- [Alex] The LG V30 and Samsung Galaxy Note eight are two
of the biggest Android flagships right now.
They're not exactly direct competitors, though.
If nothing else, there's a big price
and size difference between them.
Still, they're both significant launches
in the Android calendar from two companies
with a well established rivalry.
I'm Alex from Android Central, and I've been
using both the V30 and the Note eight
for the past few weeks.
Here's what I think so far.
(dance music)
Some housekeeping before get underway.
The V30 I've been using isn't final hardware just yet,
so we're going broad strokes in this first comparison.
Remember, things can change between a pre-production
phone like the one I've been using
and a final, boxed retail product.
Although LG attracted some criticism for aping
Samsung's design language with the V30,
these two phones look and feel dramatically
different once you get them in hand.
The note is tall, heavy and chunky.
The V30 is wider yet slimmer and lighter
with more of a curved, organic feel.
LG's phone is infinitely easier to use in one hand
even with its relatively large six inch screen.
The fingerprint scanner is way easier to reach, too,
and the phone itself is nowhere near as tall,
making reaching the notification shade less hazardous.
That said, Samsung has a really decent one-handed mode,
although it's not enabled by default.
Both phones have excellent build quality
on account of the very similar materials
used to build them.
The note feels more substantial in the hand.
A lot of that is just the extra weight,
but I also appreciate the more angular corners
of Samsung's phone.
There's also the fact that you're dealing
with a very overt curve on the screen of the Note eight
compared to the ever-so-slight angle
of the V30's display.
That's mostly a matter of personal taste, though.
So, on the whole, it's kind of a draw in terms of design.
I prefer the stark, slab-like look of Samsung's phone,
but I really appreciate the greater ease of use
the LG's more ergonomic design gives me.
I do think the sheer height of the Note
is gonna be a dealbreaker for some people, though,
whereas the V30 is more of just your standard
big phone size that so many of us are already used to.
The displays of these two phones offer you
more of a clear-cut choice, once again,
in terms of size, if nothing else.
The Note eight's proportions are a bit taller
with an 18.5 by nine aspect ratio
as opposed to the V30's 18 by nine.
Still, the jump from a six inch screen
to the note's 6.3 is palpable.
And, this comparison underscores by Samsung,
for the moment at least, remains the king
of OLED in smartphones.
Not only does it have an eye-searing
1,200 knit daylight mode that gets activated
in very bright conditions, but it also adapts
better to darker situations.
The note doesn't crush shadow details
like the V30 screen does.
I don't want to talk down LG's POLED panel, though.
In most situations, it's great, and a marked
improvement on the G6.
The new problem for LG is the note has arguably
the best screen in any phone.
Audio is yet another point of contrast.
LG has its fantastic quad DAC built into the V30,
which brings some added punch to wide audio.
That's something you'll miss out
on the Samsung side, and actually a feature
that's unique to LG among all its competitors.
Elsewhere it's kind of a wash.
The bottom facing speakers of both the V30
and the Note eight are nothing special,
but at least both come bundled with decent
quality earbuds.
Samsung gives you AKG tuned buds,
whereas LG's partnered with B&O Play.
Overall, in the audio stakes, though,
it's a win for LG thanks to that quad DAC.
LG has also managed to fit wireless charging
inside all V30 models this time around,
not just those sold in the US, which brings
it up to speed with Samsung, a company that's
included this feature in all its flagships since 2015.
There is one truly unique hardware feature
that's still exclusive to the note, though.
That, of course, is the S-pen.
No one's even trying to compete with Samsung
anymore when it comes to a stylus on a high-end smartphone.
For me, the use case for the S-pen hasn't really
been about drawing or note taking, but rather
using it in a way that I'd use a track pad
or mouse on a PC.
Samsung's built out a tonne of proprietary features
around the S-pen, many of which are great,
but, for me, it's the precise input that it
gives me that has the real value.
That's something that only the note can offer.
As for LG, it's gotten rid of the old second display
from earlier V-series phones, instead replacing
it with this floating bar, and, like I said
in our initial review, I'm not a huge fan of this.
The options there aren't massively useful,
and it animates too slowly to really save you any time,
but at least it's easy to turn off.
On the inside, both phones offer very familiar
spec sheets.
Snapdragon 835, and both in the US, internationally,
Samsung uses its own Exynos equivalent.
64 gigs of storage is standard,
and 3,300 milliamp-hour batteries.
Samsung's ahead on RAM with six gigs
to the V30's four gigs, but I don't feel like
there's a huge advantage there for the Note
in day-to-day performance.
Maybe it's a little better at keeping apps
in memory, but the difference is tiny.
The bottom line is that both phones are
really strong performers.
