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The LG V40 is certainly the best smartphone that the company has ever released. It has the best cameras, the best screen, the best performance and the most refined design of all the LG phones I've ever used. And in 2018, this will not be enough to do more than launch into the space of high-end smartphones. At $ 950 unlocked, the V40 is looking to play in the major leagues of the smartphone with the Galaxy Note9 and the iPhone XS. The sad truth is that, despite all the good things about this phone, it's just enough (or just not as good) to get out of action.
Poor battery life, weird photo processing decisions, and an almost total lack of distinctive features for everyone, except LG's hardcore fans (if any), have already placed LG behind Samsung, Google and Apple. Ship with a version of Android dating a year at a price close to a thousand dollars adds nothing to the appeal of the V40.
If all this makes you think of a lot of negative things, you are not wrong: the history of the V40 is not a failure, but an exceptional success to which it will inevitably be compared.
Design, material, what's in the box
The V40 is in many respects quite similar to the V30 that preceded it. But this year's phone is more stylish, more refined and more generally nicer. I can not tell you what that means, but the V40 is really a nice phone to hold – it's relatively light and, while slippery, provides the feeling of superior quality that I've long believed LG phones have hard to realize fully. It is covered with Gorilla Glass 5 all around, so let's hope that an all-glass body will withstand the impacts relatively well.
It's all a mess of cameras.
The fingerprint scanner is on the back (as on the G7, this is no longer the power button) and a dedicated launch pad from Google Assistant is on the left side of the phone. I'm not sure I can use it a lot, but at least it's not mapped to Bixby. The fingerprint reader is very well located and I have no complaints about its responsiveness or accuracy – that's fine. The V40's speakers pull out of the earpiece and bottom of the phone, where the Quick Charge 3.0 USB-C port and Quad DAC headphone jack are located.
The headphone jack is increasingly rare.
The OLED screen, new and improved, is a generational leap from the panel of last year – to my great relief. Although they are not quite at the level of the latest Samsung screens in terms of brightness and viewing angles, these new LG OLEDs are enjoyable to look at and offer significantly improved brightness and contrast. I think there was a real worry about the fact that LG would remain years behind Samsung in the OLED game, but the V40 sees this gap significantly reduced or even eliminated altogether. The screen also supports HDR, so you can really take advantage of this extended color gamut in applications like YouTube and Netflix.
The V40's OLED display represents a significant improvement over the phone from last year.
In the box you will find a LG quick charger with a USB-A to C cable and a pair of LG brand headphones (at least in my unlocked model in the US).
Cameras
I'll be honest: I do not like the way the photos come out of LG's cameras. They are treated to the point of resembling caricaturists: supersaturated, with a massive exaggeration of the edges and a ridiculous contrast. They do not look very realistic. However, not everyone agrees with me on this point and I recognize it. My complaints do not end with the subjective quality of the treatment, however.
The saturation in LG's automatic HDR is comic to the limit.
Switching between the V40's three rear cameras often takes too much time, and the telephoto lens, in particular, seems to take a long time to launch. For a brand new phone, this is just not acceptable. LG's new photographic gadgets also do not make up for this dull performance: the "triple shot" mode is nothing like what I've been hoping for (a way to capture instantly from all three sensors). In this mode, the phone captures a photo of each of the three cameras, one by one, for about five seconds, and turns them into a useless video with "zoom" effect. Whoever at LG was responsible for this question should ask his judgmental question – the feature is as useless as it is bad to use.
The same scene taken with the three different cameras generates a difference in white balance and color profiles.
All in all, although I can appreciate the different perspectives offered by the V40's cameras, I can not really capture an image, but the real user experience of these cameras is not excellent. What should be an important and differentiating feature for this phone ends up being largely a disappointment.
Should you buy it?
No. There is simply no good reason to choose the V40 unless you get an extremely important discount. As an LG phone, I imagine that contracts with airline operators will fly fast and furiously during the holiday season here in the US, but I doubt Samsung's Note9 is far behind, and that this phone is simply better this year. The V40 is a good phone, but the places where it is not – or more often than not, where it's just not up to the competition – make it extremely difficult to recommend to anyone that this is to buy a phone.
How long are you going to watch this Android version number? Who knows!
Note 9 offers more storage, better battery life, better cameras and a better screen. The Pixel 3 XL is more powerful, integrates newer software (with much more frequent updates), lasts longer and takes much better still images. Pixel costs even less. Of course, the V40 has a headphone jack and an additional camera, but these differences are not significant.
All that LG wants to improve and browse on its flagship phones, its competitors continue to do better. That's the real problem here.
All that LG wants to improve and browse on its flagship phones, its competitors continue to do better. That's the real problem here. It's not that LG phones are naturally at a disadvantage to the point of being unpleasant or impractical to use, it's that LG's competitors are so good. Apple, Samsung, Google, and Huawei are themselves major smartphone innovators. In terms of improving the products offered by LG, these companies have consistently outperformed them. With the V40, this continues to be true. This conclusion may not be very satisfactory, but I think it can not be avoided.
Buy it
- If you dig up the weird photo processing of LG and really like the idea of three cameras
- If you can get a really good deal
Do not buy it
- If battery life is a major concern
- If you want fast software updates
- If you want the best value for your money
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