Try as phone manufacturers might to convince
us, smartphones in 2018 do not have AI features. They may be marketed so, but
AI is Jude Law directed by Spielberg or a dog robot opening a door. It’s
not half-baked software features on a smartphone’s camera.
LG released the V30S ThinQ at MWC 2018 promising
an updated V30 but with ‘new integrated AI’. This is as misleading as the
frustratingly pointless features themselves – but with better hardware specs
than the old V30, it’s a better phone.
ThinQ (pronounces ‘thing-queue’, apparently)
is LG’s new branding for its electronics that have what it deems an AI feature
– it launched ThinQ TVs recently too.
LG’s decision making of late is shaky at best
and the V30S ThinQ’s release in lieu of the expected G7 at MWC is odd – there
is barely anything here different from the first V30. But the V30S is a
beautiful, accomplished smartphone despite the wacky name and awkward release
timing.
It’s just a shame that the display lets it
down by being under par.
Price and availability
At the time of writing the price and release
date of the V30S ThinQ are both unconfirmed.
The original V30 retailed for £799/$799 but
can be found for around £599 at Carphone Warehouse – but be aware
this is not the V30S ThinQ reviewed here.
LG supplied us with a pre-production version of
the V30S that it ensured us is representative of the final product. In our time
with the device, the one hiccup was G Pay (the new replacement for Android Pay)
would not let us add a payment card.
We actually tested the V30S+ ThinQ, the ‘+’
merely denoting the internal storage of 256GB. The 128GB model is the V30S
ThinQ, there is no other difference. Go figure.
Design and build
On the outside, the V30S is exactly the same
as the original V30. The dimensions, materials and weight are all the same, and
only the eagle eyed will spot that the grey and blue colours it comes in are a
shade different.
This means the V30S is a slick, premium
smartphone that we’ve loved using. In-hand feel is superb and makes 2017’s LG
G6 look and feel like a prototype. The generous 18:9 6in OLED screen is easily
manageable even with one hand at most times though typing will likely require
two.
The display itself isn’t curved but the sides
of the bezels ever so slightly are, adding to the smooth, pebble like feel. The
size is proportioned well enough that we weren’t constantly afraid of dropping
it though.
The V30S ThinQ has a glass and metal design.
Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and rear is a real bonus for durability but yes,
that means it attracts fingerprints. Our grey review unit wasn’t too bad though
as lighter colour glass phones show smudges far less than dark ones.
We like the design – it’s superbly understated
and classy in comparison to the modular madness of the LG G5 from a couple of
years back. It holds its own against fellow Korean Samsung and its Galaxy S
line. As with most flagship LG phones, the fingerprint sensor on the rear is
also a physical power button, and it works superbly.
The dual cameras above the sensor are ever so
slightly raised but the phone does not rock too much when used on a table.
There’s also a B&O logo that belies the phone’s audio chops (more on that
further in) and an LG logo. The design also hides antenna lines well in the rim
of the body.
Mercifully there is also a headphone jack.
Along with the Galaxy S9, it could well be one of the only flagships this year
to keep it. We still feel its omission is stupid, so the V30S wins out here
against the Pixel 2 and Sony Xperia XZ2.
IP68 water and dust resistance, the best
available currently to smartphones, rounds off a fairly complete package.
Also, the haptics on the V30S are the best
we’ve yet seen on an Android phone. The iPhone X’s integrated haptic feedback
is still the best there is, but the V30S uses it well too, particularly for
tactile keyboard feedback and switches in the camera app.
Features and specs
As the V30S ThinQ is a tiny update to the V30,
most of the specs are identical. The only hardware changes are an increase in
RAM (from 4GB to 6GB), higher storage options (128GB or 256GB) and the two new
colour hues: New Moroccan Blue and New Platinum Grey.
Everything else is the same, including its
major flaw.
Screen
Unfortunately, the display is the V30S ThinQ’s
Achilles’ heel. It is not good enough for an OLED screen on a £799 phone. It’s
noticeably blotchy and grainy, the best comparison we can think of is that it
looks a little like parchment.
It’s a 6in P-OLED with a 2880×1440 resolution
and 537 ppi density. At a glance, it’s a vibrant, well calibrated OLED and
HDR10 support. But as soon as we noticed the flaw, it ruined the whole
experience of using the phone.
It’s particularly noticeable on white, but
after a while there’s a graininess to the whole display that simply isn’t
present on OLEDs from Samsung, OnePlus and even LG itself in the Google Pixel 2
XL, despite the latter phone screen’s blue tint.
