Dual screen LG G8X phone

[denverpilot]

Been playing with Android lately and the numerous bog standard glass slabs seemed relatively boring.

Noticed that the LG G8X dual screen phone is discounted nearly everywhere right now. A year old, kinda didn’t take off due to original pricing, etc etc etc.

This thing is running about $450 everywhere right now for the phone plus the dual screen “case”. Has a reasonably fast processor, 6GB of RAM, and generally is close to “flagship” specs in the Android world other than the displays not being 4K.

Anyway. The dual screen thing is really neat. Multitasking is fun. PoA Tapatalk on the left, watching the YT video mentioned in the post on the right...

Blame the potato photo on the iPhone that took it. Haha...

Also got a chance to play with android’s work profile thing since we have that level of mobile device control at work. It’s actually really nice to have, say, two copies of slack... the work profile slack attached to work stuff, the non-work-profile “copy” hooked to personal slack channels.

Still getting used to other Android things. Some I like a lot, others Apple does better, but the Android has some impressive things like context aware hardware reconfiguration ... leave home or work, turn off WiFi, save a touch of battery... reverse that for Bluetooth... stuff like that. Neat.

Haven’t played with any aviation apps on it yet. I’m sure none do “proper” dual screen, so nothing interesting to test with those. Browsers and such, many have cool features... like a button in chrome to pop the link you’re holding down open on the other screen in another chrome window.

It has some warts like all LG devices seem to, but it’s way more interesting than all the other glass slabs everyone makes now.

Oh and the Quad DAC driving real wired headphones? Absolutely the best audio I’ve seen natively out of a mobile gadget in eons. Makes the others sound truly awful in comparison.

Right now I just have a pre-paid SIM in it with an alternate phone number and rate limited unlimited data. It’s feeling like it’ll end up being my daily driver and I’ll swap the numbers around.

 

[asicer]

So if you can get separate keyboards to come up on both screens, you're going to double the number of words per post?

 

[GRG55]

Can it make and receive phone calls?
Just askin'

 

[denverpilot]

I should have mentioned... Not only are these relatively cheap brand new, but refurbs and in this case, an open box one at a big box store, even cheaper.

I was out the door for about $380.

A one year old flagship with two nice quality bright screens for less than $400? Sold! It was $800 a year ago.

 

[MuseChaser]

I'm intrigued, Nate. I use Mint Mobile (an MVNO using T-mobile network). The cheapest price I can find right now is via eBay, ($310) but only works with AT&T. Best Buy has the next best price at $350 if you activate with Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint.. no mention of T-Mobile. With no activation, it's $450. May I ask where you were out the door at $380 (pm is fine if you'd rather), and if it would work on T-mobile network?

FWIW, I've been using Mint Mobile (Ryan Reynold's company) for over a year, and it's incredibly cheap and works great... AND you can get an actual human, EASILY, on the phone to talk to for support (did I mention easily?) who actually knows what they're doing. Couldn't be happier. Would be happy to send referrals to anyone interested... we'd all get free stuff. PM me if interested. NEVER did that before.. I hate that kind of marketing. I never leave reviews, even if solicited (OK, ESPECIALLY if solicited)... but, well, I like the company's service. Period. I have no other interest, investments in Mint, or anything. I probably don't agree with Ryan's politics. Still... it's great service at VERY inexpensive prices compared to the big four.

 

[denverpilot]

I'm intrigued, Nate. I use Mint Mobile (an MVNO using T-mobile network). The cheapest price I can find right now is via eBay, ($310) but only works with AT&T. Best Buy has the next best price at $350 if you activate with Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint.. no mention of T-Mobile. With no activation, it's $450. May I ask where you were out the door at $380 (pm is fine if you'd rather), and if it would work on T-mobile network?

FWIW, I've been using Mint Mobile (Ryan Reynold's company) for over a year, and it's incredibly cheap and works great... AND you can get an actual human, EASILY, on the phone to talk to for support (did I mention easily?) who actually knows what they're doing. Couldn't be happier.

It's capable of all US networks and appears to even have the odd-ball new bands. I don't believe any were ever truly carrier locked but you could ask the seller. I ran into that silliness too, looking at them.

Also be cautious -- many resellers are selling refurbs without the dual-screen case. That's a rougly $200 mistake. Along a similar vein I spotted a couple eBay sellers selling the cousin, the G8 NON-"X" -- a nice phone with a higher res screen and different internal storage and RAM specs, which is a good way to spot confused or lazy sellers -- as the G8X.

(I believe all G8X had 128GB internal storage and 6GB RAM.)

Anyway... As far as carriers go, I purposefully put this one on our little regional cell company east of Denver where I live, called Viaero. Their FCC coverage doesn't extend into town (it goes on out northeast into Nebraska, etc...) so they have a roaming deal nationwide with both AT&T and T-Mobile.

I've been playing with seeing where the switchover point is, and the inevitable dropped calls we see at the RF boundaries around here...

And... when in town, I have forced this phone on to both AT&T and T-Mobile LTE and both worked flawlessly including so-called "HD Voice".

With T-Mobile and Sprint now acting as a single network, I forgot to force a Sprint LTE connection but I'll give that a shot next time I'm across the FCC license border and the phone sees a Sprint tower.

I suspect you're running into what I saw -- refurbishers selling the bare phone without the dual display case (the second display is housed in a case that snaps on to the main phone which can be removed) and have no idea if they're selling the G8 or G8X. The G8 did come in carrier specific flavors. As far as I can tell the G8X did not.

Edit: To be clear the g8 is not dual screen and doesn't support it at all.

But they are both low volume sales numbers and the resellers aren't paying attention to what they actually have in inventory.

As far as this one goes it was an open box from the Best Buy website witb curbside pickup.

One more weirdness to note. The main phone charges via USB-C which is spiffy. It also has wireless charging. However... When it's in the dual-screen case, LG didn't have enough room to put a USB-C on the case and it uses the USB-C connector to drive the second screen. So the case has a magnetic port like a MagSafe Apple like thing -- and the dual screen case comes with a magnetic adapter that you plug USB-C into.

Many refurbs they've lost this little adapter. LG and most places sell them for $7.99 so no biggie. Buy two. LG charges shipping. B&H doesn't. Amazon only has one seller of them at $24. It's another way to find out if a refurb seller is clueless - ask if they are selling the dual screen case and if the magnetic charge adapter is included.

In the meantime if yours doesn't come with the adapter you can either wirelessly charge or take the phone out of the dual screen case and plug in USB-C.

Supposedly the phone will fast charge at something like 21W, but the included LG USB-A to USB-C charging brick is 18W. Various reports it is picky about the fastest speed chargers. This one had the 18W brick and it's a little over an hour and a half to do a "nearly dead to full charge". It also supposedly will do the faster wireless charge but my wireless chargers are all slower ones.

Hope all that helps. Took me a few days to figure all that out from YT videos and specs. And then running into what I think you are, weird resellers. Quite a few selling the main phone by itself for $300-ish, or trying to anyway.

BTW this one was listed as "excellent" by best buy and that means it has all hardware on an open box. It was missing the magnetic adapter. After showing the manager it's a standard and needed hardware item that comes with the dual screen case, they tossed me a discount to replace it.