LG V40 test – even 5 cameras can not spice up a boring phone

The LG V40 ThinQ, the latest flagship product of the Korean electronics giant LG, has finally arrived. It contains Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip, a bright, colorful OLED display, and a super-loud speaker. Oh, and five cameras.

Rumors are true: the V40 has three rear-facing cameras and one front module with two sensors. LG is betting that these, in addition to the artificial intelligence features of the rest of its ThinQ range (including the LG G7 ThinQ), will help it stand out from the crowd.

So are they doing it? We spent most of the week running the V40 on trial. Here are our thoughts.

Design

Let's start with the aesthetics.

The V40 is cut from the same fabric as the ThinQ V30S, with thick layers of Gorilla Glass 5 protection at the back and front, which tilt at the four corners to join its aluminum frame. (At 7.7mm and 169g, the phone has thicker and heavier hair than the V30S.) This is an airtight construction that does not breathe the luxury of Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 or iPhones from Apple's recently refreshed lineup, but which nevertheless remains top notch. clean minimalist and discreet way.

The G7's controversial notch is here reappearing, though it can be "hidden" in the settings menu by changing the color of the notification shade to match the black frame of the phone. In other news, LG narrowed the lower cover of the screen to 5.7mm and managed to insert a 3.5mm headphone jack next to the USB Type-C port.

This glass hides the durability of the phone. Like the G7, the V40 is IP68 compliant for water exposure (that is, it can survive for thirty minutes in a five-foot pool). It complies with the MIL-STD 810G standard (withstands falls from a few feet).

But it's not perfect. The back of the phone features a touch-sensitive recess characteristic of LG's Boombox Speaker technology, which uses the internal space between the V40's back cover and the speaker as a resonance chamber to "increase the noise level." base of more than 6 dB with twice as much power. low. Everything's fine (more about Boombox later), but there's something about it that seems out of place in a flagship product – almost like cheap plastic.

Cameras

One of the features of the V40 that virtually jumps from the spec sheet is its cameras: it has five. This gives it the dubious distinction of being the first in North America with a penta-lens configuration, beating Nokia and others at least.

He has three cameras at the back:

• Standard 12MP sensor with f / 1.5 aperture, 78-degree field of view, 1.4 micron pixel size, and optical image stabilization
• 16MP wide angle lens with f / 1.9 aperture and 107 degree field of view
• 12 megapixel telephoto lens with f / 2.4 aperture, 45 degree field of view and 2x optical zoom

And two at the front:

• A standard 8MP lens with f / 1.9 aperture and 80 degree field of view
• 12 MP telephoto lens with f / 2.4 aperture, 45 degree field of view and 2x optical zoom

So why the five-pronged approach? Versatility, says LG.

"The three different [rear] Goals allow designers to frame plans differently without changing their position on the subject, "the company said in a press release.

I'm not convinced that a three-camera configuration is, or should always be, a selling point (the unique Google Pixel 2 rear camera is widely considered the best on the market), but LG is keen on – there is something to say for the extra flexibility. I managed to use the Triple Shot mode, which takes three pictures simultaneously – one per sensor.

According to LG, the shooting mode with high resolution function (HDR) has been improved with facial detection. Its contrast settings take into account the faces, the human posture, the backgrounds and the overall sharpness of the scene. In addition, he claims that the camera's dual-phase autofocus (PDAF) locks on subjects in just 130 milliseconds between shots.

It's hard to judge these improvements on the bottom, but my tests give a mixed picture. In AI Cam mode (which automatically configures settings such as white balance and ISO) under proper lighting, the photos are sharp, clear and mostly free of distortion (with the exception of some color bands). The dimmer environments were another story – the three cameras (and especially the telephoto lens) produced very loud photos that seemed almost too smooth. The grains of wood on a table and the textures of murals became amorphous spots, and the shadows were similarly lacking in fine details.

I was not impressed by the dynamic beach either. Like the G7, the V40 tends toward the colder end of the color spectrum. It's a matter of taste, but I personally prefer the slightly more saturated and more saturated look of the Samsung Galaxy S9 photos.

Two-sensor front cameras are being used more and more – Samsung has recently entered the ring with the Galaxy S8. The idea is to create a bokeh, this stylized effect obtained by blurring slightly the background while keeping the focus in the foreground. Google achieves this with pixel software, but some photographers insist that there is no substitute for physical sensors.

I'm not so sure. LG's front-facing cameras take usable photos, though faded, and the skin becomes a little doughy, which may be due to excessive post-processing. And I did not see much difference between lighting modes (Natural, Studio Contour, Stage, Stage Mono).

I am not a videographer. But in the interest of detail, I captured three clips – one on each of the three rear sensors – at 4K at 30 frames per second (fps), the maximum resolution supported. (The other variants are 1080p and a 1080p slow motion mode that records 240 frames per second.) They appeared smooth and jitter-free, even though they were a little more compressed than I would have liked.

As for software, the V40's camera app comes with some interesting tips. One of them is Cine Shot, which LG has been watching earlier this week. These are basically still images with looping motion segments: you take a picture, highlight the part you like animated, and get an animated GIF file. It works with the three front cameras of the phone.

