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- [Alex] Competing directly with Samsung
can be a thankless task.
Just ask LG which has toiled in the shadow of its
local rival just about as long as it's been making phones.
Even the genuinely good LG G6 struggled to move the needle
when pitted against the Samsung Galaxy S8.
So now there's the LG V30.
It's a much a successor to the G6 as it is an other LG phone
and the V30 continues the no-nonsense approach
of that device while also bringing you the upgrades
we expect from something in the V series.
High quality audio, great cameras,
and unique new video features.
I'm Alex with Android Central,
and this is our LG V30 video review.
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First of all I should mention up front
that we're using a pre-production version of the LG V30.
LG cedes these early devices to press
ahead of their phones going to full production.
But while they're usually representative
of the final product, this is not strictly speaking
a retail-ready phone just yet.
We'll follow up with some updated impressions
when we get final devices, so be sure to subscribe
so you don't miss any updates.
With that out of the way,
let's deal with another really obvious point.
Yep, the V30 looks kinda like a Galaxy S8.
From the curved corners, minimal bezel,
polished metal trim, and tall aspect ratio,
you might well mistake it for a Samsung phone
at least from a distance.
Up close the differences do come in to focus.
The V30 has a six inch display,
and is smaller in all directions than the S8 plus,
as well as using a shorter, but still pretty tall,
18 by 9 aspect ratio.
It's also flatter, thinner, and lighter,
and that gives it a distinct in-hand feel.
It's actually a bit easier to hold on to
than its contemporaries in the Samsung camp.
The screen is a P-OLED panel from LG display,
the first in an LG phone since 2015's G Flex 2.
Back then LG's OLED technology was, well, bad.
Really bad.
But I'm happy to report that LG has made a huge amount
of progress over the past two years,
to the point where the V30 screen is almost as good
as Samsung Super AMOLED.
Samsung definitely has the edge here,
there's no doubt about that, but LG's latest screen
at Quad HD plus resolution looks fantastic and punchy.
And unlike some of those older OLED panels
is clear enough to use outdoors in bright daylight.
If anything, the display's weakness is in low light.
It has an unfortunate tendency to crush shadow detail
at low brightness levels which isn't great
if you're watching Netflix by candlelight
or trying to judge exposure in a low light photo.
This is an unfortunate holdover from the days
of the G Flex 2, and it's easily fixed in software
by simply raising the floor for brightness,
but that's not exactly ideal either.
One reason why you may prefer the V30's panel to Samsung's
is because of its curves or rather lack thereof.
You have to look ever so closely to make out
the very very slight curve of the panel at its edges.
That means you're not dealing with a Samsung style
colour shifting around the sides.
The flatter display makes the V30's side bezels
more pronounced, which might seem undesirable,
but also makes it less prone to
accidental touches around the sides.
It remains to be seen how well the V30
will stand the test of time.
After a couple of weeks,
mine has only picked up minor abrasions.
And the use of Gorilla Glass 5
on both the front and the back
should make it as resilient as possible for a phone
whose surface area is made up almost entirely of glass.
The phone certainly feels solid and well put together
despite weighing even less than the G6.
You could say that it's lack of heft
makes it feel a little insubstantial,
but at the same time it's easier to one hand,
and it lacks the awkward top-heaviness of phones
like the Note 8 and GS8 plus.
Given its six inch display, you might expect the V30
to feel like a big phone, but that really isn't the case.
The in-hand and in-pocket feel is closer
to that of a 5.5 inch device with a 16 by 9 screen.
In other words, you get a big screen,
but it's not so massive as to become unmanageable.
Again, examples of the opposite include
many of Samsung's latest devices.
And this is basically table stakes at this point,
but, yes, the LG V30 is water-resistant, rated IP 68,
so you need't worry about using it out in the rain.
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There's nothing at all too surprising
in the V30 spec sheets.
It's a run of the mill hardware load out
for a 2017 flagship.
Snapdragon 835, four gigs of ram, 64 gigs of storage
plus microSD, and a 3,300 milli Ampere hour battery.
