At Easter this year LG threw a spanner in the world of smartphones
Announcing the V 30 an excellent device for the focus on video. This is our full review
I'll jump onto that in a sec but before I do if you're not already subscribed to that greater subscribe
It's how you're going to stay on top of everything that we do right the V 30
This is a 6-inch screen device ip68 water and dust resistant. It's got a quad HD
Quad HD pOLED display pretty much everything you want in a smartphone and around the back
It's got a sensibly position fingerprint scanner and a dual
camera the V 30 spinner and lighter than the g6 the note 8 and the Galaxy S 8 plus
And it's got a better screen to bezel ratio than the g6 before it as well available in four colors
lilac silver blue and black all with glossy reflective fingerprint loving finishes
You've got Gorilla Glass surrounding in a metal frame USB type-c at the bottom as well as a loudspeaker
And this thing also has a headphone jack as for the screen
It's 6 inches so it's a nice big phone quad HD resolution means it's also incredibly sharp and the pOLED technology under the hood
That's plastic OLED organic light-emitting diode means
It's pretty much on par with AMOLEDs from Samsung is fundamentally the same
Technology you can also do some cool stuff in the settings to drop the virtual resolution
So it consumes a bit less battery
with great viewing angles an excellent finish on the glass
So it feels really rich when you're gliding your thumb across it this whole phone from design to screen get some massive thumbs up
Inside the phone it's Android 7 not Android 8 so not the latest version as found on the Google pixel and the new Sony Xperia
X8 one still it's a really stable experience considering
This is a pre-production version of the V 30 the user interface is fun its feature packed
But it isn't stock so any Android purists would be well off to opt for a pixel or indeed
Overlay a custom skin from the Google Play Store the features on there that are different though are really useful
There's something called knock code on there so you can unlock your phone with a few taps in addition
You can add a navigation icon
So you can bring down the notifications tray without having to reach to the top of your phone perfect for a 6-inch screen?
Device, and anyone who has a V20 is wondering where's the second screen on this thing?
I'm afraid it's gone, but that isn't the end of the world LG's put something called a floating bar on here
You can bring it into frame when the phone's on by tapping a little arrow on the right-hand side
Or when the phone's off it just appears on the always-on display
Handy shortcuts the dual camera setup on the back of the LG V30 is the best that we've seen from LG today
It's one 16 megapixel regular field of view camera with an F. 1.6. Glass lens and the second camera is a wide-angle
120 degree 13 megapixel snapper with an F, 1.9 aperture now
I can't quite say that this is the best camera phone around, but it's definitely the best
Wide-angle camera phone around and the pictures are so so good that it's pretty much
Competitive on every front all the additional shooting modes are also excellent only adding to the value
You've got full manual, this thing can shoot raw and you've got something called guide shot
Which is just a really handy way of framing your picture by numbers in particular my favorite thing about the V
30 is that it doesn't over process images as much as the LG G 6 did so you haven't got that
Pretty mottled effect that you had on low-light shots with its predecessor the video is where this phone really
Differentiates though not necessarily with regards to image quality. It's good, but it's nothing we haven't seen before
It's down to software. Open cine video mode and first off
There's something awesome called point zoom you can zoom in on a part of the screen that isn't necessarily in the center
It's smooth and looks excellent on top of that you can grade your videos on the fly with some neat
Instagram esque filters that are just much much more comprehensive than on any other smartphone
The surround microphones work well
So this image stabilization down the line will also be able to export the metadata
Taken when grading the videos and import it into the Vinci resolve or premier Pro so that we can edit it
Professionally afterwards under the hood you've got a snapdragon 835 pegged with 4 gigabytes of RAM and that is plenty of power for pretty much
everybody
Benchmarks like a champion and gaming. It'll handle anything that you throw at it
The only downside is wouldn't have minded a bit more room for some heavy multitasking
Background processors may close a little bit earlier on the V 30 than say on the 8 gig OnePlus 5
But personally I didn't know it's any slowdown and I doubt you will either
Multimedia is excellent on this phone
Especially when you're looking at it the 6 inch full vision
plastic OLED screen supports HDR and videos pictures even reading an email it looks sensational
Where it falls down is audio, but specifically from the loudspeaker?
Plug in some headphones and the quad DAC in this thing makes it sound really good. No matter what headphones
You've got it's really smart
it'll figure out if you've got a low-end pair of headphones or a high-end pair and gives you some prompts so you can tailor the
Experience as best possible in terms of the connection
So it's also better than we've seen from LG for a long time fast LTE wireless
Charging and you've got NFC as well
The only thing that's really missing is an infrared blaster
But we're not gonna complain too much about that and now on the wall is charging
it isn't quite as quick as Samsung's super fast wireless charging, but the fact that there is a bonus with a
3300 milliamp battery under the hood that lost a full day
Even with relatively heavy usage you probably creep into - if you're using it lightly
The LG V 30 is one of the best smartphones around definitely the best from LG
Make sure you check out our other videos and head of techradar.com to see the full review by cameron. Thanks for watching