LG K4 2017

LG K4 Dual (2017) is a new entry-level 4G-ready budget smartphone released by LG. It features an impressive battery life render this a reliable feature phone replacement for those on a budget. LG has stayed true to its word with the K4, offering an affordable smartphone experience. For design, the entire body is made from plastic, with a lightly textured removable back that’s functional, even if it isn’t the prettiest thing in the world. The smooth finish elsewhere, mixed with the heavily rounded edges and corners, not to mention its overall size and weight, make it a comfortable fit in the hand. The hardware controls along the phone’s sides naturally resting against index finger and thumb. Without a lip to get a fingernail under, the back doesn’t prise off particularly easily, but once removed, user have access to the K4’s replaceable battery, microSD slot and microSIM slot. The back is also where a user will find the loudspeaker grille. The LG K4 Dual (2017) packs a 4.5-inch WVGA IPS LCD. It produces nice colors and blacks head-on. The user can quickly toggle between low, medium and high-intensity backlight levels to alleviate the lack of automatic brightness.

Whilst some of LG’s lineup are already running the latest major release of Android, the K4 launches with version 5.1.1 Lollipop. It still makes for a robust user experience, dressed in LG’s own skinned interface, iconography, and apps. A user gets typical LG experiences, like Knock Code security on the lock screen, a slew of tools for power and storage management and a theme and customization experience. At the heart of this phone is an underclocked 1GHz quad-core Mediatek MT6735M, paired to a gigabyte of RAM, which in practice seemed more than enough to offer up a reliable user experience in day-to-day use. Storage is very limited, with almost half of the phone’s 8GBs of total space occupied by miscellaneous files, which are presumed to be predominantly comprised of the operating system and LG’s apps. With that in mind, picking this phone up with a microSD card should be considered a necessity, rather than a choice. On the upside, such humble specs paired to a fairly sizeable 1940mAh battery give the K4 real staying power. Similarly to the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact, the K4 can last a full weekend without needing to visit a wall socket and as it’s removable. As for the camera, a 5-megapixel primary camera and 2-megapixel front-facer mean K4 owners won’t get left out in the cold if a user wants to use their phones with apps like Skype and Snapchat. The rear camera boasts a LED flash, whilst user can leverage a screen-based flash for selfies in low light using the front-facer.

Hands-on article by Jagadisa Rajarathnam