Hands on: LG G7 Fit review

The LG G7 Fit was announced at IFA 2018 and is a phone that packs in some premium features. But look under the bonnet - and at the bonnet itself - and LG has done some tinkering to keep costs down.

Here it offers a handset that’s for the 'inbetweeners' - those who don’t want to go full-fat premium with their phone purchase but don’t want to be stuck with a maudlin mid-range device for the next two years. 

LG G7 Fit release date and price

LG G7 Fit price and release date hasn't been revealed, despite the phone being revealed at IFA. It's certainly going to be cheaper than the LG G7 ThinQ and LG G7 One, however, as it has an older chipset and not as premium chassis. 

LG has badged this phone as being 'above the mid-range' and it's right - it's not quite there in the style and substance department for it to be considered premium.

Design and display

Chassis-wise, the LG G7 Fit is exactly the same measurements of the LG G7 One. It measures 153.2 x 71.9 x 7.9mm but is a little heavier, weighing in at 160g, as opposed to 156g. In the hand, that weight change really is negligible. 

The screen is populated by the same amount of pixels, too - an impressive 3120 x 1440 are fitted into the 6.1-inch QHD+19.5:9 FullVision display and it looked lovely in our tests. There’s a real vibrancy there that made you forget that you were looking at an LCD display and not OLED. 

The chassis isn’t as nice in the hand as its LG G7 bedfellows - it has a more plasticky feel. While there's a notch on the handset we tried this was blacked out, with the 8MP Wide Angle (F1.9) camera is simply nestled in the black bezel. There’s a smaller bezel at the bottom of the screen too. 

The shape of the device made it nice and easy to hold and it didn’t feel too bulky at all, despite its rather large screen. 

Camera, power and battery

The cameras are the same as the LG G7 One. As mentioned, the front-facing one is a decent 8MP. For proper snaps that aren’t of the selfie kind, there’s also a 16MP snapper on board. The shots we took were impressive. 

The unforgiving glare of a convention room may not be the best place to try out the low-light features of the camera but the colors sprung out and LG’s logo gleamed when we took a picture of it on the show floor. Given the screen can go to 1,000 nits, this isn’t surprising. 

Battery wise, you are looking at 3000mAh but there is also Qualcomm’s quick-charge tech on board (through USB-C). 

You have a choice of on-board storage of 32GB and 64GB, an option that is missing from the LG G7 One - the same option to add more storage with a microSD card is also there.

And now for some of the corners cut. Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 which isn’t as snappy as the 835 variant (or nowhere near as energy efficient) in the LG G7 One, or the 845 chip in the G7 ThinQ. 

We couldn’t put this fully to the test to see if cracks started to appear with loading up loads of apps and the like so we can only report that there was not stuttering cycling apps, quitting them, heading to the camera, loading Google etc.  

We expect that there would be a bit of slowdown when it came to a more power-intensive session, though.

When it comes to watching TV and movies, there’s still HDR10 compatibility on board, which can be found on the other LG G7s and things such as Boomsound (which improves the sound of the external speaker), DAC functionality and a version of AI Cam from launch. All of these are top-range features so it's great to see that LG hasn't scrimped in this department.

If you get the LG G7 One then you have to wait for AI Cam, for some reason. Essentially, it’s similar to what Honor offers in its camera functionality - it will use AI to make your photos better and offers different effects for whatever you are taking pictures of, be it flowers or fauna, or actual humans. 

Early Verdict

The name of the phone may bring up visions of this being a sporty device, but it’s not. What the LG G7 Fit is a more fun version of the LG G7 One and ThinQ, with slightly less grunt in the processor department and one or two design tweaks to keep costs down. 

We’re not entirely convinced that a mid-range/premium hybrid should be a thing in a phone, given some of the Chinese manufacturers are making premium phones at a reasonable price. But the LG G7 Fit is packing enough top-line specs to turn your head.

• IFA 2018 is Europe's biggest tech show. The TechRadar team is in Berlin to bring you all the breaking news and hands-on first impressions of new phones, watches and other tech as they're announced.