LG V40 ThinQ Review 2019

LG V40 ThinQ

Highlights:-

 

• LG V40 ThinQ has three rear cameras and two front cameras

• Overall performance is good but it gets hot after tension

• The price of LG V40 ThinQ in India is Rs. 49,990 for the only configuration

When MWC 2019 starts in less than two weeks, we will get some new flagship smartphones coming in 2019, all of which will be present in your pocket. These new models will have the latest processor, new designs, and better imaging capabilities. This is a question - does it make sense that 2018 is paying the full price for the Android flagship?

The phone in question is the LG V40 ThinQ, 949,990, which was launched globally around October last year but had entered the Indian market last month. Roughly Rs. 50,000, V40 ThinQ is the current head of LG. It can be seen as G7 + ThinQ ed 40,000 (review) beef, thanks to the back and front extra cameras, a high capacity battery and a big display. All this Rs. Comes on premium. 10,000 on G7 + ThinQ

So should you spend this kind of money right now, when we have a new crop of Android flagship around the corner? let's find out.

LG V40 ThinQ Design:-

We have to hand over it to LG for the overall manufacturing quality and the elimination of the V40 ThinQ. This phone looks and feels a lot more premium than our G7 + ThinQ in our opinion, which is a good start.

 We also love matte finish of the metal frame and glass back which does not easily attract fingerprints. The phone also looks more or less ancient at the end of one business day.

The front and rear glass taper on the sides basically blends with the frame so that you never feel the edges.

The highlighted antenna lines above and below are a different color of gray, so they do not mix with the rest of the metal frame, but at least they are kept symmetically.

The V40 looks thinner as ThinQ, it is equally slippery. Smooth finish provides hardly any grip, which uses a one-hand multiple times. The phone had slipped through our hand several times during our trial period, but fortunately it fell short on tables or couch only. Our unit was not damaged, but we were lucky.

Large display on LG V40 ThinQ makes it a little harder to reach the physical buttons on both sides of the phone with one hand. The button feedback is good and we also have an additional Google Assistant button on the left, which can be used to help support or run on the display. The button is not customizable.

The Hybrid Dual-SIM tray sits right on the phone, and can accommodate two 4G nano-SIM cards for Dual 4G VoLTE or Single SIM and MicroSD card.

LG V40 ThinQ is one of the few flagships that still offer a 3.5mm headphone socket, which is placed at the bottom. Next to it, we have a USB Type-C port and a speaker.

The latter uses a part of the body in the form of a resonance chamber to increase the sound, which is called the LG Boombox speaker. Since it uses the body to enhance the sound, you get a little stereo effect, but earpiece does not really make much contribution and blocking it does not make any difference to the audio.

6.4-inch QHD + display dominates the front of this phone, but does not feel too immersive due to the thick black beams on the sides. At the bottom is not the chin, which is good, but you get a rung on top. LG has managed to keep two cameras and one earpiece in place to make it more broad or deeper. Earpiece sits a little off-center but we have no problem with the call.

LG has used an OLED panel (P-OLED according to the AIDA64 app), which produces bright color and good black level. You can choose different color profiles depending on what type of colors you want to see. We found the web 'color profile to create a good balance, but most other profiles made Reds very vulgar.

In the box, the LG V40 ThinQ ships have 16W Fast Charger, Type-C Cable, SIM Ejection Tool and a 3.5mm headset.

LG V40 ThinQ specifications and features:-

Being a 2018 flagship, the LG V40 ThinQue is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 Octa-Core SoC. In India, there is only one version that has 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage. The latter is expandable for a theoretical 2 TB using a MicroSD card, but it will be at the expense of the second Nano-SIM slot.

The phone is IP68 certified for dust and water resistance, with Gorilla Glass 5 for front, back and cameras, and MIL-STD-810G military certification for shock resistance. Other connectivity features include the general suite of dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5, NFC, USB-OTG, GPS and sensors.

LG V40 ThinQ is still stuck with the Android 8.1 Oreo and our unit was running the security patches of December 2018, which is a little embarrassing to see the phones launched almost four months ago internationally. Perhaps LG's custom skin is causing delays. In any case, an Android 9 Pie update is expected only in Q2 this year, about that time when Google announces the Android Q.