Now more phones are starting to push to six gigs of ram,
but I've never really felt like the V30 is weaker
for sticking at four.
Apps still load lightning fast,
I've noticed no drop frames in the interface,
nor of app reloads that become particularly problematic.
It also goes without saying Qualcomm's
latest mobile platform has more than enough power
for whatever gaming needs you might have.
Battery life too has been great.
We've seen many phones this year with around
a 3,300 milli Ampere hour battery and relatively large
screens to boot, and thanks to more efficient CPUs
and displays you can absolutely get a full day
out of this kind of battery capacity.
The V30 has regularly gotten me at the end of a 16 hour day
with around 4.5 hours of screen on time.
You're not looking at multiple days per charge by any means,
but again, I'm fine with that on this kind of device.
And when it is time to recharge,
Qualcomm quick charge three and USB power delivery
are both supported here.
The only area of relative weakness has been standby time
with the always on display enabled.
Overnight I found the V30 will lose around 10% of charge
if the always on display is enabled
or if it's not plugged in,
which is more than many high-end rivals.
On the subject of charging, it's great to see that
there are no longer any weird regional variations
on the V30's hardware like we saw in the G6.
All V30s have wireless charging built in
and LG's famed Quad DAC.
As other manufacturers come up with increasingly dubious
reasons to get rid of the headphone jack,
LG is embracing wired audio, and the results are glorious.
If you have a nice pair of studio headphones,
you'll really appreciate the stronger output of the V30
to the point where it will be hard
to go back to anything else.
And LG's also partnering with B&O Play,
hence the branding around the back of this European unit,
to include some surprisingly good wired earbuds in the box.
Unfortunately though, on device audio is nothing special,
and the bottom firing speaker is just okay.
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To me what really sets the V30 apart is it's camera setup.
The headline spec is a 16 megapixel main camera
with optical stabilisation behind an f/1.6 lens,
a first in smartphone photography.
The secondary wide angle shooter has a 13 megapixel sensor
like the G6 only now behind a brighter f/1.9 lens,
and this makes for a powerful photographic duo.
Despite having small one micron pixels,
the V30's main camera takes phenomenal photos.
The high resolution of bright lens plus OIS
will help you capture sharp, clear photos even in low light,
with clarity and fidelity to match the Galaxy S8.
One thing I've noticed in this early phone ware is that
V30 will tend towards underexposing night shots
in some situations, so occasionally I've had to bump up
the exposure a little to compensate.
LG has also thankfully paired back some of the
over sharpening we've seen in the G6
and many of it's earlier cameras, which means
more fine detail is preserved with less artifacting.
There's a mess of different shooting modes to explore,
though as is often the case
with the best smartphone cameras,
most of the time you'll just want to stick to full auto.
If you want to play around with
the creative photo modes though, the manual shooting mode
has been updated to include Graphi,
a new app with downloadable ISO shutter speed
and white balance presets for different kinds of shots.
As good as the V30's main camera is, and it is really good,
the biggest improvement might actually be
in the wide angle camera.
It still captures 120 degree field of view,
only now with less distortion around the edges than the G6,
and with significantly improved low light performance
thanks to that brighter lens and the better post processing
afforded by the Snapdragon 835.
Of course you'll still get better night shots
out of the main camera, but it's really surprised me
how usable the wide angle is even in
relatively dimly lit indoor conditions.
And that's great because wide angle photography
is by far the most fun thing about using an LG phone.
Say what you like about portrait mode
and fake depth of field, for my money there's no substitute
for being able to simply press a button
and instantly capture these wider, more dramatic scenes.
It's always sort of an implied that the V in LG's V series
stands for video, and so it's no surprise to see a bevvy
of new videographic capabilities in this new phone.
The new LG centre log mode takes inspiration
from the techniques used by professional filmmakers,
and it lets you capture footage that on the surface
might appear more washed out, but it's captured in a way
that lets you bring out more shadow or highlight detail
when you process it later.
