Editor's choice: LG G7 ThinQ

My favorite phone released this year is not the fastest performance, is not the best camera, and has a battery life worse than average. It also has a superfluous button for a virtual badistant that I can not reprogram for something more useful and has the worst name for a phone I've seen in years. This is not a phone that I recommend most people should buy. But the LG G7 ThinQ (I told you that it has the worst name) is my favorite phone right now because it meets my specific set of needs and needs better than n '. whatever else at the moment.

The main reason why I like the G7 so much is that it's the android phone that best mimics the iPhone's ability to cram a big screen into a frame that can still to be managed in one hand. I love the design of the iPhone X because it is optimized for the way I use a phone, which consists of a lot of vertical reading while on the go. The big skinny phones are the best for that. But I do not necessarily like iOS, and I often want the flexibility and the interface of Android.

LG displays the notch and the 19.5: 9 format of the iPhone. the G7 also has a tall, lean appearance, but has stretched the dimensions of the screen to a diagonal of 6.1 inches, which allows even more real estate screen. At the same time, the G7 is only 2.8 inches wide, which allows me to easily reach the screen with my thumb when I use the phone with one hand. It is narrower than any other Android phone with a design similar to that of the iPhone X that I've used, like the OnePlus 6 or the Huawei P20 Pro, but it has a larger screen than the Samsung S9 or the iPhone X. The G7 has more of a chin "(the bezel at the bottom) than the iPhone X, but that does not bother me, nor the notch at the top of the screen.

But the screen is not the only thing that makes me go back to the G7.It has a headphone jack, which does not bother me for use with headphones ( I was on the wireless earphone train long before the headphone jack started to follow the buffalo's path), but that matters a lot when I'm in my car wife and want to plug into the phone. auxiliary input and recharge my phone at the same time, without having to deal with the terrible configuration of the car Bluetooth.

It has the loudest and clearest speaker that I've ever had I heard on a phone, is great when I watch YouTube sitting on my couch, something that I do a lot. This is not a stereo configuration, as many other phones offer, and it is possible to block the speaker with your hand if you hold the phone wrong, but that is so strong and so clear that these things do not bother me. LG's internal "Boombox" resonance chamber is not just a marketing gadget, it vibrates the entire device as the volume is increased and makes the output even stronger when the G7 rests on a table.

Photo Chris Welch / The Verge

The G7 also has a wireless charging, which I use whenever I work from my desk at the desk and on my nightstand every night . Wireless charging is not as fast as wired charging, of course (and the LG does not have the best Samsung wireless charging) but it 's extremely convenient and, whenever I' re on the go uses a phone that I miss, I miss my phone on a charging stand or stand when I arrive at my desk. It also helps me manage the battery life of the G7, which is much shorter than that of many other phones.

LG V30, the G7 also has the best haptic vibration feedback available in the Android world. This is not as good as the Apple Taptic Engine in the iPhone, but it is damn close, and shame on all other Android phones. As my colleague Sam Byford has said, "LG continues to make phones that make it nice to keep a space to delete a lot of text."

The G7 is also pretty good in the performance, software departments and camera for my needs. I'd like the camera to be faster (it's one of the slowest cameras I've used) and I'd love to have a better camera Autonomy, but none of these problems is so serious that I am forced to give up the other things that the G7 brings to the table. I've long hated LG's software design, but after years of refinement, the G7's interface has come to a point where it does not bother me and does not turn my stomach with a bad aesthetic. Since Android, I am also able to customize it extensively, to the point of bringing the gesture interface of the iPhone X.

I have, well sure, any other complaints with the G7, but these would apply to any phone that I will pick up in 2018. I'm paranoid that I will scratch the display, so for the very first time, I put a screen protector on my personal phone. Before buying a G7 with my own money, I used our LG demo unit for a few weeks and of course, I scratched the screen right now. There are some scratches on my iPhone X screen that I can not see and that drive me crazy, so the G7 is definitely not unique in this respect.

I am also extremely suspicious that LG is providing software updates in a timely manner. despite the recent launch of a special software update initiative. The story says that the G7 will be forgotten and will receive few infrequent updates on the software front. My Project Fi model runs on Android 8.0 with June security patches, but who knows where it will be in a few months when Android 9.0 P will officially fall.

Photo of Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

I'm looking at the field of phones released this year and I look forward to what's going on in the back half, it's hard to see anything else which better meets my needs than the G7 right now. Google will certainly have a new range of Pixel products this fall, but they will likely not have energy efficient design or wireless charging, and they will definitely not have a headphone jack. Samsung and LG are both expected to have new models, but they will be bigger phones, and the next range of Apple iPhones will not answer any of my complaints with the current iPhone X.

All this is to say, for my wants and needs, LG's goofily named G7 ThinQ is the best phone released this year. Who would have had that?