There is a lot going on in LG's custom skin, and most tricks and gestures are similar to those we have already seen with G7 + ThinQ. The home screen can be a single-layered interface, or you can enable the app drawer. The order of the navigation buttons can be swapped around, and two additional buttons can be added to the regular trio.

Other features include 'mini views' which shrink screen contents with swipe gestures on the navigation buttons, the ability to mask the notch, shortcuts and quick access panels, 'Floating Bar' and Smart Doctor, who gives. You manage your storage and RAM.

Notification in the LG V40 ThinQ is not LED, but you can always enable on-display. You can choose from different clock faces and it is also interactive, which means that you can control your music or access the wireless connectivity toggles without awaiting the phone without standby.

Fingerprint sensor works well on the rear for authentication but you can also use face recognition. The latter is not as fast as the implementation of others such as Vivo or Oppo, but it is quite safe after enabling the option 'advanced face recognition' option.

LG V40 ThinQ display, camera, and battery life:-

There is some use in the size of this phone, but after a few days, it was not very upset. The treatment for the slippery body will be to use a skin or a case. General app performance is very good.

There are good apps to run in the background, and multitasking is also handled well. The phone runs quiet with regular use, but fires the game or shoots a bunch of photos and metal parties quickly get hot. Long-term use of the camera, especially video recording, heats the metal frame very quickly.

The phone also posted good benchmark numbers. In AnTuTu, we got 2,62,210 points while scores in the 3D Benchmark such as the slingshots, we got 4981 points. These numbers are set to native QHD + resolutions with screen resolutions

Asphalt 9: In games like Legends, we experienced Smooth Framerates on 'High' presets in native resolution, although PUBG Mobile struggled to provide frequent framerates with 'High' graphics setting and Framers set on 'Smooth'. We had to reduce the display resolution to full-HD + to get better results.

In some games, you can set the LG's Game Tools feature to reduce graphics settings without entering the settings page of the game.

Audio has always played a major role in LG's flag, and like the G7 + ThinQ, the V40 ThinQ also has high-Fi DACs that are meant to run high-impedance headphones.

The phone for headphones also supports DTS: X Virtual Surround, which claims to add more spatial elements to the audio. Speakers have been tuned to meridian audio, and it can get quite loud, but as we mentioned earlier, we would prefer a true stereo effect while using speakers.

The bundled headset provides very good audio quality. The settings app has an in HDR video effect 'toggle switch, which enhances the brightness and color while viewing the video in fullscreen mode, although the screen of this phone does not really support HDR.

Camera setup is another big difference factor between this phone and LG's G series. The V40 ThinQ has two cameras at the back and three in front. There is a 12-megapixel standard shooter with rear, f / 1.5 aperture, dual PDAF, OIS, and 1.4 microns pixel size.

It is followed by a 12-megapixel telephoto camera which provides 2x optical zoom, f / 2.4 aperture and autofocus. Finally, you get a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera with a f / 1.9 aperture but no autofocus.

There is a 'triple shot' feature in the viewfinder that lets you shoot photos with three sensors simultaneously, giving you three different perspectives. This is useful when you can not decide which type of shot to take. You can also enable 'Cam AI Cam', which will detect what is in a scene and what effects and filters will suggest.

AI sometimes takes a few seconds to detect the scene, so it is not particularly useful for action shots.

You can switch between the three sensors in the viewfinder with the respective markers, and a long-press on any of them gives you a little preview that what your frame will look like using three, which is a good touch. The appointment of these markers could have been better though, because they were out of reach during the shoot in Landscape Orientation.

In daylight, the primary camera picks up very good detail and color tones in the scenario. HDR kicks when needed, which balances exposure well. Autofocus is very fast, and by tapping your subject in the viewfinder, the focus gets locked, which makes it easy to re-compose the shots. Wide-angle camera does not naturally do good with close-up topics, but landscape shots help in getting more objects in frames. You will get a little barrel

Distortion around the edges of the frame, but it is not very serious. The telephoto sensor also captures very fast images in good light.

