LG K7 review: Another run-of-the-mill smartphone

South Korean manufacturer LG has launched the duo of K7 and K10 smartphones in India. While the K10 costs Rs 13,500, the cheaper K7 is priced at Rs 9,500.
This LG K7 is the company's first launch in the sub-10K segment this year. We reviewed the K7 to see whether it has what it takes to disrupt the market, and here are our findings.
Display and design
The first thing you notice about the LG K7 is just how light it feels in the hand.At 161 g, the phone is easy to carry and is also extremely comfortable for one-handed use. But at the same time, it’s pretty durable as well.
The design of the K7 resembles that of a pebble, which lends it a premium look and feel. It also has LG's 2.5D Arc Glass, which gives its edges a slightly curved appearance. The phone’s metallic frame further adds to the design.

The LG K7 houses the volume rocker and power button at the back — a design feature that has become its signature style. It has a removable battery and two nano-sim card slots – one comes with 4G LTE support while the other is 3G only. There’s also a microSD card slot for memory expansion. The 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port are both placed at the bottom.
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The front panel of the smartphone houses the front-facing camera and the speaker grille at the top, while the bottom has the LG logo. There is no physical button on the front, as the soft touch keys are a part of the display.
Speaking of display, the LG K7 features a 5-inch FWVGA screen with 854×480 resolution and a pixel density of about 196 ppi. The sunlight legibility of the screen is pretty decent but it’s a bit more reflective than what most people would prefer.
While many other budget smartphones offer Full HD displays, the LG K7 smartphone loses out in this department due to its clearly inferior panel.

Camera and performance
The key specs of the phone are as follows:
Memory: 16GB built-in, and expandable up to 32 GB via microSD card
Operating System: Android v5.1.1 (Lollipop) with LG’s custom UI layer running on top
CPU: 1.1 GHz quad-core Qualcomm MSM8909 Snapdragon 210
RAM: 1.5GB RAM
Connectivity options: 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1, and GPS
Battery: 2,125mAh (Removable)
Camera: 5MP rear and front-facing cameras
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In terms of specifications, the K7 smartphone clearly falls short of what the competition is offering. For instance, both Coolpad Note 3 Lite and Samsung Galaxy J3 offer better specs at a similar price point.

But even with the not-so-impressive specifications, the smartphone didn’t disappoint us in terms of performance. During our time with the K7, we didn’t face any lags or heating problems. Switching between apps and browsing the web was smooth too. The sound output through the phone's speaker was pretty decent, as was the overall audio quality. The phone also had good call quality and signal reception, even in areas having weak cellular signal.
However, we faced quite some issues while using the phone’s GPS feature as it failed to detect our location numerous times.
Moving on to the imaging department, the LG K7 sports 5 MP rear and 5MP front cameras. The phone’s camera app comes with standard features such as Slo-Mo and Panorama, among others.

The images captured by the LG K7’s rear camera in direct sunlight were decent, but lacked detail. Indoors captures too were just satisfactory. The front camera took decent selfies and will work fine for video chats. But in essence, imaging is definitely not one of the LG K7’s strong points.

As far as battery backup is concerned, things aren’t any better. With a 2,125 mAh battery, the K7 lasted us a day with minimal usage. So if you’re a heavy smartphone user, it’ll be a good idea to carry a power bank with you. The fact that competing budget smartphones offer massive batteries doesn’t help the K7’s cause either. For example, the Xiaomi Note 3 packs a 4,000 mAh battery and the LeEco 1S comes with a 3,000mAh battery.
Verdict
The LG K7 is fighting for a spot in the budget segment, where there are already many good and value for money options available. Add to it downers like disappointing camera performance and underpowered hardware, and things get even worse. In a nutshell, the K7 doesn’t really bring much to the table. And at Rs 9,500, it’s not something we would recommend you to go for.