The V Series is basically LG’s do-all, be-all smartphone. It’s a relatively new series, with the V20 being just the second iteration. For the longest time, LG has been looking for an answer to Samsung’s hugely popular Note series. Unfortunately for them, just enlarging their flagship “G” series, and adding the “Pro” or "Flex" moniker does little to boost its popularity.
Rewind back to the October of 2015. LG announced the V10. A utilitarian phablet for power users. At a time where features and controls are being taken away from consumers in the name of “design” and “ease of use”, the V10 goes against the flow by providing users with more features, more control. Two front cameras, two front displays, removable battery, expandable storage, HiFi DAC (Digital Analogue Converter), manual video recording controls, and a MIL-STD 810G certification for shock resistance. The V10 is basically the antithesis to Samsung’s Galaxy Note5, and that’s really part of the appeal of the phone.
It has its flaws, but largely due in part to Qualcomm’s lousy showing that year. For a device that was meant to do everything, it was rather underpowered. Which was part of the reason I wasn’t too fond of the phone overall. Things are different this year though. With the V20, I think LG finally has a legitimate response to Samsung’s Galaxy Note, and a phablet that could stand on its own.
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While the V10 was a ruggedised beast of a phone, the V20 takes a page out of the G5 by using a lot more metal in its construction, giving it a much more premium feel. If you think about it, it’s actually a pretty impressive feat considering the phone still has a removable back cover, and maintains its MIL-STD 810G certification.
The front of the phone resembles the BlackBerry Z10, but then again, there’s only so many ways to fit a screen into a rectangular slab. The fingerprint sensor doubles as the power button on the back of the phone. It is a clickable button, but you can simply rest your finger on it to quickly wake and unlock the phone.
That 5.7” QHD LCD display is accompanied by a tiny secondary display on the top right corner. It is somewhat of a hallmark feature for the V Series. The main display is a pretty great looking display, but still loses out a little to what Apple and Samsung has to offer in terms of colour, contrast, and outdoor visibility. The secondary display is a tiny strip of LCD that allows for additional features and functionality.
My favourite use of the secondary display is mainly just for notifications. Since it’s always on, I can easily glance at what notifications I have when the phone is on my desk. If you multi-task a lot, you can actually put that secondary display to good use by setting it up to show five recently used apps.
It has a bunch of other tools you can customise as well, and some apps like the camera actually makes use of that secondary display to provide more settings. Its usefulness is apparent, but the feature that I think is the most useful can be mostly replicated without the need to actually have a secondary display. Like Motorola’s “Moto Display”, or Samsung’s “Always On Display” with the use of an AMOLED display.
Due to the secondary display, along with large-ish bezels, the phone feels bigger than the Note7, but should be familiar territory for users of plus size iPhones. This is definitely not a phone that you can use one-handed comfortably.
Being a media power-house, I was half expecting the phone to come with stereo speakers, but sadly it's just a lonely bottom firing speaker. While it sounds decent, it's not the loudest I have heard. If you want good sound quality, what you really need to do is to make use of that 3.5mm headphone jack.
The V20 comes equipped with HiFi Quad DAC, which promises aural nirvana if you’re into that kind of thing. LG claims that it delivers clearer sound by minimising distortion and ambient noise by up to 50 percent. While I did notice it was louder than most, frankly I don’t have a good enough pair of earphones to hear a big difference. The phone does comes with a pair of B&O Play earbuds worth S$198 which is a nice value-add for buyers. I am neither an audiophile, nor the most technical person, so if you really want to know more about LG’s Quad DAC, this article have you covered.
Audio playback is not the only trick the V20 has up its sleeve though. It also makes use of high AOP microphones that lets me record some really fantastic audio. I tested it with some karaoke app, and recorded some voice overs, and they sound fantastic for a phone recording.
The V20 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 with 4GB of RAM. It may have been replaced by the slightly updated 821, but performance is still decent nonetheless while playing games. I did notice the phone getting a little bit warm at times, but it’s a cool dragon most of the time. The phone also comes equipped with 64GB internal memory coupled with expandable memory via a microSD card. The V20 also comes with dual sim support which could be convenient for frequent travellers.
The LG V20 is actually the first smartphone launched with Android 7.0 Nougat. So it has all the goodies like split screen multitasking, quick app switching, as well as the under the hoods enhancements. LG is once again taking a heavy handed approach when it comes to customising Android, and not the good kind. Extra functionalities and features aside, the design itself is somewhat of an eyesore. The iconography, the app UI design, the transitions, and the layout, leaves much to be desired.
