The curved G Flex 2 may be the star of LG's MWC show this year, but its new series of mid-range phones prove that you don't necessarily need to spend a lot of cash to get the very best features. We've already seen the curved LG Magna, but now it's the turn of the LG Leon, the third sibling in LG's new family of four.
Unlike the Magna, the Leon has a completely flat screen, but it still uses LG's new 'in-cell touch' technology. This removes certain layers of the display and integrates the touch sensor directly into the screen, allegedly making it more responsive and easier to see outdoors. It's also meant to improve the display's black levels and provide greater clarity.
The 4.5in display certainly looked impressive for such a budget device, but colours were far less punchy here than on the Magna. Its 854x480 resolution was also noticeably jagged in places, particularly when looking at text and app icons. It's not a complete deal-breaker, but its pixel density of 220 pixels-per-inch is very much on the boundary of what's acceptable for a screen of this size.
Fortunately, the Leon's snappy quad-core 1.2GHz processor more than makes up for its lacklustre display. We weren't able to run any benchmarks during our hands on time with the phone, but Android 5.0 was lovely and smooth when we were browsing through the phone's menu screens and we didn't notice any lag or judder during menu transitions.
Our biggest disappointment about the Leon, though, is its slightly poorly designed rear home and volume rocker buttons. Whereas the Magna's buttons are all roughly the same size, the Leon has a smaller main home button and larger circular indentations that act as the phone's volume rocker controls.
This difference in size makes it much more difficult to actually find the home button, as we found our fingers were constantly resting in either one of the volume rocker indents rather than directly on the home button. As a result, it's less intuitive to use than the Magna as we often found we were hitting the incorrect buttons when returning to the home screen.
Above the rear controls lies the Leon's 5-megapixel camera. While its shots won't be nearly as detailed as the Magna's 8-megapixel sensor, it does come with all the same camera features. Chief among these is Gesture Shot, which allows you to activate selfies on its front-megapixel VGA camera with a simple hand gesture so you don't have to tap the screen.
LG's yet to announce UK pricing and availability for the Leon, but LG told us it's expected to launch within the next few months. We'll bring you our final verdict as soon as we get our hands on a full review sample.