The LG booth at Consumer Electronics Show 2019 was all about their televisions and curved OLED arrays, but tucked away in one corner was their smartphone showcase. The area was littered with LG’s flagship smartphone, the LG V40 ThinQ in all its colour variants. Taking a break from gawking at LG’s rollable OLED, we spent some time checking out the V40. LG had launched the phone internationally a few months ago, but the phone is slated to come to India only in the next few days. The unit we played around with was an international, unlocked variant and not a Korea-specific one, so that was good. Here’s everything we gathered from our brief time with the LG V40 ThinQ.
Upon picking up the LG V40 ThinQ, you can definitely feel its size and heft in your hands. It is by no means a light phone and with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9, it still manages to feel large. The phone, at first glance, feels very similar to the V30, that is until you turn it over. The back of the LG V40 ThinQ now sports a frosted finish, at least on the Moroccan Blue, Carmine Red and the Platinum Grey coloured variants. The Aurora Black version has a glossy back, which we found to be a serious fingerprint magnet. The frosted back finish actually looked very nice on the LG V40, but also had a tendency to get smudged after a bit of handling. The new finish doesn’t make the phone any less slippery though.
The frosted finish on the Carmine Red LG V40 ThinQ still manages to gather smudges
The other interesting aspect of the design on the back is the tri-camera module that is placed horizontally. Under the camera, you’ll find the fingerprint sensor, placed just like it is the G7. In terms of the button layout, the power button is on the right side of the phone while the volume rocker can be found on the left. Under the volume rocker, you will also find a dedicated AI button, which at the time of our using was configured to bring up Google Assistant. We did not check if it could be reconfigured.
LG has once again moved back to OLED screens for their flagship smartphone, after having used IPS LCD on the G7+ ThinQ. Interestingly, the LG V40 ThinQ does not carry a Dolby Vision certification, but it has already been Netflix certified. There’s also a notch on top which houses the dual front camera assembly, and there’s also a “second screen,” a software feature that adds a floating information bar on the display.
While the Penta-camera setup will be the real highlight of the LG V40 ThinQ, the company continues to retain some of its star features such as the 32-bit Quad-DAC, the BoomBox speakers and the usual IP68 and MIL-STD 810G rating. Powering the phone was a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with support for a microSD card with up to 2TB of storage. The LG V40 ThinQ retails for roughly $949 (give or take $50) in the U.S. if you buy it unlocked.
The LG V40 ThinQ continues to improve an already very impressive product lineup from LG. It is sad to see the company’s flagship smartphones not sell well when they are actually quite amazing smartphones. We were thoroughly impressed by the LG G7+ and couldn’t recommend it enough to our friends and family for the overall value for money proposition it offered. The LG V40 ThinQ definitely caught our interest, but it remains to be seen just how much of a powerhouse the phone is and how good of an imaging stack it packs.
The phone is set to make its India debut in a few days, and it would be very interesting to see how the company prices the phone. The LG G7+ ThinQ was priced at $749 for the 64GB variant (roughly Rs 52500) when it launched, but the India price was a far more lucrative Rs 39,999 that too for the 128GB storage variant. With the phone ready to launch on January 20, the price of the phone is not going to be a secret for long.