You’ve got to hand it to LG: the company’s not afraid to try doing things a little differently with its phones. Whether that means a flagship with rear-mounted buttons, a curved display, or now – a secondary screen – LG’s got this irrepressible urge to push its phone hardware into new, largely uncharted territory. At least, we’ve seen the odd phone before with a secondary ticker-style display, but with its new V10, LG’s trying to prove that handsets like the old Samsung Continuum were on to a good idea, and that a low-power, immediately available notification screen has a lot to offer when paired with modern smartphone hardware. We went hands-on with the V10 at LG’s New York launch event to see how well this all came together.

Mind you, the V10 is a lot more than just a gimmick, and while that 1040 x 160 extension of the main display is bullet point one on our list of V10 features, the phone also offers a 5.7-inch quad HD main screen, beefy 4GB of RAM, a rugged construction, and an unusual dual-sensor front camera design – one that allows for the capture of some exceptionally wide-angle shots. All that’s driven by a capable Snapdragon 808 SoC, and gets its juice from a big, removable 3000 mAh battery. Extras like a home-button-integrated fingerprint scanner help round-out the package.

But let’s not mince words; you’re curious about that secondary screen. Is it at all usable perched up there at the tippy-top? What else is it good for besides acting as a quick-launch bar? Watch on to get our initial impressions of LG’s latest smartphone.