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HomeGearGadgetsLG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict

LG’s V40 ThinQ, this feature packed flagship smartphone offers a wealth of functionality to enhance your daily usage. But is it worth the money? Is it a good multimedia device? How does it perform? Do you Love the Notch or Dislike it?

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict
LG V40 ThinQ

LG’s V40 ThinQ comes with the latest hardware and boasts five onboard cameras. Three rear and dual front facing cameras for selfies along with a HiFi 21-Bit Quad DAC and DTS:X Virtual Surround sound and much more.

The new LG V40 ThinQ features a sleek, polished design along with the hardware to make you love the experience.

We have been running the LG V40 ThinQ as our daily driver for the past 3 months and the overall experience is a very good one. The feature packed phone offers a wealth of functionality that you may or may not use but it’s nice to know it is there.

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict
LG V40 ThinQ Specs

Specs

The V40 sports the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, 2.8 GHz + 1.7 GHz Octa-Core CPU and 6GB of RAM. Storage comes with a minimum of 64GB/128GB. Expandable with an additional 2TB microSD card.

The latest ThinQ features a 6.4″ QHD+ P-OLED display with 3120 x 1440 resolution at 538 ppi.

The new second screen area is more decorative as its new purpose is to deal with how the notch area is viewed.

A large selling point or at least marketing point for LG is the V40’s 5 cameras that feature a slew of functionality that you may or may not ever use. But it’s sure nice to know you can if you need to.

The V40 ThinQ comes IP68 Dust & Water Resistant and meets the MIL-STD-810G shock resistance standard for MIL-STD-810G Method 516.6, Procedure IV “Transit Drop” and is equipped with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for all glass, front, back as well as camera glass.

For connectivity the V40 ThinQ features 4G LTE connectivity, Bluetooth 5.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi, NFC, Native Screen Sharing and most of the trimmings you are accustomed to in a top tier phone.

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict
Left to Right: Headphone Jack, Type C Chargeport, Speaker

Ships with Android 8.1 Oreo and comes equipped with a 3,300 mAh battery. Thankfully a Type C charge port is included along with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology. The device measures 6.25″ H x 2.98″ W x 0.31″ D and weighs 5.96 oz.

As is the case with many Android updates, they can be slow to roll out and we have not seen an update beyond 8.1 Oreo at this time. EDIT:We have however seen a few security updates already. It’s encouraging to see that LG appears to be rolling those out to the V40 diligently. Now that we’ve gone through the obligatory spec sheet, let’s get into a little more…

LG has provided the V40 ThinQ smartphone to us so that we could provide first hand review coverage of the Design, Build Quality along with our overall user experience with it to our readers.

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict
LG V40 ThinQ Design

Design & Aesthetics

The V40 is a beautiful and polished device. The edges are softly rounded, glass is smoothly rounded, everything is relatively symmetrical and balanced. While the physical design is decidedly unexciting it’s not unpleasant. Naked the phone is very pleasant to hold, glass front and back in a sandwiched design. It’s also very similar to the Samsung Galaxy S9+ and iPhone X. It’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet as you might suspect with anything that is all glass or glossy.

One complaint about the paint job: the camera oval that surrounds the 3 rear cameras can easily get scratched. If you run the V40 naked, expect that the black paint will get scratched off due to the beveled edge surface protruding past the plane of the body.

Still the LG V40 takes a safe route and widdles down to a common design for handset these days building on LG’s V30 design and taking an abrupt turn from the V10’s unapologetically utilitarian build. Not to say that the LG V40 is a bad design, it’s not. Smooth and polished. It’s VERY similar to the Galaxy S9 plus. We feel the Galaxy S9 Plus is too narrow for our liking, do you feel the same?

LG’s speaker design choice looks exactly like the iPhone’s. Do we care? Not particularly. Smartphones have been evolving and design choices that were once innovations, become common. It’s the nature of the beast.

The 6.4″ main screen has an additional always-on screen feature. The always on section of the display keeps a separate background graphic at the center of your lock screen. As the name depicts, it’s always on. This can be a handy feature, especially to add some color to your all black device along with time, date and notification info at a glance.

The size of the phone feels quite tall initially and perhaps a bit thinner width-wise that we would like. The thinner real estate does stretch the content slightly that you can see at first but you quickly get used to that. That said we’d prefer a slightly shorter and wider phone but that is purely subjective. Still we prefer the V40 shape over the Galaxy S9 Plus.

Currently the LG V40 comes in two colors, Black and Morracan Blue which looks amazing. Unfortunately the Morracan Blue is a carrier specific color, namely Verizon. But the Black variety is slick if you’re an “everything looks better in black” kinda person.

LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict
Embrace the Notch

Gimme more Notch

LG embraced the notch with their new second screen area to help you customize yours. The notch cutout area hugs the top surrounding the earpiece and two selfie cameras. You can apply background colors to the “new second screen” area to suite your taste.

You can accentuate the notch or use black to give the appearance of no notch. We find this is a great approach and works well with black. However this works on the home screen, phone screen, message screen, but does not apply globally across everything. Still it’s a pleasant feature to have.

Be the notch my friend

LG also embraces theme customization directly through the LG store. You can download free backgrounds, icons and themes or paid ones. We find it nice to be able to customize your look without having to root your device or fiddle. Find one you like, install and presto.

Day to Day Usage

LG’s V40 ThinQ is a pleasing phone overall. The latest Snapdragon 845 and 6GB of RAM help make the silky smooth snappy user experience. Multi-tasking is a breeze and switching from app to app is quick and immediate. A host of features can help make your day more productive and/or convenient.

We love that LG has integrated theme customization into their proprietary layer. LG’s UI layer is smooth, not all that different than a pure Android OS, and supports 7 icons across your favorites bar. While this might seem like a small point, it does save us from installing a 3rd party launcher like Nova Launcher eating up precious RAM or feeling compelled to root the device. Still if you need one, Nova Launcher is still the best hands down.

Glass on both front and back make the V40 feel every bit a polished and premium phone but certainly more on the delicate side of things. You’ll want to toss this guy into a case as soon as possible. We’ve gone with the Spigen Rugged Armor TPU case. It’s simple, feels good in hand, provides drop protection and fits the phone like a glove. It just doesn’t come with a screen protector.

The black looks great, however when it sits on a dark table it’s easy to miss. We’ve already lost this phone a number of times when it’s sitting on a cherry wood table. While we love the all-black look, for us it’s also difficult to see and sometimes feel the buttons: volume, Google button, Power button are glossy black just like the phone and low profile.

We have noticed that under heavy multi-tasking or in “some” games the back of the V40 can get somewhat hot from time to time.

Continue to Page 2 of the LG V40 ThinQ review…

LG's V40 ThinQ is a smooth and polished device in both looks and build quality offering beautiful 2k resolution in a 6.4" P-OLED display to rival the mobile industries best. The V40 offers a hardware rich and feature packed platform with a smooth User Experience (UX) and a clean User Interface (UI) for excellent day to day functionality.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Hardware
Display Quality
Battery Life
Camera
Audio & Sound
UX & UI
LG's V40 ThinQ is a smooth and polished device in both looks and build quality offering beautiful 2k resolution in a 6.4" P-OLED display to rival the mobile industries best. The V40 offers a hardware rich and feature packed platform with a smooth User Experience (UX) and a clean User Interface (UI) for excellent day to day functionality. LG V40 ThinQ Review: 3 Month Verdict