Vibrating Screen Instead of Speakers? LG G8
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,156 words · ~10 min read
0:00
so we could have done a full review of the lg g8 but the reality of it is that
0:05
most phones are pretty much the same thing other than a couple of key
0:09
gimmicks these days anyway so we figured what the hey why don't we just do a
0:13
phone gimmick video instead focusing on of course the big gimmick of the g8 the
0:20
rear fingerprint sensor
0:23
just kidding that was what the g2 anyway no
0:28
the screen that actually vibrates to
0:31
make forward-facing sound yes my friends there's no speaker on the front of your
0:35
phone you think that's the biggest gimmick there's more it gets way gimmickier than
0:40
that and stay tuned and you'll find out just how after this message from our
0:44
sponsor freshbooks freshbooks accounting software is custom built for how you
0:49
want to work helping you stay organized and productive try their 30-day free
0:53
trial for free at the link in the video
0:56
description
1:06
so do you want to show off the weird vibrating screen speaker first or the
1:09
hand unlock first i wanna do the vibrating screen first when you heard
1:13
that this phone had that feature did you assume that it had no other speakers and
1:17
no other holes i did and then i got really confused because as soon as i sat
1:21
here and you put it on the table i was like whoa hold on a second it's got
1:25
speaker holes in the bottom and making matters even more confusing
1:30
it doesn't even seem like it's a good speaker solution because it's the
1:34
old-fashioned fire into your palm and you know curve
1:37
your palm real nice so you can actually hear anything like there's actually no
1:41
speaker at the top
1:44
the exciter is right about here kind of right where that google search bar is it
1:48
is meant to be a top speaker even though it does kind of shake the
1:52
whole screen let's put some sound on you you might be able to hear that it's
1:56
louder at the top than the bottom i would say the stereo effect on this is
2:02
far less convincing than even like a
2:05
really a really small amplified earpiece
2:09
speaker like what i've got on the note 9. um it's you you can really tell like
2:14
where it's coming from and it's especially because you've got that
2:18
downward firing one into your hand it's
2:22
like kind of out here yes and then this one is like
2:25
here so it's almost like a weird offset like if you were to take your projector
2:29
screen and put one of your speakers well behind it and then one of them way over
2:33
on the side like it's not a proper stereo effect and it's really quiet the
2:37
other issue here is that this phone just doesn't sound very good i'm at only 70
2:42
80 right now and there's clear distortion
2:47
okay compare that to a pixel 3 that has dual front firing speakers in stereo do
2:53
you want to explain what a power bottom is yeah like it crushes it
2:58
but i bet you can go higher without
3:03
looks like a distortion toilet brush a little bit
3:06
okay hold on let me crank this though
3:11
it's ugly the phone really vibrates noticeably in
3:15
your hand so what i'm trying to figure out though is whether that's from the vibrating
3:19
screen aspect or if it's from the boombox speaker thing so the g7 the
3:24
phone that came before this had these boom box speakers so they actually
3:28
utilized some of the space of the phone as an acoustic resonance chamber for the
3:32
speaker so that it actually hollowed out some aspect of this and that vibrated
3:36
your hand on the g7 even though there was no vibrating screen
3:39
it's actually kind of unpleasant and it's really unfortunate because my first
3:44
impressions of the g8 are honestly really good like i like the really
3:49
natural curve they've got for the glass back here i really really like the
3:53
rounded corners down here it fits nicely in the hand it's not gigantic so if
3:57
you're the kind of person who doesn't want like a freaking tablet in your pocket
4:02
then it's it's actually like it's still one handable you know like i can
4:06
actually type on this with one hand it's got glass on the sides now and look what
4:11
they did this is even improvement compared to the g7 is they managed to
4:14
have no more bump no camera bump at all oh it felt really sleek but i couldn't
4:19
put my finger on why oh okay
4:22
well now we got to try a phone call then yes because there's another aspect that
4:26
is potentially awesome which is it's somewhere between speaker and bone
4:31
conduction speaker apparently they say if you're in
4:35
a noisy environment you can just put it closer to your
4:39
jaw and you can hear better than you can with a normal phone
4:42
okay so we figure what better way to create a noisy environment
4:47
than to just crank something on our
4:50
brand new okay it's not all set up but it should still make noise home theater
4:55
setup is it still a home theater if it's at work so this is bizarre i can hold my phone
5:01
right here like some kind of freaking and i can still hear him just fine
5:07
that's pretty cool all right now let's introduce some noise
5:10
pollution in hawaii
5:15
i can go and throw them 100 like emojis
5:18
cool okay come on back in so that's impressive
5:22
i actually wasn't that convinced
5:25
again while i was trying to hold the phone to my ear at the top like
5:31
i would be in the habit of doing but then once i actually put my ear sound
5:37
absorption hole right here
5:40
where the actual exciter is i was able to even after he turned it back up i was
5:45
able to hear you quite clearly so are you saying that it's not great for
5:49
consuming content but actually for calls it's pretty sweet actually yeah i'd say