Some of the additional features are genuinely useful, like the ability to customise the software navigational buttons, and double tap to wake/sleep. There are however also a ton of features that I will probably never use, including a bunch of LG’s own bloatware. LG is pretty much including everything but the kitchen sink in the software, much like the approach they are taking with the hardware.
The software performance is sadly not as smooth as I would have liked for a flagship device. It’s quick and snappy most of the time, but sometimes you still see some stutters or dropped frames. Sometimes apps just inexplicably take a bit longer to open, pages take a bit longer to load. This is pretty much the same thing I say about LG’s UI on every LG smartphone I have reviewed (outside of the Nexus), and it’s getting a little dreary.
(Rebooting the phone when you insert a new SIM and installing carrier bloat? How is this still a thing?)
(While screen on time is a decent 5 hours, the overall usage time is just over 9 hours.)
Blame it on poor optimisation, or a small battery, but the battery life on the V20 fails to impress as well. At just 3,200mAh, it’s a tiny bit smaller than what other phablets in its class offers. That deficit shows up in the battery life as well, but it should be able to last most people a day of use unless you are a heavy user. While the removable battery is probably part of the reason for the slightly smaller battery pack, it also allows users to quickly swap in a fully-charged battery pack.
The camera on the V20 is genuinely a joy to use. It uses the same dual camera setup like the LG G5 did. The first is a normal optical image stabilised 16-megapixel camera with f/1.8 aperture, and the other is an 8-megapixel camera with f/2.4 aperture which uses a wide angle lens. That 135-degree field of view allows the V20 to capture some really unique shots, and is easily one of my favourite feature of the phone. It does mean a drop in the quality, but the effect is pretty impressive looking.
The camera also uses a hybrid autofocus system that combines laser detection, phase detection, and contrast autofocus. It’s decent enough in most situations, and accurate too, but I still think Samsung’s Dual Pixel system is faster.
In auto mode, the camera makes good decisions about the exposure and whether or not to use HDR mode. But LG’s processing tend to make the photos a little bit more saturated, and the noise reduction and sharpening makes it look a little bit unnatural when pixel peeping. This is especially apparent in low light conditions. Talking about low light, there is something about a choppy viewfinder that bugs me, and sadly it's something the V20 has inherited from the G5 as well.
Full resolution images can be viewed here.
LG V20 can produce some really good looking images. It may not be the best camera around, but it’s not that far off. But what it lacks in auto mode, it makes up for it by having the best set of manual controls on a smartphone camera out of the box. Manual controls for shooting images are not exactly new, but the V20 allows for manual controls while shooting videos too.
This is provided of course you know what you're doing. I tend to stick to auto mode unless the situation calls for it. While this is a feature that most people probably won't make use of frequently, for those who wants more granular control over content creation, the V20's camera is tough to beat.
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I am sure you can see by now why I chose the title I did for the review. LG pretty much threw in as much as they could into the LG V20. High end processor, removable battery, expandable storage, dual sim capability, premium metal build, HiFi Quad DAC, high AOP microphones, two displays, two rear cameras with 3 types of autofocus system, best manual controls on a smartphone camera, and last but not least MIL-STD 810G certified. The only thing that is perhaps lacking in hardware is any sort of IP (ingress protection) rating against water, so be sure to steer clear of the kitchen sink while using the V20.
While the LG V20 has enough going for it to be a viable option for most users, it is still not able to go toe to toe with Samsung’s Galaxy Note lineup. The phone is undoubtedly packed to the gills with software and hardware features, but it lacks the kind of polish that one would expect from a top tier manufacturer, especially in terms of the software. The V20 is a great showcase of the technologies that LG has to offer, and the individual hardware components on the phone are no doubt great. But as a whole, the phone is lesser than the sum of its part somehow. I find myself loving some of the features the phone has to offer, but loathing the subpar software and its idiosyncrasies.
LG only got some slack partly because the Google Pixel and OnePlus 3T are both not officially available in Singapore, and mostly because of what happened to the Galaxy Note7. If you are looking for the niche set of features that the V20 offers, there is nothing else quite like it. But if you're not, the V20 is only a good option because of the lack of alternatives here in Singapore.
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