hey everyone Tim Schofield here and the LGV 40 thin queue has been out for a good amount of time a little over two months now so it’s time to do a sort of longer term review of this latest flagship from LG I like to take a look and see how this kind of stands up against the competition of course it is priced similar to that of the note 9 so you can expect top-of-the-line quality or can you from LG’s latest flagship also I do have a bit of a crack in this phone I kind of showed up and I don’t exactly know why so I will show that up up close as well but anyways let’s go ahead and get my over 2 month review of the LG v 40 to begin I’d like to start with some notes about design of the v40 and overall it’s a very good-looking phone very minimal bezels overall it is light however that is light because it is not surrounded with any aluminum whatsoever it’s all plastic around it and of course that glass back and because of that it gives it a less premium feel to it I think that metal is just a more premium feeling material than surrounded with
plastic and of course it being lightweight you might like it you might don’t I just think overall something lighter with a plastic feel just feels a little less premium also I did not wash the back of this phone on purpose so just after some general usage I want you to take a look at just how many finger prints and kind of just how gross the back of this phone is it’s definitely just for whatever reason collects seems to collect a little bit more dirt than any other glass back phone I have owned and also a little painful to show off next to that far right lens no that is not a hair that is actually just a small crack that has shown up on the lens protector which has not affected the photos in any way I might add but I’m just not too sure how it actually showed up I don’t remember dropping it anything like that but I did just look at it one time and it was there a bit unfortunate but it has not affected the phone’s camera quality I really do like the fingerprint scanner on the back it’s in a very convenient location you have to kind of turn off the
animation you’ll see when I sent my finger down it kind of pauses a little bit for unlocks you have to actually change the animation in settings to make that go a little bit faster and it not having that animation which seems a little counterintuitive you should go directly to the home screen as soon as you place your finger on LG is also one of the few companies that includes a headphone jack store not only they include one it is a very good quality one so if you like to listen to a lot of music to your headphones this is definitely the way to go even their speaker quality is also very good I’ve been very impressed with how loud the bottom firing speaker paired with that earpiece now they aren’t front firing unfortunately but considering its bottom firing earpiece they get extremely loud and they are very good quality worth mentioning this does have wireless charging as all flagship should have the v40 has a six point four inch 1440p OLED display and overall I’m a fan of the quality of this OLED it’s not quite at Samsung’s level but it still is a very very good phone of course with it being OLED blacks are completely black so when you do have an always-on display like this phone does it looks great and yes there is a notch up towards the top of the v40 and no LG does not call it a notch if you jump into display settings you will
see there is a second screen option not only a second screen a new second screen now there are some options I will give them credit no they don’t call it a notch but they do give you options at least where hey maybe you want it to actually cover up the entire notch so by software there the notch is now gone on the v40 you can completely get rid of it there I go back home you can tell it just looks like there isn’t a notch so you can get rid of it via software but they also allow customization options where you can kind of change the coloring if you want to go with a more rainbow look you can also change how the app corners look here are the two options with the app corner so a very subtle difference and of course just a lot of color options now for me when it comes to the knots it’s a bit of a nuisance of course they needed to put these two dual cameras somewhere but eventually with the notch you do run out of some space for notification icons which can be a little cumbersome and then of course it does kind of jut into fullscreen videos and gaming when it comes to battery life the v40 has a 3300 milliamp hour battery and overall the phone does get me through the full day I get about an average of 4 hours and 40 minutes screen on time but that still leaves me wanting a little bit more in
comparison to other flagships out there this kind of falls behind especially at the price point it’s at you expect top the line battery but you don’t get it from the v40 yes I can get through a full day barely but then that’s really about it if I forget to plug it in at night it’s going to be dead in the morning when it comes to performance like every other phone with a Snapdragon 845 it handles everything I throw at it it’s a great processor for the year Qualcomm did a good job with it also coupled with 6 gigabytes of RAM means Ram management does does the trick they have not been over aggressive with killing apps things run smoothly now let’s do it a little bit of multitasking here let’s say I wanted to I don’t know go into the camera snap a couple pictures google lens is built into the camera I’ll get into all that in just a second so of course let’s go to relay Pro load that on up maybe load up a post there’s all the comments that load it up and I’m gonna go back home maybe try one more thing so let’s say we wanted to load up the Twitter timeline there we go it’s loading it up now let’s go ahead and swap all the way back to Odyssey and it’s just just right back into the game so I’ve not had an issue with things prematurely closing or closing when not needed and of course performance has been great in the u.s.