5:53
that's that's really fair if you actually take a lot of phone calls in
5:56
crowded environments because you could hear me pretty well too right
6:00
that's impressive i was literally standing next to speakers with obnoxious music
6:05
like the epitome of obnoxious music playing so i think as long as you have
6:08
the right expectations then you might be impressed with this
6:12
because i thought it was going to be awesome sound and no speakers and that's
6:15
what i thought based on the tv demos and that's not even the most gimmicky
6:19
gimmick though right they claim that you can unlock the phone
6:24
with your palm like with my palm pilot i can remote
6:28
into it and unlock it does anyone even get who's gonna get
6:33
that no one something so they put one of those time-of-flight sensors on the
6:37
front of this which is what face id is all about and this does have face unlock
6:41
which is sweet but for some reason
6:44
the feature you never knew you didn't want you can also use your hand to
6:49
unlock it you can now unlock your phone with hand id in theory
6:57
you did it you did it yeah do it again okay
7:03
i've never got two in a row
7:12
nice yeah okay it's not fast though
7:19
yeah an underscreen fingerprint sensor is clearly a better solution with that
7:24
said the oneplus 6t is fast but the
7:27
ultrasonic sensor wrong phone not impressive to me so far check this out
7:37
it might as well be an iphone 6. it might as well be hand unlocked
7:44
it's our new punchline poor lg hand gate everything's gate with
7:48
this thing vibrating screen gate okay okay so
7:54
lucky you it unlocks for you that's great now that actually has other
7:58
features that you can do with your hand other than unlocking it they're called
8:01
air motion sounds terrible air motion try holding
8:06
your hands six to ten centimeters away six to ten
8:09
sure let me get that dialed right in for you okay don't pretend like you aren't
8:14
intimately familiar with that length okay so see that green bar that came up yeah
8:19
okay now move your hand 20 centimeters away
8:24
okay now you're supposed to be able to like swipe
8:29
to start an app or pinch for a
8:33
pinch for a screenshot like like a duck
8:37
but it's supposed to be giving you a preview where it kind of images your
8:40
hand and you can see what your hand's doing but it's not even giving me the preview
8:44
anymore
9:02
wait why isn't the preview coming up if the bar is coming up
9:05
i can't take this anymore
9:12
and then the last unusual feature is that portrait mode now instead of just
9:16
having stills capture and the ability to change
9:20
your background blur let me just blur you some more here now it also has
9:25
video mode yeah this is not good
9:28
like you add some twitter compression to this and you are looking at a pretty bad
9:33
time it's almost a shame that those gimmicky features suck because
9:38
underneath all that is like a pretty decent phone snapdragon 855 six gigs RAM
9:42
128 gigs rom there's just the one sku it's got ip68 water resistance it's got
9:47
a headphone jack including lg's whole uh 32-bit hi-fi quad dac thing they've
9:53
actually got a pretty good reputation for their analog sound output it's got
9:56
usb type-c 3500 milliamp hour battery
10:00
there's actually not a lot to complain about here 6.1 inch display it's just
10:04
like it feels like the same thing i've been
10:07
saying for the last i don't know five years eight years however long it's been
10:12
about these um about phones really is like yeah it's
10:17
like pretty good except that they try to write their own software instead of just
10:21
using Android and they apparently do that so that they can build in these
10:25
weird features that mostly don't work
10:28
the speaker i mean it's not better than a phone that you know just has a
10:34
a single bottom firing speaker but that was the norm not that long ago and it
10:38
has the benefit of being able to use it in a crowded environment and not have to
10:41
like fuss around with you know holding your phone in exactly the right spot so
10:45
that's pretty cool this thing though
10:49
can just disappear for all i care i'd recommend
10:53
it if it wasn't running lg's skin that will always be a problem for me it's
10:56
actually looks like they've made a lot of improvements here to be perfectly honest with you the icons are not ugly i
11:02
don't hate lg's skin it's better than samsung's well the way samsung's was
11:06
before it recently improved it also pricing and availability this will be
11:10
out in the next coming weeks depending on your carrier for about probably 800
11:14
bucks the g7 was 750. so
11:18
it's a flagship it's not the most expensive phone out there if it's a good deal on contract with
11:23
your carrier normally these sponsor spots are pretty
11:27
long but i'm gonna save you guys some time private internet access piavpn go
11:32
get it now at the link in the video description it makes your internet
11:36
browsing more secure and it's super affordable go go go go go go go
11:41
so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
11:45
subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured
11:48
at the link in the video description you know what i'm willing to give a final
11:51
answer i'm nay i'm really sold on the bigger screen phones now oh hold on a
11:55
second i couldn't hear you let me get my crotch closer would you say but james
11:58
likes it so uh while you're down there you can also check out our merch store
12:02
which has cool shirts like this one and this one our community forum yes it does
12:05
have shirts like that one it doesn't come with the pecs though
12:10
dance dance pecks