Wide aperture of the primary sensor makes it even better in low light. There is a good definition of details in distant objects, colors are well represented, and noise is suppressed without elaborating detail. Even under low or artificial lighting at night, macros sharpened for us with the right color and good box. In low light, the camera app does not switch on the telephoto sensor when you press its button, instead using the main sensor and digital zoom, like most other phones with telephoto cameras Wide-angle camera also captures great data in low-light, due to which the large f / 1.9 aperture is.

Camera app has a portrait mode that works well with locating the edge for both static objects and human subjects. Under the artificial lighting system, the level of expansion is also good. You can also enable portrait mode for front camera, and it works quite well under good light.

Upon arrival in Selfie cameras, we have a standard 8-megapixel sensor F / 1.9 aperture and a narrow F / 2.2 aperture with a wide-angle 5-megapixel sensor but a big pixel size of 1.5 microns. Along with the primary camera, there is very good details in daylight, as well as in low light in Selfie. A slightly larger pixel in wide-angle sensor compensates for a narrow aperture while shooting in low light.

LG V40 ThinQ is suffering from the same HDR problem that we had with G7 + ThinQ, which is that highlights in white areas and selfies appear over exposed and burnt. We really hope LG will fix this with the next update.

The camera app provides a ton of different shooting modes, for some screwed people with standard panoramas and expert modes. In portrait mode the background backdrop setting changes the background of your subject to a solid color of your choice and jump flash jump-cut captures a picture in every You can also make your own avatar by using a picture of your face, but adaptation is a bit limited because there is no alternative to connecting or editing facial hair.

Finally, we come to video capabilities of the LG V40 ThinQ. This phone can shoot up to 4K resolution, either 30fps (10 minutes per clip) or 60fps (6 minutes per clip). The quality of the video recorded in daylight is good and the footage is well stable without any major discrepancy. The phone uses a combination of electronic and optical stabilization for video.

With wide-angle camera, you can shoot till 1080p, but the image can be quality dip. The color looks a bit pale and the lack of good definition in the objects. While shooting in low light, the quality of the video is still quite good, although when there is some amount of visible noise

Shooting at 4K.

Usage of heavy camera consumes lots of battery life, but with regular use, we were able to charge once a day. Given the size of this phone, the capacity of 3,300mAh is not very high, but with the display resolution in QHD +, we were able to fit the day-to-day use.

Upon switching to full-HD + resolution, we could take a few more hours, reflected in our battery loop test too. We got runtime of 11 hours and 15 minutes, and continuous playback time of 11 hours and 49 minutes, with a set of QHD + and full-HD + sets, respectively.

The V40 ThinQ supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0, which charges up to 77 percent of battery in one hour and it takes an additional 40 minutes or so to fully up. You can charge the phone wirelessly using any QE compatible charger, but it is going to be very slow. We have been able to fully charge the phone in 3 hours and 10 minutes using the 10W Qi wireless charger.

Decision:-

LG V40 ThinQ is a solid package at the current cost of Rs. 50,000 The only real competition is Samsung's Galaxy S9 + (review), which is slightly higher, but can be found well under Rs. 60,000 online. OnePlus 6T (review) top-end version costs Rs. 46,000, and it provides the same CPU power but there is less camera and no shock or water resistance.

The V40 ThinQ offers better features than the G7 + ThinQ, but there are some drawbacks to it. The HDR for selfie camera is still broken, the side of metal gets hot in a little tension too quickly, there is no proper stereo sound, and the Android version is still behind in the competition. On a more positive note, the V40 ThinQ seems like a buck. 50,000 phones It has a good display, a versatile set of cameras, good battery life and quick performance.

This is for our basic question, which should you buy now? Hopefully LG can launch the MWC 2018 G8 ThinQ and V50 ThinQ in a week. Looking at LG's track record from last year, these phones may take some time to reach India, but we can at least see the drop in price of V40 ThinQ.

Meanwhile, Samsung has flown the Galaxy S10 900 66,900 series launch at Flipkart, which means that we can see these new flagships in India at the beginning of March. After this, HMD is Global, which will make a great start to the new Nokia phone, which also includes the much anticipated Nokia 9 PureView.

We would suggest that you stop your shopping by MWC 2019 and select one of the new 2019, or at least wait to see how they are stacked against the current options. In the upcoming phone, you should usually spend a bit more than the V40 ThinQ, but you will get the current version of upgraded hardware and Android, which is a win.