We are being picky, but when you are spending
this much money we feel obliged. Just as you may balk at the blue tint on the
Pixel 2 XL or the less-than-vibrant older LCD iPhones, it must be said that the
display is not good enough here. We’d go so far as to say it’s one of the only
flaws in what is otherwise an outstanding product.
The problems aren’t so noticeable when
watching video, but for all other tasks it’s lurking there. And that is a huge
shame.
The screen is the most important part of a
smartphone, the window through which everything else is viewed. The bad quality
screen on the V30S importantly makes us hesitant to recommend it on a device so
expensive.
Processor, memory
and storage
Just like the V30, there’s a Snapdragon 835
paired with Adreno 540 grahpics, a winning combination. Although there is now
the 845 in the Sony Xperia XZ2 and international Galaxy S9, the 835 is still an
excellent chip also found in the Pixel 2 and OnePlus 5T.
Performance is as slick as an LG phone has
ever been, with animations, app switching and load times all wonderfully fast.
And in the two upgrades over the original V30, there’s now more RAM and
storage.
The V30 has 64GB storage, while the 128GB
model was marketed as the V30+ (the ‘+’ meaning more storage, where for other
phones it often refers to extra screen size).
Here, the V30S ThinQ has 128GB while the V30S+
ThinQ has 256GB. Both new V30S ThinQ models are upped to 6GB RAM from the older
generation’s 4GB.
128GB as a base storage option is great seeing
as most rivals plump for 64GB. And with both new models you get an SD card slot
expandable up to 2TB. If you’re after lots of RAM and storage, the base V30S
has better specs than the base Galaxy S9, which has 64GB and 4GB RAM.
Connectivity and
audio
It’s in audio that the V30S ThinQ truly
shines. What LG has accomplished here is head and shoulders above other phones
and makes some rivals sound woefully worse in comparison.
LG’s partnership with Bang & Olufsen has
clearly paid off. The 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC on-board processes sound better
than any phone we’ve ever heard through headphones. Granted, we have some
high-end headphones at our disposal but LG also includes decent in-ear B&O
headphones in the box. Any included headphones are a rarity these days.
LG’s software team has added sound presets and
digital filters to the phone so you can tweak to your taste. Be warned that the
DAC means audio can go dangerously loud, but the software can also turn down
the volume when you plug in headphones to minimise the risk of hearing damage.
All genres of music sound incredible, and in
our testing songs by David Bowie, LCD Soundsystem and Nine Inch Nails not only
sounded amazing but revealed audio detail we never knew was there before. If
audio is your priority, this is the smartphone to buy in 2018.
A shame then that the one down facing speaker
is less than impressive, with no stereo speaker set up to be seen. It’s fine
for Facebook videos or YouTube but for music and film then you have the
outstanding output from the headphone jack.
You charge the phone via the supplied USB-C
quick charger, and the glass back means it’s also compatible with Qi wireless
chargers, though at a slower rate.
There’s also Bluetooth 5.0 and Google Daydream
compatibility for VR. NFC for mobile payments is present, but our
pre-production model wouldn’t play nice with G Pay so we couldn’t use it.
Cameras
The V30S ThingQ has dual cameras. The main
shooter is a 16Mp sensor with f/1.6 (an aperture in mobile beaten only by the
S9’s variable f/1.5) and autofocus while the wide angle 13Mp lens has f/1.9.
The front facing camera as on the first V30 is
still an underwhelming 5Mp. It baffles us that LG should produce such a premium
phone with such a poor selfie camera. Shots are grainy and unattractive and
nothing close to social media worthy. It’s a poor oversight.
Luckily the rear cameras fair better. Despite
the two sensors, the V30S doesn’t offer the popular portrait mode found on the
iPhone X and 8 Plus, Galaxy S9 or even the single lens Pixel 2. Instead, LG
continues to provide the lesser-found wide angle option.
And you know what, it’s awesome. If you aren’t
into portrait mode and instead simply want to capture more in your shots
without having to stand far away from your subject, it’s excellent. LG has
improved the functionality so you don’t get as much of a fishbowl effect that
occurred on the G6.
Click the image below to view some sample
shots, including St Pancras hotel from the same position with and without wide
angle turned on. The in-cupboard shot with Batman also shows how the phone can
brighten low-light shots in some situations:
But overall picture quality can be annoying
grainy in very low light and oddly shaky unless you hold the thing stock still,
the latter a problem the Pixel 2 in particular does very well in minimalising.
