I'm done with my assessment on one of LG budget Android smartphones that you can buy with that familiar look from their 2014 flagship. Here's my review of LG Magna.
Before I start, all of the screenshots were taken with Android Lollipop's own power saving mode on. The LG UI 3.0 is visible on this one which is quite an eye candy for me. One thing that I don't like is quite difficult to switch back and forth when I'm using 3G on both SIM slots. Out of 8 GB ROM, you can only get around 3.36 GB of app storage
Even with that custom UI, you can still see some of the stock elements like this "cards". The form factor especially on the back is like LG G3 but it was a bit premium versus LG Leon.
No surprise that I got no problems on calls, text, WiFi and mobile connectivity. Unfortunately, it doesn't have OTG capability. On benchmarks, it got over 18,000 on Antutu which is typical for a 1.3 GHz Mediatek MT6582 quad-core processor. The sensors inside are accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, sound and magnetic
On battery itself, I'm amazed that it was the smallest 2,500 mAh battery that I encountered but meaty on battery life. On my video battery rundown test with HD videos, 1 SIM on w/o mobile data, it stood at 10 hours and 53 minutes from 100% to 1%
These are the 8 MP rear camera samples of LG Magna with different conditions which is a-ok. The 5 MP front camera is ok too.
Pros: Excellent battery compared to counterparts with same SoC, nice display, good in usual connectivity task
Cons: No OTG capability, no LTE, price can be a bit higher.
Currently, it is priced at Php 7,999 which might be not reasonable especially for those who are alerady aware of some global brands with LTE with a few bucks added but if you are already contented to 3G and you want a compact smartphone with excellent battery life, LG Magna might be for you. My rating is at 3.75 out of 5
