LG Magna review – hands on

The Magna is LG’s top mid-range phone for 2015. However, unlike the rest of its flat competitors, the Magna has a subtly curved 5in screen in the style of its high-end cousin, the LG G Flex 2.

You wouldn’t know to look at it, though, as the curve is barely noticeable. Unlike the G Flex 2, which has a very defined curve and a chassis that can bend and flex with a small amount of pressure, the Magna is completely rigid. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, as it gives the phone’s build quality a strong, sturdy feel that’s both easy to grip and comfortable to hold. It may be made entirely of plastic, but the rear panel’s hairline metallic effect brings a welcome touch of style.

Another design cue it borrows from LG’s top-end phones is the rear placement of its home and volume rocker buttons. This allows the screen to take pride of place on the handset with less space taken up by unnecessarily chunky bezels. You’ll still find onscreen buttons on the main display, but the rear buttons are naturally placed so they fall right under your index finger, making them easy and intuitive to use. 

We were impressed with its 5in 1,280×720 resolution display as well. The Magna is one of the first smartphones we’ve seen to use LG’s ‘in-cell touch’ technology. This is meant to provide greater clarity, clearer visibility outdoors, a more responsive feel and deeper blacks by removing certain layers from the touchscreen and integrating the digitiser directly into the display. While we’ve yet to put the Magna through its paces with our own calibration tests, blacks were incredibly deep for an LCD display and colours were bright and vibrant. 

We’ll have to wait and see how the Magna performs on a day to day basis, but its quad-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM certainly felt very fast and snappy when we were browsing through Android 5.0.1’s home screens and menu options. It also has a 2,540mAh battery, 8GB of storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. 

Selfie fans will be pleased to hear that the Magna also comes with the G Flex 2’s Gesture Shot feature, which now lets you to use gesture commands on the front-facing camera from up to 1.5m away. LG’s Knock Code security feature also makes an appearance here, allowing you to unlock your smartphone via a series or pattern of taps that’s completely unique to you. 

There’s no UK price for the Magna yet, but LG told Expert Reviews that it’s expected to launch at the end of this month, so we’ll hopefully be able to bring you our final verdict on LG’s top mid-range contender very soon.