Google's AR stickers are another example. They rely on the giant search platform ARCore to layer animated characters on tables, sofa cushions and other flat surfaces of the real world.

Cine video completes the selection. You can add professionally created lookup tables (or LUTs) to clips captured in RAW or Log format, as well as additional shooting modes such as Food, Panorama, and Snapshot; Filters that allow you to overlay hues on images and videos and Snapchat lens stickers that combine the movement of animated characters and props with your head, face and upper body.

Display

You may remember that the V30S ThinQ had a 6-inch FullVision full-view OLED display at a resolution of 2880 x 1440 pixels. The V40 has a 6.4-inch diagonal resolution and a resolution of 3,120 x 1,440 pixels (536.92 dpi), with an upgraded OLED panel that is more dynamic and bright than ever before.

While the V30 reached 606 nits (equivalent to 606 candelas, or the amount of light emitted by a tallow candle per square meter), the V40 reaches between 500 and 600 nits. This may not approach the maximum luminance that the G7 can reach a good day (1,000 nits in Super Bright Display mode), but as it can not safely maintain these levels for more than three minutes at a time, is not very disappointing. I will take stability on the bleeding edge every time.

So what does it look like? Compared to the Vivo Nex S that I have lugged for a month or three, V40 OLEDs are significantly more saturated – mostly in a good way. The colors appear, especially those at the hottest end of the color spectrum (think reds, yellows and oranges), and I'm really impressed by the viewing angles. Even when the phone is flat on the back, it does not cause any distortion to my eyes.

That said, the warmer hues of the default color profile are not suitable for everyone. The white backgrounds tend to look a little gray alongside the more neutral OLEDs, like the Nex S, and the skin – especially in the selfies – fades a bit.

Fortunately, there are different palettes to choose from: Auto, Eco (an energy saving mode), Cinema, Sports, Games, Photos, Web and Expert. As with the G7, the sliders on the Display Settings menu (Settings> Display> Screen Color) let you change the color temperature and RGB levels as you like.

On a more positive note, moviegoers will be happy to know that the LG V40 can display videos, TV shows and high dynamic range (HDR) movies, offering improved brightness, wider color gamuts and better contrast. than their non-HDR counterparts. . HDR10 covers 100% of the DCI-P3 and Rec 2020 color spaces – the standard for digital cinema projectors and most 4K Ultra HD TVs and monitors – for a total of 1.07 billion colors (1024 shades of each primary color). ).

The compatibility with Dolby Vision, the exclusive HDR specification of Dolby, is unfortunately absent. It offers a slightly higher brightness per square meter and a 12-bit color instead of ten standards. It's unclear if this will come in a software upgrade.

l & # 39; Audio

On the audio side, the V40 is practically a carbon copy of the G7, that is, it contains a Meridian-optimized 32-bit Quad Hi-Fi DAC that uses four digital-to-analog converters, an amplifier and proprietary algorithms. to expand the dynamic range and emphasize the bass of songs, videos and podcasts played via the 3.5mm headphone jack.

On the rare occasions when you choose to leave your headphones behind you will find the DTS certified Boombox speaker. The incarnation of the V40 can reach sound levels higher than 6 GB, which gives it a similar sound: it easily carries the sound in a room. Unfortunately, this sound is not writing.

I compared it side by side, at maximum volume, at the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and Vivo Nex S, and although it is visibly clearer and sharper than the previous one, the voices sounded a little muffled and the bass generally more confused.

Fortunately, it is customizable. The DTS X: 3D Surround app is built-in, a multitude of equalizer settings in which you'll find EQ profiles (Classic, Pop, Rock and Hip Hop, to name a few) and a volume normalization option. Connecting an external audio source unlocks the headphone-specific settings, such as sound preset, digital filter, and balance adjustment.

Performance and battery life

Whatever the other defects of the V40, I can not accuse him of being outdone.

This is largely thanks to the Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip under the hood, Qualcomm's flagship product and the same chip inside devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Sony Xperia XZ3. It's a bit old in the tooth (it debuted in February), and it was overshadowed by chips like Apple's A12 Bionic. But it is more than capable of providing a smooth and seamless experience – and this is all the more true when it is associated with 6GB of RAM, as in the V40.

During my week with the V40, I started to appreciate the responsiveness of the touch screen: the latency of scrolling, the time that elapses between the gesture of the finger and the response to the screen, is virtually non-existent . Not once, I have encountered any shift, hitching or redrawing of the home screen (and an annoying phenomenon that occurs when the Android memory manager releases the launcher from the RAM). In addition, applications launched quickly. The navigation was as sweet as butter. And no matter how many Chrome tabs I threw in his direction, he felt helpless.

To get a more objective measure of V40 performance, I loaded Geekbench 4, a popular benchmarking suite. He got a multi-core score of 8.841, which places him slightly ahead of Vivo Nex S, Galaxy S9 and G7, but behind Note 9 (8.876).

