The LG V30 is LG’s latest smartphone to hit the market, with a release date of November 2017. After reading the specs online, we were highly excited to get our hands on a review model to check out how it performs with the latest games we can throw at it. If you’re too lazy to read our full review, know this: This phone is damn good. Is it an S8 beater? Maybe.
LG went above and beyond and sent us a lovely case – I don’t think everyone gets one of these but it made the rest of the office take note of our unboxing. We even had a clapperboard in there – check it out below. We opened it up and started our review:
Specifications on the LG V30:
Chipset: Snapdragon 835, one of Qualcomm’s fastest chips
Display: 2880×1440 (wow!) and gorilla glass for those potential drops
Battery: 3300mAh – it lasts us through a day of hard usage, and 2 days of mild use
Water resistance: Yep, IP68. If it visits Mr Toilet, it should be ok to use (after a good clean…)
Dimensions: 151.7 x 75.4 x 7.4mm. A bigger screen area than the iPhone X
Weight: 158grams.
The handset came pre installed with the latest Android OS, however once it booted up it went through a number of steps, including me signing into my Google account, and during this the handset performed a number of automatic updates which were very quick to do – the whole process took less than 8 minutes. Geekbench says that an earlier pre-release version of the V30 gets 1899 single core and 6350 multi-core which would place it top 3 of all Android handsets and essentially just as fast as the Samsung S8+ (but slower than the King of Handsets, the Note 8). You won’t experience any slowdown on this handset with anything for the next 12-18 months.
Build quality is excellent, the phone feels very slick and the screen is nearly edge to edge – no annoying notches here folks! It’s solid and sturdy but if I were to pick any negative, it’s that it might bend if put under stress, just because of the shape. I didn’t test this theory out however. The fingerprint scanner on the back still needs some getting used to, but this passes after the first few hours of use.
I played a number of games on the handset to stress test it – everything loaded almost instantly and ran incredibly smoothly. That’s to be expected from a leading handset manufacturer, but it’s also good to be reassured. The screen size was really helpful when playing Clash Royale as I sometimes find that the characters on screen are a little bit small for my old eyes and the colour range seemed extremely good – although I’m no expert.
Overall, I can’t help but highly recommend this phone. The only problem is the price point: at the time of writing this we’re looking at a bill of $800/£800 USA/UK. The phone was released on November 1st, so you should find availability easily enough and with Christmas around the corner I’m sure there will be some great deals available on this handset.
Super specs, ace screen. Buy it.
LG have gone above and beyond with their latest handset which is a strong rival to the S8. While the price is expensive, if you spot a good deal then snap it up.
