LG Electronics last week unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the LG V30, at IFA 2017 in Berlin.
Among the LG V30’s innovations:
- An F1.6 aperture camera lens;
- A glass Crystal Clear Lens;
- The first OLED FullVision display;
- Cine Video mode for producing movie-quality videos;
- The Point Zoom feature, which lets users zoom in on any subject anywhere in the frame;
- Cine Effect, which has 15 preset effects to give videos a movie-like look;
- Premium sound with advanced Hi-Fi Quad DAC, sound tuning by B&O Play; and
- Voice recognition.
Based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform processor, the LG V30 has a 6-inch, 18:9 QuadHD+ OLED FullVision display with 2,880 x 1,440 pixel resolution.
Premium Package
It comes with 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB or 128 GB of ROM, and it can take microSDs of up to 2 TB capacity.
The device has two rear cameras: a 16-MP standard angle with a focal length of F1.6; and a 13-MP wide angle with an F1.9 focal length. It also has a 5-MP wide angle front camera with F2.2 focal length.
It runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat, weighs 158gm, has NFC, and has a USB Type-C 2.0 socket that’s 3.1-compatible.
The V30 is rated at IP68 water and dust resistance, and it uses Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 wireless charging technology. Google Assistant is built in, and it comes in black, silver, blue and violet.
Users can unlock the device through facial or voice recognition, by using its fingerprint reader, or by tapping out a pattern on the screen.
The V30 will be released in late September — first in South Korea, then in the United States and other markets.
Customers who download and install WRKSHP’s Beat Fever game will receive US$100 worth of in-game purchase credit.
The LG V30 will be on par with other premium devices, said Ken Hyers, a research director at Strategy Analytics.
Features That Catch the Eye
“The V30 keeps LG in the high-end smartphone conversation, and in the way that LG chooses to specialize — digital imaging, both for stills and video,” observed Ramon Llamas, a research manager at IDC.
“It’s a smart move, considering how much people use the cameras on their phones these days,” he told TechNewsWorld.
While the V30 “has several features that set it apart from other vendors’ flagships, “one of the most important is that it is the first band 71-capable 600 MHz LTE smartphone, Strategy Analytics’ Hyers told TechNewsWorld.
It will work on T-Mobile USA’s new 600-MHz network being rolled out over the summer, he said.
This is “a big deal for LG since it guarantees the V30 will receive strong promotion from T-Mobile, [which] is the fastest growing network provider in the nation,” Hyers added.
LG “will need all the help it can get promotion-wise for the V30 during the upcoming holiday season, since its announcement is sandwiched between Samsung’s Note8 announcement and the announcement of three new iPhones,” he pointed out.
The V30’s use of internal display technologies “is on par with Samsung’s deployment of OLED displays,” noted Gerrit Schneemann, senior analyst at IHS Markit.
It lets the V30 “take advantage of advanced features like VR and HDR streaming content,” he told TechNewsWorld.
That advantage may be canceled out, however, as wireless carriers throttle content.
Fighting for Market Share
High-end devices represented only 23 percent of the 27 million units LG shipped in the first half of 2017, Schneemann noted.
“The V30 is important for LG,” he said, because it could “increase the profitability of LG’s mobile business unit.”
LG “is a solid No. 3 in the United States market behind Samsung and Apple, but “its premium products haven’t fared well against its larger rivals,” Strategy Analytics’ Hyers said. The V30 “may be the best LG smartphone ever … but there are many other great products in the same price range.”
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