The V40's battery does not reach the high level set by its silicon, but it lasts longer than expected. The 3,300 mAh power supply (the same capacity as the V30S) consumes about a day and a half with low usage (checking Slack messages, answering emails, making phone calls and browsing the web, for example). It's not quite the two days or so I'm able to get out of the Vivo Nex S (which has a 4000 mAh battery), but to be honest, the V40 is much smaller. A bigger battery would have needed a thicker frame, and I'm not sure that the compromise was worth it.

The V40's battery supports fast charging in the form of a Qi-based wireless fast charge and Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 technology, which is a bit disappointing. I would have liked the V40 to come with a newer version, such as Quick Charge 4.0, which can charge a phone at 50% in five minutes, compared to 15 minutes of charging time of Quick Charge 3.0. (Curiously, the G7 works with Quick Charge 4.0 Chargers.)

In terms of storage, the V40 comes with an internal module of 64 GB, expandable up to 2 TB via a microSD card. It's about equal to the G7, but half of the internal memory of the Galaxy S9 base model and Note 9.

Software

If you have tested the G7 or read about its AI-based application ecosystem, you already have a perfect command of the V40 software. It's almost a true copy.

AI Cam is on the menu. It automatically selects 19 different color and contrast filters: people, flowers, pets, food, sunset, landscape, city, animals, drinks and snow, just to name a few. objects in the frame. It also recommends optimal exposure and saturation settings, enables or disables High Dynamic Range (HDR), and switches between shooting modes.

In my tests, the results were no worse than those of the G7, switching to Person mode (which highlights skin tone) when he spotted a face and in City mode when the horizon of New York appeared. But the situation worsened at night when the Bright mode, a low-light shooting mode combining bright information from adjacent pixels, came into play. Regardless of which lens was selected, the camera became almost unusable.

A characteristic do not have Reported from the V30S and G7: QTag function, a cloud of words that floated around objects that AI Cam vaguely recognized, such as food, clothing and landmarks. It has been relegated to a block of text in the lower left corner of the screen, where it only appears when AI Cam has full confidence in its predictions. (He correctly recognized a box of Diet Pepsi as a "drink".) QTag will not be forgotten; the incarnation of the G7 has consistently ranked laptops in the "musical instruments" category, soda cans in "ham" and backpacks in "cauliflower".

Google Lens, the artificial intelligence of Google's object detection, fulfills it very well. It's always at your fingertips from the top-level menu of the V40's camera app and recognizes a long and growing list of things.

In addition to phone numbers, dates, addresses, furniture, celebrities, clothes, books, movies, music albums, video games, landmarks, points of interest and notable buildings, Google Lens can scan barcodes and QR codes, add events to calendars, import contact information from business cards, extract network names and passwords from Wi-Fi tags, and recognize certain beverages such as wine and the coffee. And recent updates have allowed him to do even more, such as copying and pasting text from print, business cards, brochures, matching clothes and "decorative objects" with the results obtained. on the Web.

For less visual queries, see the Google Assistant. Like the V30S and the G7, the v40 features a dedicated key that launches the wizard from any location, including the lock screen (a double press allows you to launch the Google Goal). The V40's far field microphones pick up sound at a maximum distance of 17 feet.

LG worked closely with Google on more than 20 custom orders for ThinQ devices, including the V40, such as "OK Google, take a wide-angle shot" and "OK Google, open the camera on Cine Video". Personally, I am not convinced of the daily usefulness of these voice commands, especially esoteric commands such as "OK Google, take a romantic cinematic video". But they certainly facilitate the use of the phone with one hand.

Availability

The LG G7 ThinQ will go on sale October 18 and pre-orders will be available as of today. It is available in two colors, Aurora Black and Moroccan Blue (with sanded tempered glass design) from all major US carriers, including Cellular, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and AT & T.

Customers who pre-order the LG V40ThinQ get a DJI Osmo Mobile 2 cardan and a SanDisk 256 GB Micro SD card with adapter ($ 258.00 value). If you miss the pre-order window, do not worry, you'll still have the 256GB SanDisk Micro SD Card at no extra cost.

Conclusion

So, is the V40 worth the money? It depends on your priorities.

Setting aside the five cameras for a moment, the V40 is largely iterative. LG played safely with the internals, which best fit what was before (the Snapdragon 845) and at worst slightly behind the competition (the battery at 3300 mAh). The same goes for the software: with the exception of Cine Shot and minor UI retouching, the experience is almost indistinguishable from the G7.

But say it does not bother you and you're curious about the cameras. Is five better than four, three or two? I tend to say no, and not just because they are noisier. My inexperienced eye may have something to do with it, but I personally believe that software and AI can achieve with one or two goals what LG did with three.

Without diving too deeply into UX 6.0, LG's exclusive Android skin, it should be noted that the V40 habit under Android 9.0 Pie – It's stuck with Android 8.1. Concretely, this means that improvements such as adaptive battery and brightness, digital well-being and gesture navigation will be omitted at launch. Even more troubling, LG does not share the timeline of Android Pie updates for the V40. or the G7, which was launched in May.

If the V40 software upgrade cycle worries you, I suggest you wait a moment.