LG G Pro 2 hands-on

LG G Pro 2 went official 10 days prior the MWC. It has already gone on sale in Korea, while US and Europe will be getting in in March and April.

The G Pro 2 is the successor of the Optimus G Pro phablet and upgrades all major specs. It comes with a larger 5.9″ 1080p IPS display, runs on the Snapdragon 800 chipset with 3GB of RAM, and comes with a 13MP camera with enhanced optical image stabilization (OIS+).

LG G Pro 2 next to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3

The G Pro 2′s display looks great, colors are punchy, the viewing angles are OK too, though the performance under direct sunlight is rather unimpressive. Still the display occupies 77.2% of the entire front, which results in tiny screen bezels – indeed a great achievement.

Other interesting key features of the LG G Pro 2 are the expandable 16 or 32 GB internal storage, the video recording capabilities – 4K@30 fps, 1080p@60fps and 720p@120fps, and the removable 3,200mAh battery.

LG G Pro 2

LG G Pro 2 is running on Android 4.4.2 KitKat skinned with LG’s proprietary Emotional UX. The phablet also introduces the so-called Knock Code – it allows the user to unlock his/her device by knocking on its display using a specific combination. We’ve tried this feature and it is indeed a very clever way to unlock the phone, you’ll need some time and quite a few attempts until you get used to its behavior.

LG G Pro 2: a closer look

Here’s a quick video demo of LG’s latest software, including a demo of knock codes:

LG G Pro 2 is made entirely of plastic. Its back has barely visible texture, but is glossy and very slippery. We expected to find fingerprints and smudges all over the G Pro 2 after handling the phablet for a while, but as it turns out it is not prone to such unpleasantries.

The back of the G Pro 2 has the already familiar control deck just below the camera – a Power/Lock key flanked by the two volume keys. Those can be configured to launch different apps (such as the camera) upon a long press.

A peek under the battery cover

We’ve taken the LG G Pro 2 for a quick spin outside. We were eager to test its OIS camera, so we snapped e few photos.

LG G Pro 2 10MP 16:9 camera samples

And here is a full 13MP 4:3 photo.

LG G Pro 2 13MP camera sample.

We’ve also shot two short 4K videos with the LG G Pro 2. The first we uploaded to YouTube for convenience, the second is available for download untouched. Enjoy!

4K video sample 1

We’ll keep our comments on the quality for the retail review unit, but the G Pro 2 camera indeed looks promising.

You can find more hands-on impressions over our dedicated LG MWC 2014 article.