unfortunately the only model you can get is the 64 gigabyte model luckily they do include a microSD card slot but if you’re looking for more internal storage you cannot get it at least within the US which can leave you wanting more but again they do give you the option for the microSD card I’m just saying in comparison to other flagships they offer higher internal storage options so kind of keep that in mind that can just be a personal preference of yours so let’s take a look at the camera app on the v40 and I’m actually a pretty big fan of it it’s an easy layout to learn now overall if I snap a quick picture it gives you a quick shortcut to actually share it and once that goes away you can tap on this arrow and it gives you suggested apps so it’s actually once you take a picture if you want to share right away it’s very simple and easy to do so you don’t have to actually tap on the picture to share it down at the bottom instead of having to scroll through a bunch of options you just have for google lens portrait mode triple shot and AI camera and if you would like to go to all of the modes there’s a specific mode button which I like I like how they do that actually I don’t like having to scroll through all of those because that can take some time and then you have a manual mode not only manual for photo but a manual for video so if you do like to take videos this is definitely fantastic that they have a manual mode I do like the idea of the triple shot but after using it for a while so
what happens is you’ll see here I will take the ultra wide shot and I have to hold it steady while it takes all three now I wish what would happen is it would take the ultra wide shot and then stop and ask me to recenter for the next lens take the picture recenter for the next lens take the picture because overall I find that a lot of the shots I take with the different lenses I don’t necessarily want to to have in the same position if I’m going to zoom in I’m going to kind of reframe it same with the ultra wide two so I kind of wish they had an option where it would pause during the triple shot so I could kind of reframe depending on the lens that it has yes I just have to revert to manually doing it so if I go to regular shot and then a telephoto shot and then an ultra wide shot just tap on those trees right there and you’ll see here with the ultra wide you could just get so much more into the shot and here’s just some of the pictures I’ve taken with the v40 and like all other flagships out now in good lighting snares you can expect to get a great shot just about every time sometimes they can be a little over processed depending on what it’s taking a shot of and also I notice overall it might underexposed some shots just a little bit too much not crazy by any means now when it gets to the lower light scenarios they will start to
struggle it’s not on par with other flagships out right now again you do have the versatility of all three lenses including that ultra wide which can just get very a lot more here’s one of my favorite shots of just a building including the surrounding buildings so when it comes down to it with this camera there’s a ton of versatility a ton of options the shots that you take over all the point-and-shoot shots that you do take could be a little bit better especially in comparison to other flagships out right now however the user is still going to love the shot that they take and of course it does have manual mode if you’d like to use that something else I would like to talk about that’s really hard to show off on camera is the vibration motor there’s a noticeable difference when going from a different Android phone to one of these LG phones because they have one of the best vibration motors in their phone the haptic feedback is really nice it isn’t quite at apple’s level Apple has had the best vibration motors and their phones for a long time now but it still is up there as one of the best aside from Apple’s phones and of course since this is a longer term review let’s go ahead and check and see what version of Android this phone is on see how updates have gone
we’re gonna go to system update system updates and it’s completely up to date on Android 8.1 da which is not the latest Android 9 pi is the latest so it is unfortunate that over this amount of time they have not rolled out the Android 9 PI update that is definitely something noteworthy and something to keep in mind when purchasing this phone also of course cuz I know about making the comparison the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has not received an Android 9 PI update either LG also has a skin over Android now overall I find that the skin isn’t very obtrusive you’ll see you do have your Google cards on the left side of their default launcher there is a bit of a theme you can kind of customize it to your liking if I jump into settings you will see extensions right here where you do have some added features which do add some cool cool things including context awareness so it knows if you’re at home if you’re going away from home so you can do things such as turn Wi-Fi on or off Bluetooth as well one that I actually use and just about the only one I use I like to manually set these things so I don’t use
them personally but they are there but when earphones is plugged in I haven’t opened up Spotify which isn’t always the case but most of the time when I plug my headphones in I’m probably gonna want to open up Spotify there’s also shortcut keys you can double press the power button open the camera which is standard however when the display is locked if I press volume up twice it will actually open up this capture where you can go ahead and write a quick note if you’re writing someone’s phone number anything like that or of course if I press volume down twice on the lock screen it will open up the camera and of course the v40 has a specific button for the Google assistant right here now if I go ahead and just press it it will go ahead and open up the assistant wait for me or I can just press and hold it and while I hold it talk into it so what’s the weather right now and let go and it’ll stop listening to me which is pretty convenient also if I double tap the assistant key it will open up google lense which is very handy and nifty to have as a shortcut shout-out to LG for not trying to make their own assistant just including the Google assistant so thumbs up for that I will say overall I probably prefer the pixel squeeze to activate the Google assistant feature in terms of functionality so I don’t accidentally press this button
which I really don’t do that often to be honest so when it comes down to the LG v40 essentially it just leaves you wanting a little bit more especially after all this time you’re still wanting more battery life you’re wanting a little bit better camera you’re wanting that android 9 update which has not come yet and it’s just a little bit frustrating especially at the price point that you pay it just kind of falls behind other flagship options that you have now don’t get me wrong the v40 is still a very good phone I just wish it was priced a little bit lower than it actually is and especially at how it was at launch if you have the choice between the note 9 and the v40 you’re probably just gonna go with the note 9 because you do get a lot more for your money so that’s just about everything I want to talk about for the v40 I hope you enjoyed the review video if you did drop a comment give it a thumbs up I’d really appreciate it be sure to subscribe as well a lot more videos coming very soon and as always guys thank you very much
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