Smartphones have become necessities in the past decade, but visually, they haven’t changed much. The 2007 iPhone is, well, just as much a rectangular slab as the new iPhone 11 Pro. But their shapes have evolved. Foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Fold are all the rage in 2019. LG isn't prepared to make a bendy screen just yet, but its G8X ThinQ Dual Screen smartphone has a full extra display you can snap on it. The result is almost the same as the competition, but also quite different.
At its heart, the G8X is a normal Android phone. When you slot into the included Dual Screen case, you can add a second screen. The secondary display sits on the left; it’s not dissimilar to adding a second monitor at your home or office workstation. The screen cannot bend or fold at all. Rigid, ordinary displays have their benefits, and they start with the price. The G8X costs $700, well below the $1,500 price of the new Moto Razr or the nearly $2,000 for the Fold.
That second screen gives you some of the benefits of a foldable phone. For example, you can run two apps side by side simultaneously, greatly improving multitasking. That's fun! There is a catch though. The extra display sits in a case that you snap on, turning the G8X into a clamshell that swivels around 360 degrees like a Lenovo Yoga laptop. It's a useful design at times, but it also transforms the phone into a thick, bulky block that weighs about a third more than an iPhone 11 Pro Max or Galaxy Fold.
The G8X and I have a love-hate relationship. I was surprised at how useful I found its second screen, but its cumbersome size never stopped making me yearn to yank it out of the case. The design feels more like like a stepping stone to the foldable phone LG secretly wants to make. Whether that device comes in 2020 or 2021, the G8X has primed me. I’m excited for LG foldables … as long as they're better than this.
Having a second, attachable screen on my phone was immediately useful. It's all thanks to a three-finger horizontal swiping gesture that lets you shoot an app to the opposite screen. It brightens the user experience—a little like the intuitive gestures in Apple’s iPadOS.
When I was hailing an Uber, I could move the Uber app to the second screen with a swipe, then respond to a friend’s text message on the main display while still keeping an eye on the car headed toward me. This also worked really well when navigating with Google Maps while I was out and about.
The second screen also helped me schedule things. To make a Google Calendar event from an email, I used to have to switch between Gmail and the Calendar app to get the location and time right. On the G8X Dual Screen, Gmail sat on the left screen and I referenced it directly as I created my Calendar event on the right screen.
The list goes on. You can watch a YouTube video and browse Reddit at the same time, or even use the Dual Screen attachment to create a custom gamepad controller to use the G8X like a Nintendo 3DS handheld. I also often found myself running an instance of Google Chrome on each screen—handy if you’re shopping and researching products at the same time, because who wants to keep switching between tabs on a phone?