Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “LG V40 Redux: Is this the best deal on the used market?”.
We called the LGV for tea. Thank you, undeveloped, innovation back in 2018 for its huge feature list, but middling quality, the camera and the battery weren’t, where we thought a thousand dollar smartphone should be. This was around the time where smartphones and flagship smartphones were just hitting that 4 figure point and the v40, which is what I’m going to call it throughout the rest of this video just wasn’t worth the money so 18 months later has LG been able to buff Out those imperfections and polish up its v40 or is it just as unread oakes right off the bat? We have to talk about the value that this smartphone delivers in the used market. You can get a used unit on ebay for around 200 to 300 dollars, which is a far cry from its $ 9.99 MSRP that it released that back in 2018 and the amount of phone you get for.
Your money is rather staggering, but allow me to rattle off some specs and features quickly here. A six point: four inch: qHD OLED display five cameras, all different focal lengths; 10 watt wireless charging, a quad DAC equipped, headphone port microSD expansion, mill, STG 8 ng and ip68 protection, a Snapdragon 845 with 6 gigabytes of RAM and a properly quick capacitive rear, fingerprint scanner. All of that for just $ 200 is kind of unreal, but let me talk about the viability and usability of the device in 2020. The first standout issue is the lack of Android 10 on the unit that I have here now. According to LG Korea, Android 10 is forecast to arrive in q2 of 2020, so there’s just under a couple of months left for LG to keep to its schedule.
As for the usage experience, the phone feels pretty modern with its frosted glass back, which is something we’re seeing in a lot of phones. These days, the lightweight is quite refreshing and between the multiple cameras, the USBC port and overall glass sandwich recipe. The v40 doesn’t seem too out of place in 2020. However, there are a few aged Hardware quirks.
The bezels are pretty thick. All things considered, the USBC port is only running at USB 2.0 and the storage is just u FS, 2.0 versus the? U FS 3.1, that we see in modern flagships that last one is rather important when it comes down to longevity, because right now the phone feels fairly quick, but going a couple of years down the line. It’S not gon na feel as quick as the phones that have come out at that time.
I ran the usual tests on the v40 playing project off road to Real Racing 3 and for tonight and for the most part of runs just as well as you’d expect. It’S not buttery smooth 100 % of the time, but 99 % of the time you’re getting respectable frame rates from high-end 3d titles, and so is a general usage phone or even really a gaming phone. The performance is absolutely right there for the money, but – and this is quite a big but the battery life hasn’t been improved, and I guess that makes sense, because you were never really going to be able to fix at 3300 milliamp hour battery and software.
Considering the phone had a six point, 4-inch display, so it doesn’t really add up. It doesn’t make sense to have a battery that small in a phone dislodge small fence in 2020, I’ve upwards of 4,000 million power cells. So you kind of have to expect the poor battery life. It was bad back then, and it’s pretty bad.
Now the v40 struggled to be my secondary phone with the zero bluetooth connections. That’S indoors and half brightness mind you. So if you are really considering one of these for your main smartphone that you would use every day with maybe Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi cellular collections, that kind of thing getting through a full day without a top-up would be nigh impossible. There is 18 more quick charging which is quicker than you might expect, because the battery is that small that it tends to charge quite quickly anyway. So if you did need to top up throughout the day – and you were happy to do that – then that’s definitely a possibility and we’ve got 10 watt wireless charging, which is still fairly quick for wireless charging, especially given the age of the device. So it’s not all doom and gloom, it’s just not that practical and before we get onto the headline feature, there cameras the audio visual experience, the 6.4, which displays a good size and being OLED the colour and contrasts. Don’T look too far off what you’d expect in 2020. The only thing you might consider aged is the fact that it’s only 60 Hertz, but I’m personally fine with 60 Hertz and that’s going to be very much a subjective thing.
The audio experience is probably the reason you were going to buy this muffin in the first place. Now the boom box speaker is a little bit McKey, it does work and it’s okay, it’s just not quite as good as some of the more modern, hybrid stereo setups. If you’re just using it on its own, however, probably the reason that you really want to go with this phone is the headphone port and that’s rare, but what’s even rarer. Is this specific headphone port, because it’s quads DAC equipped? I personally moved on to wireless options for my mobile audio, but hooking up my dt 990 pros to the v40 was a brilliant experience. The clarity isn’t something I’ve been able to experience for a while and the ability to pick different presets in the EQ menu right.
There in the menu I mean it’s just brilliant granted that features not going to be for everyone, but I’m starting to understand why people go with LG phones because of the audio experience, because it is just that much better. All that brings us to the camera all rather cameras in 2020. It’S not really that uncommon for a flagship to come with five cameras to make thirty pros the s20 ultra the me 10-5 g.
They all have five cameras, but the v40 was the first mainstream flagship to get all three focal lengths on the back. The ultra wide the wide and the telephoto, but what’s more uncommon in 2020, is the pair of cameras up front with two different focal lengths. A widen and ultra wide what the spec sheet was never really the issue back in 2018, it was the width off Ness and overly dramatized colors. The software processing from Y can gather the color seems to be pretty oversaturated and the LGB 40 photos look okay, just like they looked okay 18 months ago. There’S plenty of dynamic range and the colors are definitely there, there’s. No denying that and there’s also a nice amount of natural background separation, thanks to the wide F 1.5 aperture being used on the main camera. We don’t tend to see that kind of thing these days.
That said, the softness is still there, particularly with the telephoto lens, and the amount of noise reduction being applied here is unreal, leading to these kind of oil patenting looking photographs in more challenging conditions. Lg’S camera app is a mixed bag really because, whilst it does seem to follow the 20/20 trend of a carousel layout with the options along, the top of the screen night mode is a button within the auto mode. Instead of being its own mode and the Zoom shutter slow thing is so 2018, it’s functional, it’s just not necessarily intuitive.
As an overall camera package, the OTB 40 does a decent job going into 2020 and it kind of fits in. Given the amount of versatility. That’S there and that’s the thing that a lot of 20/20 flagships are going for more versatility. It’S just not quite got that quality of something like a pixel 3a, for example, and that kind of sums up the v14 20/20. It’S an unbelievable deal on the used market. I mean you can get kind of lower and more scratched up versions of this for $ 200 and what you’re getting there is a fairly modern system on the chip, you’re getting good cameras, not amazing, but good, and it’s definitely versatile you’re getting heaps of features. You’Re. Getting probably one of the best audio experiences on an entire smartphone nice big, bright OLED display you’ll, get in all of that in $ 200, for kind of a lower spec option and $ 300 for something that’s a little bit more spruced up. I think that’s brilliant value. It’S not going to be as quick as a 1 plus 60. It’S not going to have as good a screen as a Galaxy Note, 8, and it’s definitely not going to get the software updates of something like an iPhone, 10 or 10s. But as an overall package, I can happily recommend this to those of you on the used market, because it looks like it’s going to get Android 10 soon and that combined with the rest of the features, adds up to a pretty good device.
In my opinion, so that was this episode of redux on the lg v40. Thank you. One of the best use smartphones that you can buy today. Anyway.
I’Ve been Ryan Thomas with Android authority. Please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one and check out my article in the video description I’ll leave a link there as well yeah thanks for watching and I’ll see you later .