternatives. Least to say, having to play the display lottery is not something that should be happening at these price-points.
The G7 promises a lot in terms of specifications, but most importantly for LG, what the phone needs to deliver is an increase in the overall product quality as well as more attention to detail.