Even battery life is pretty much identical
across both models.
Despite the larger display for Note eight,
it has mostly kept pace with the V30
throughout my daily usage patterns.
Both will give you a full day, though probably
not much more than that.
Between three and four hours of screen-on time
while I'm outside on LTE.
Both phones are IP68 rated as well, meaning they're
sufficiently water resistant, good enough
to survive a dunk in the sink or to be used
outside in the rain.
LG has often lagged behind much of the Android
competition in terms of software, while Samsung
has only recently started to build out a UI
with a futuristic vibe that genuinely looks good.
However, both are on pretty firm footing
with their latest phones.
The Note eight's software is all but identical
to the Galaxy S8's except for some new S-pen
features and subtly improved performance
thanks to that extra two gigs of RAM.
Meanwhile, the V30 takes what we knew
from the G6 and tunes up its performance
while also smoothing out some UI hiccups.
LG's haptic feedback is improved, too,
as has touch response.
There's nothing overtly weird about the way
LG's software looks or works,
and, considering how overcooked some of its
earlier software efforts have been,
that's an important development.
Overall, I think I prefer the slightly more
futuristic feel of Samsung's skin, but I am
absolutely fine with the look and feel
of LG's software as well.
Perhaps the biggest functional advantage
for Samsung comes with its multitasking features
as well as multi-window, which is now a standard
part of Android, you can save pairs of apps
to load at the same time, and quickly load
apps in a floating window, which is a great way
to take advantage of the Note's enormous screen.
There's also a helpful one-handed mode gesture,
which is something you'll miss out on the V30.
And, finally, the one area where the differences
between the V30 and Note eight really show: the cameras.
Around the back, both feature jewel camera arrays,
but they work completely differently.
Samsung gives you two 12 megapixel sensors,
a standard camera behind an F-1.7 lens
and a telephoto camera with an F-2.4 aperture.
Both are optically stabilised, giving the opportunity
to capture clearer low-light zoomed shots.
On the LG side, it's all about wide angle photography.
The standard camera has a super bright F-1.6 lens,
though it's more pixels on the sensor than Samsung;
just one micron as opposed to 1.4 on the Note.
And, then you've got a 13 megapixel, 120 degree
wide angle shooter behind an impressive F-1.9 lens.
There's no optical stabilisation on LG's second lens,
but still, the company has made huge strides
in low light performance in the wide angle since the G6.
For the most part, the main cameras of these
two phones are so close as to be near identical.
The focal length of LG's camera is slightly longer,
and Samsung captures slightly more colour detail,
whereas LG favours sharper fine detail.
But, besides that, these two main cameras
basically provide an identical experience.
Both are highly capable, whether you're shooting
in conditions with challenging dynamic range
or at nighttime with very dim light.
The biggest question is whether you want
wide angle photography or a telephoto lens.
There's really no correct answer for everyone here.
It's more a question of personal taste,
and, personally, I prefer the added freedom that to be able
to capture a dramatic wide angle shot gives me.
It's always been one of my favourite things
about using an LG camera.
Samsung's telephoto option is all well and good,
and can capture some unique shots in its own right.
However, I don't feel the telephoto is a huge value add.
The light focus of the Note eight is hit and miss,
and there's clearly some software work to be done there.
LG also has some unique video features loaded
on the V30, the most promising of which is
the new LG cine-lock mode, which captures footage
in a way that lets you bring out more shadow,
highlight and colour detail when you process it later.
The Note eight is a capable video camera
in its own right with impressive software stabilisation,
but, if you're gonna process your video in Final Cut
or Adobe Premier, you'll find LG's shooting mode
will give you more freedom and likely better looking
footage at the end of it.
Ultimately, it's really hard to call an overall winner here.
These are two great phones that take different
approaches to their design, and have different
priorities in terms of the technology
and the feature set.
If you go with the V30, you'll save a couple
of hundred dollars compared to the Note eight,
while getting a more portable handset that's
easier to hold and just as fast
with fantastic wide audio capabilities,
some unique video recording features
and a really fun wide angle camera.
Go for the Note and you'll pay more
but get a bigger phone with a better screen,
all the functionality of the S-pen,
the best telephoto lens on any smartphone,
and a great looking software loadout
with more multitasking options than you'll
know what to do with.
If your buying decision comes down to price,
especially if you're purchasing outright,
then maybe it'll be hard to justify
the extra cost for the Note compared to the
cheaper and equally capable V30, but if you're
the kind of person that wants the biggest,
most powerful, most impressive handset,
then there's no denying that's the Note eight.
Hit the comments, let us know which one you choose,
LG V30 or Galaxy Note eight, and subscribe
so you don't miss our coverage of both phones
here on YouTube.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
(dance music)