Like with the other V30, the V30S is an
accomplished video recording device. There are six resolution modes, including
1920×1080 FHD at 60fps and 3840×2160 UHD that produce often stunningly good
video.
Post-capture, the phone offers granular
editing tools not often found on a mobile device. Along with audio, this is an
excellent video machine, though one you’ll want to export from to a better
display than the phone’s own for most editing purposes due to its faults.
The main camera is also good, performing well
in most conditions. Colours are quite accurate and results aren’t as saturated
as with the S8, S9 and Pixel 2. But in terms of overall quality, those phones
win out against the V30S.
The software additions to the V30S ThinQ over
the V30 are in the camera app, with new QLens and AI Cam modes. It’s not clear
if they will be added to the V30 in a software update, but we think they
probably will.
Their usefulness is limited. QLens is a Google
Lens-esque visual search tool where you point the camera at an object or scene
and search Amazon or Pinterest for it. It works well on simple objects and
products with lots of text on them to search (books, food etc.) but works less
well on generic objects like pens or mugs (granted, finding specific everyday
items is an immensely difficult task for a phone).
AI cam isn’t really AI, but the software has
some uses. Point the camera at a scene and the viewfinder pops up with words
depending on the scene. A person in glasses will flash up with ‘eyewear’ and
other words before the app selects ‘person’ mode accurately. Point it at a
landscape in London
If you don’t want to select the correct
shooting modes, the phone does it for you. Sometimes though it throws up words
all over the screen and never selects a mode for you to shoot in. We ended up
not using it much, and the V30S’ manual pro mode is good enough that if you
know what you’re doing you’ll get better shots than on auto anyway.
These are optional
modes in the camera and represent the only software changes from the original
V30. Also added to the V30S are LG exclusive voice commands for Google
Assistant. Saying things like ‘Take a selfie on a wide angle’
work, but change the wording slightly and they probably won’t.
We also only knew of this
feature and what to say via a press release. Most buyers wouldn’t even know it
was there. Plus despite the versatility of the video camera on-board, not many
people are going to say ‘Take a summer blockbuster Cine Video’ in public.
We assume that the first V30 will get
these features in a software update at some point, further highlighting
that the no-show of the G7 at MWC meant this updated V30 was rushed
to market. There is zero reason to consider an upgrade, or even be annoyed if
you bought the first V30.
Battery life
The 3,300mAh battery is non-removable unlike
on the V10 and V20 and performs merely fine. Using it as our primary device off
the charger at 8am, the phone lasted the whole way through the day ending at
around 25% 12 hours later with medium-heavy use, Bluetooth to a smartwatch and
regular music playback.
It’s by no means the worst phone out there for
battery, but other phones like the OnePlus 5T (also 3,300mAh) and Pixel 2 XL
(3,520mAh) continuously outperform it. Thankfully there’s a Quick Charge 3.0
charger in the box which can charge 50% in 36 minutes in our tests, and it’s
wireless charging compatible too.
Software and apps
Our V30S unit came with Android Oreo 8.0 and a
1 February 2018 security update (reviewed originally on 15 March). LG’s latest
Android skin, UX 6.0, is its best ever. The rounded icons, colourful menus and
less intrusive LG apps make for a better experience than the version shipped
with the Nougat G6.
That phone was the first non-Google device to
ship with Google Assistant, and of course the V30S has it fully integrated too.
There are still some annoying oddities though,
like how the icons on the home screen stretch and ping back like they’re
elastic when you try to swipe to a non-existent next screen, and the floating
bar that replaces the V20’s second display is preferable but still not overly
useful.
Unless you really need a quick way to make a
note, GIF, or call a favourite contact, then the bar is as gimmicky as the edge
panels on Galaxy S phones. But at least you can turn it off.
There’s also face recognition but it’s not as
secure as Apple’s (best) or Samsung’s (second best), and the software warns you
it can be fooled by pictures or similar looking people, not that we could fool
it with either. Despite this it’s a nice to have feature.
LG is notoriously bad for its bloatware but
signs are good here. Our G6 was loaded with useless Korean carrier bloat that
we couldn’t ever get rid of. Our V30S is better, with optional downloads of LG
apps you can bypass. But this will be entirely region and carrier dependent, so
be warned if you plan to import the phone to the UK
Even though Google apps are on the phone after
set up, LG still duplicates Google Photos with Gallery, Google Calendar with
Calendar and more besides. It also makes it quite hard to disable its own apps,
leading to frustration.
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