LG G2 Mini

Today I’ll be telling you a few things about the LG G2 Mini, its different versions available or will be available in the nearby future, and how different the phone actually is from the regular LG G2. Off the bat, I have to point out the elephant in the room, and that being that there are a TON of different versions for this device: there’s the regular one, there’s an LTE-enabled one and there’s the LTE enabled one that also has Tegra 4 on it. Also, the one that isn’t LTE-enabled has an optional Dual-SIM version to it.

What worries me most about this device is its size – how anyone can call a 4.7 inch screened device a MINI is beyond me, but being so that the standard for phone size seems to be ever on the rise, I guess it kind of makes sense. Still, the mini version for the LG G2 is the size of the original HTC One ( the M7 ), which by no shape or form can it be classified as a miniature device. Leaving the size part and the difficulty in the nomenclature aside, the phone truly is a smaller version of the original G2, but not by much ( truthfully, the screen is only smaller by a mere 0.5 inches ). However, Mini versions of a phone are never just smaller, but also a bit weaker than the original device. You’ll be glad, however, to know that not too many things have been removed from the G2 in the making of this device.

SUMMARY

By definition, with the specifications that the LG G2 Mini has and considering its features, it’s easy to classify this device as a mid-range smartphone. The main differences between the G2 Mini and the G2 are the size, the camera, the memory and the hardware ( coupled with a few features, that in some cases exist in the G2 Mini but not the regular G2 ). All and all, the G2 Mini isn’t MUCH weaker than the normal version of the device, and it does have a few bonus features that were unheard of in the main phone – granted with some limitation here and there ( this is, after all, a mid-ranger and not a full-blown flagship ). However, if you want it to be stronger than the original G2 Mini, consider getting the Tegra version ( whenever it decides it wants to come out ).

GENERAL

Networking, as I’ve said, entirely depends on the user and the version of phone that he or she chooses. Something that all versions have in common is the fact that all of them use Micro-SIM cards and they all have similar 2G and 3G connectivity. The non-LTE version of the LG G2 Mini has Dual-SIM, but that’s optional and depending entirely on the version you purchase. The LTE version, logically, also have 4G LTE connectivity, but they don’t have any optional Dual-SIM model. As far as availability goes, almost all versions ( aside from the Tegra one, that’s not really out yet ) are fully available world-wide.

BODY

The size of the device is pretty big for a Mini, but considering the fact that the regular LG G2 was way bigger, it’s pretty okay. There’s not a lot of wasted space with this device and it’s just about big enough to accommodate its 4.7 inch screen. The exact size of the device is 129.6 x 66 x 9.8 mm ( or circa 5.10 x 2.60 x 0.39 in ) and it weighs approximately 121 g ( or 4.27 oz ). Similarly to the LG G2, the G2 Mini doesn’t have any physical buttons on the front of the device and instead has on-screen buttons ( like the Nexus devices ).

DISPLAY

The display of the LG G2 Mini is pretty good for a mid-ranged device, but it’s nowhere near the same quality as the one on the original G2. To be specific, that one had a True-HD-IPS+ LCD, where as the Mini version only has an IPS LCD screen that reaches a fairly low resolution of 540 x 960 pixels and holds a pixel density of circa 234 pixels per inch. The phone also has the LG Optimus UI installed on it, for those that like custom user interfaces. The screen of this device is also protected by a sheen of Corning Gorilla Glass 2, so it should have some amount of resistance to scratches and minor falls ( although usually falls cause internal damage and rarely resume to just cracking the screen ).

SOUND

As far as the audio part is concerned, the phone is lacking in comparison to the original G2. That one wasn’t too impressive either, but at least it had a Dolby Sound Enhancement installed, where as this one is pretty Default without anything serious to set it apart from the masses.

MEMORY

As far as memory goes, the LG G2 Mini is both inferior and superior to the G2. What caused this Schrodinger-type predicament? Let me explain – as far as RAM is concerned, the G2 Mini is clearly slower than the regular G2, as it has only 1 GB of RAM compared to the 2 GB present on the other one. It’s the storage that’s the interesting part: sure the regular G2 is available in both 16 and 32 GB versions, but it lacks a MicroSD card slot; the G2 Mini, on the other hand, while having only 8 GB internal storage ( out of which only around 4 are user-available, sadly ), it does also has a MicroSD card slot that can use any card of up to 32 GB.

