Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “LG V40 Impressions: 5 Cameras on a Phone?!”.
Hey what’s up guys mkbhd here and if i sound a little sick first of all, it’s because i am hopefully it doesn’t affect the video too much. This is the lg v40 thin q, whereas i’ll call it the v40 because that’s a horrible name. Again. Sorry not sorry, so this is not a review, but it’s been a couple days with the phone of my extended first impressions, but it hasn’t even taken me that long to come to the conclusion that this is essentially an lg g7 thin cue. But with some minor improvements and then a whole new camera setup, that’s what this phone is all about, like an lg g7s, if you want to call it that, like it’s, got some slight upgrades and they’re very clear, but it’s really about the camera.
So this v40 has the same snapdragon 845 and six gigs of ram high-end internals, the same gorilla, glass, 5 and metal build and the shape, and it all has an air of quality. Yet is somehow just slightly lighter than you’d expect in the hand. Lg keeps doing this, but it’s pretty recognizable as an lg shape with the curved glass and the tapered sides. It has the same boombox speaker that literally rattles the phone, when you have the volume all the way up, but it gets impressively loud, especially when on a table same headphone jack and the 32-bit hifi quad dac to go along with it. For those who absolutely refuse to go wireless and want to enjoy the actual highest of audio quality, it’s still here same expandable storage via microsd, same ip68 rating for water resistance, same fingerprint scanner on the back and in the middle, where it belongs same qi. Wireless charging same button layout, even with the non-remappable google assistant button over here under the volume buttons on the left side. It’S all still here. I don’t hate it, but i guess i got ta still say i wish it was remappable, but it’s all still here and at the end of the day, the same lg software skin. So the software experience is exactly as you’ve seen before on top of android 8.1. I’M personally not the biggest fan of this skin. As you know, i’ve tried it multiple times. It’S not my look, but there are definitely a lot of features like a lot tucked away in the settings as far as customization graphics settings changing the resolution hiding the notch. All that stuff – it’s not lacking in this department at all, as expected, the bigger physical changes to notice are the display and the battery, so the v40 here now has a 6.4 inch oled display, instead of the smaller lcd on the g7. It goes right up to the edges, it doesn’t have much of a chin, but has roughly the same size, side, bezels and top bezel and being an oled will make hiding the notch. If you choose to do that a little more convincing and there’s also a couple other display features for hdr video and app scaling and things like that and it’s the same 3120 by 1440 resolution, so crazy, sharp and plenty bright. So it’s an excellent display by any metrics and the battery is bigger.
It’S now a 3300 milliamp hour battery not best in class on paper, but i’d say it’s acceptable. So now, knowing all that, you can tell it’s a pretty familiar phone, but if you’re considering buying it, you want to know about the biggest new feature, which is these cameras. They’Ve always focused on this. That’S a horrible joke and i’m sorry, but they’ve always focused on a well-stocked camera app with a lot of features.
So sometimes it may seem like they’re, just throwing a ton of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. But a lot of stuff sticks. There’S a lot of interesting, useful stuff in the camera, so this year it’s three cameras on the back and two cameras on the front. Why you may be asking because you somehow haven’t seen the leaks? Well i’ll tell you all about it, because that’s what we’re here to do in the back. There is a regular medium camera, a telephoto camera and a super wide angle, camera and on the front, there’s a regular selfie camera and a super wide angle. Selfie camera five cameras: that’s a lot to dive into, but this, in my opinion, is probably the best use of multiple cameras that i’ve seen.
There’S no monochrome sensors going on here, no duplicate focal lengths. Nothing like that. It’S actually three different useful things on the back and two different, useful things on the front, it’s good.
So let me get all the numbers out there on the back. The primary camera is a 12 megapixel sensor with an f 1.5 aperture and a roughly 78 degree field of view. That’S a normal camera.
The wide angle – camera is a 16 megapixel sensor, f, 1.9, with a 107 degree field of view, and the telephoto is another 12 megapixel sensor, f, 2.4, with a 45 degree field of view, so roughly a two times optical zoom. Did you did you get all that? That’S a lot to think about, but basically, when you see all this first thing you think about – or at least that i think about is what would i use the other two cameras for nine times out of ten, i’m probably going to still use the normal camera. So, with the super wide lg users already know, they’ve been doing this for a while, whether you’re taking a picture of a building in a crowded city or a landscape, or if you’re, just looking for a more creative look to a photo. The super wide accomplishes this.
It’S great and then the telephoto lens, i guess the main purpose of that aside from portrait mode, has always been to give a higher quality zoom for things further away. Optical zoom will always be higher quality than digital zoom right. Well. Technically, yes, given all the other variables stay the same, but here they don’t quite again, it’s a different sensor at different, fixed aperture and honestly to me, looks like a bit of a different color science.
So i’m getting very different white balance between the two cameras and different image processing. Even it looks like so in practice, the normal camera versus the telephoto doesn’t just look like a straight up zoom. It looks like a different camera and also in practice, minimum focus. Distance of the telephoto lens is a little further out than the normal, so these macros i wanted to take just weren’t really working.
I have to resort back the digital zoom from the main camera, but that’s all closer to what you may consider nitpicking but onto the front facing cameras. This i like this is a good idea. I don’t even take selfies that much as you could probably tell by the lack of me talking about front-facing cameras in most videos, but this is a a good idea for a useful difference in two different front-facing focal lengths. It’S a single normal, eight megapixel, selfie camera for most of your normal front facing photos and videos, but for once in a while, when you’re trying to get more in a photo behind you or fit more people, the wider angle, selfie camera will do better. It’S a five megapixel and those work pretty well. You won’t want to use it all the time because it definitely distorts more and you have to stretch things closer to the edge of the frame to fit them in, but it accomplishes the effect you need – and i don’t really have any complaints here for my first Impressions and then just in the camera software itself, they have kept a lot of their other features.
They’Ve kept their ai scene recognition with a lot of scenes, recognized and the automatic enhancements. If you want to turn that on and other things like that, the one thing they’ve added with the triple cameras now is something called triple shot. Basically, if you’re ever undecided, about which of the three cameras to use just turn on triple shot and use them all. So you point and shoot, and you put your subject in the middle of the frame with triple shot on you press it you hold still and it takes a shot with each of the three cameras all in a row. Then it takes a minute to save uh. Probably longer than i would expect, but once it does, you get all three photos from all three focal lengths at the same time, plus this little five.
Second video with the absolute worst super zoom effect of all time seriously. I don’t know what the point of this is, even if it does get better with software updates uh. Is it worth it? I don’t know seems silly to me, but at least you do get a full resolution copy of all three photos. Overall, i don’t see myself using triple shot that much actually, because i actually want to take my time to focus and point and shoot and decide how i want each photo to come out, and i can easily do that here, but that is it that’s. What’S new with the v40, that’s what you need to know on the surface. Uh a lot of people considered that g7. When it came out a couple months ago, one of the more underrated phones, uh that might have been because of lg’s skin – might have been under the radar for a couple other reasons, but it was pretty good. This v40, with the improvements it makes, even though it’s not a direct step from that phone, i think it does it well and i’m a fan of the use of the different focal lengths that lg is going to here.
Will it sell people who weren’t already all in with an lg phone? I don’t really know, i think you kind of have to want an lg phone already, and this might be the icing on the cake. But if not, this might not change your mind either way. It’S still cool to see and worth considering, especially at the 900 bucks. It’S not that insane thousand dollar price, so a lot of people might be interested in checking out this phone for the first time, either way.
That’S been it thanks for watching talk to you guys, the next one peace .