There are also a bunch of presets in the centre log mode
that give your footage a particular kind of look,
and these are more than just Instagram style filters.
They actually change the way the colour is processed,
and that can dramatically alter the look of your video.
I love the idea of this, but I think it runs up against
the main problem of high end photo features
like raw capture in smartphones.
In order to have these high end video features,
you need a great camera to begin with,
but a great camera is often so good in auto mode
that there's no real incentive to explore
these more exotic shooting modes.
Personally I found the new cinematic mode to be more useful
for its point zoom feature, which let's you smoothly zoom
into any point of the frame without the jarring motion
you usually get from digital zoom in video.
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So the camera is clearly where
most of the software effort has gone in the V30,
but it's worth mentioning the handful of other tweaks
that lend this phone a bit more polished than the G6
on the software side.
Touch response has been tightened up,
making the phone feel a good deal quicker.
The V30's haptics are also much improved.
Vibration responses now feel much sharper
and nowhere near as rattly as they were in the G6.
It's a small thing, but again,
a big part of the overall polish of the V30.
LG's answer to fans missing the old second display
from the V20 is the new floating bar,
which is essentially a cross between the old ticker display
and Samsung's edge screen.
Tap the little tab in the corner of the screen
to bring up app shortcuts, screen capture functions,
slightly new GIF recorder, or music controls.
Some of the other functions of the second screen
have been rolled over into the always on display,
which gives you quick access to settings, music controls,
and notification icons even when the screen is off.
For me this is one those borderline useful features
I never really got around to using much.
There are too many taps and swipes needed to use it properly
and it animates too slowly for it to be a real time saver
in any way.
Thankfully LG's made it really simple
to turn off the floating bar once you inevitably decide
that it's not for you.
Speaking of borderline useful, face unlock.
LG has built out this secondary unlock method
which begins scanning as soon as you raise the phone.
It's technically impressive
though also less secure than a fingerprint.
And really with the V30's fingerprint scanner
being located in a place you can actually reach,
it's just not that necessary.
Other software changes are pretty subtle.
There are some new widgets,
including a larger weather widget.
The alternative launcher with it's own app draw
has been spruced up.
It's no longer just the old launcher from the LG G4.
And the software is now based around Android 7.1.2,
so not oreo just yet, but at least your on
the very latest version of NuGet, which brings
helpful additions like app shortcut menus in the launcher.
All in all, LG's software is still a bit
of an acquired taste, but it's slowly creeping
in the right direction, and this is by far
the most polished LG UI I've seen to date.
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The LG V30 gets an awful lot right.
It would be easy to call it a Samsung copycat.
Nevertheless, the design continues the no-nonsense trend
of the G6 with better quality than ever.
The display, despite some low light issues
is a step beyond any previous LG phone in terms of quality.
The size is near perfect for me, giving me a big display
in a more ergonomic handset than Samsung.
And the camera builds on everything I loved about the G6
with better low light performance, superior processing,
and new video tricks that I might not use all the time,
but nice to have all the same.
LG's phones will inevitably be judged by the standards
of its main competitor, and that comparison is actually
really interesting this year.
LG has retained all the things that make its phones unique
like high end video, the wide angle camera, and a Quad DAC
while also shipping with fewer annoyances
than its Samsung rivals.
The fingerprint scanner is in a place
that you can actually reach.
There's no frustrating animation jack,
no bigsby button.
So as much as I could praise the great design
and camera features, there is another
very compelling argument for the V30.
In a world of headphone jacks going away,
and weird screen dimples, and $700 phones
with inexplicably bad cameras,
and dumb fingerprint placements, and bad biometrics,
the V30 is a phone with no BS
that just does everything well.
And then it goes the extra mile with this phenomenal
dual camera setup.
And it does all that at a price considerably below
many of its main rivals.
The V30's gonna have its work cut out
going up against the Note 8s, and pixels, and iPhones
of the world when it launches.
But for the moment, it's easily
among the best android phones I've used,
and it has every chance of becoming a sleeper hit
for late 2017.
Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe
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everything we do here at Android Central.
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