DATA CONNECTION

The connectivity is pretty okay for this device – you’ll get decent speeds even with the 3G version ( which can reach around 21 Mb/s Down and 5.76 MB/s Up ). Of course, the 4G version is way faster than this one, and can reach a much larger speed. The Wi-Fi of the LG G2 Mini is 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot and DLNA. This phone also has an Infrared Port and its Bluetooth is v4.0 with A2DP. The Micro-USB port of the device is v2.0 and, unfortunately, it is lacking any sort of MHL or other features ( and considering the device doesn’t have an HDMI port, it’s pretty logical to assume that you can’t connect it to your TV ).

CAMERA

The camera of the LG G2 Mini is pretty decent, but nowhere near as good as the camera of the original LG G2. The original one had a 13 MP main camera packed to the brim with features, where as this one has an 8 MP camera with a fairly standard amount of features. As far as quality goes, the main camera is only known to record in 1080p ( not much info around about the frame-rate ) and it can photograph at resolutions of 3264 x 2448 pixels. The few features this camera has are: Autofocus, LED Flash, Geo-Tagging, Face Detection, Panorama and HDR. The LG G2 Mini also has a secondary frontal camera with 1.3 MP that’s known for recording in 720p format. The Tegra version of the device does have a stronger camera ( it has the same 13 MP camera as the G2 ), although the number of features related to the camera doesn’t seem to be increased.

BATTERY LIFE

The battery of the LG G2 Mini is smaller indeed than that of the regular G2, but with the stats on this device it does offer a much better endurance rating. The battery on this device is a Li-Ion 2440 mAh battery ( smaller indeed than the 3000 mAh battery of the G2, but potent enough for what it has to power ). The endurance rating for this device is said to be around 76 hours, where as the one for the full-sized one is 68 hours. Over-all, the battery is pretty decent.

HARDWARE

Hardware-wise, the phone is somewhat weaker than the G2 ( not by much, but the difference makes itself felt in more demanding tasks ). The hardware you can find on the LG G2 Mini is as follows: a Quad-Core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 processor, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset and an Adreno 305 GPU ( quite inferior to the Snapdragon 800, Krait 400 Quad-Core at 2.26 GHz and Adreno 330 of the LG G2, but still does its job ). Now the Tegra version of the device, while not yet out, does have a different configuration – a Quad-Core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A9 processor, the Nvidia Tegra 4i chipset and the 60 Core ULP GeForce GPU associated with that particular chipset ( which is quite potent in itself ). Over-all, you can choose which version you’d prefer, but personally I’d wait until the Tegra version was out and get that one.

SOFTWARE

There’s nothing to complain about here as the LG G2 Mini has the latest version of Android on it pre-installed when you get it – that being Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat. The original G2 didn’t have this version when it came out, but there is an available update for it ( if perhaps anyone had missed that ).

FEATURES

The LG G2 Mini doesn’t have a whole lot of features, but it can do its job as well as others with the few that it has. The sensors on this device include Accelerometer, Proxmity and Compass; the browser uses HTML5 and Java is provided via a Java MIDP Emulator. The GPS of this device also has built-in support for A-GPS and GLONASS and the phone also has FM radio with RDS. The messaging is done ia your standard methods: SMS ( with Threaded View), MMS, E-Mail, Push E-Mail, IM and RSS. The colors in which this device is available in ate – Titan Black, Lunar White, Red and Gold.

Here’s a brief list of what this phone is capable of:

• SNS integration
• DivX/XviD/MP4/H.264/H.263 player
• MP3/WAV/FLAC/eAAC+ player
• Photo viewer/editor
• Document viewer
• Organizer
• Voice memo/dial/commands
• Predictive text input

This concludes our little review of the LG G2 Mini. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it and that you’ve learned a few thing about this phone. I tried keeping it as short as possible so as not to go into too many unnecessary or boring details, yet still cover everything there was to cover.