LG V60 ThinQ 5G review: Still Alive with android 13

LG V60 ThinQ 5G narrative review: the regressive flagship

This is the LG V60 ThinQ and it’s LG’s modern flagship system that, once more yes, comes for free (at least in most cases) with a twin display screen case simply like the LG G8X did.
Well, LG dispatched me one to borrow for evaluation so I figured I’d strive and do a whole walkthrough on it for you guys.

Now, if you aren’t acquainted a whole walkthrough on this channel is the place I attempt and go thru each single function I perhaps can on a new system so you guys are higher organized have to you be in the market to really go purchase one.

With that said, there is a lot to go via so let’s get started out with the hardware.

Firstly, the LG V60 (I refuse to use the ThinQ branding at the end that LG has added to all their new phones, I’m sorry, it’s unnecessary) has a 6.8” FHD+ OLED display with a 20.5:9 aspect ratio making it LG’s largest phone screen yet.

Something that some human beings will both admire or hate about this display screen even though is the truth that it isn’t curved like most of the flagship units we are used to seeing. Personally, I experience the bezels round it simply can’t assist however provide it a barely dated/less than appear due to the fact of that, however for these that by chance contact their displays whilst keeping their telephones due to the fact of severely curved displays, you won’t have to fear about that at least.

Flat Display
In that screen, we have a 10MP the front digital camera with 1.22-micron sized pixels (there’s no pixel binning from a large decision down to that either, it’s a 10MP sensor with 1.22-micron sized authentic pixels). It’s additionally has a 72.5-degree discipline of view an aperture of f1.9 and a sensor dimension of 1/3.1”

The phone is IP68 rated

meaning it can be submerged for up to 30 mins at a depth of 1.5 meters. Also though, the V60 is Mil-STD810-G tested for shock resistance as well. Neither of these ratings apply to the second display by the way, we’ll get to that party piece in a sec though.

Moving around the phone, we have our volume buttons and Google Assistant button that you can tap to bring the voice assistant up or you can hold down to talk to her in a walkie talkie fashion. The latter of which is actually quite handy as it one, allows you to not wait for her to decide that your done talking since as soon as you let go it knows, and two, makes it easier for her to understand you as it gives her less surrounding noise to have to try and isolate your voice through.

At the top of the device, we have our SIM card & MicroSD card slot tray to expand the 128GBs of on-board storage that’s included.

On the right, we have our power button.

And we have one of our dual speakers at the bottom (the other is the earpiece and LG claims they made them more balanced). We also have a 3.5mm headphone jack that LG continues to put a 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC in so wired audio should sound a lot fuller than most devices.

In between both of these, we also have our USB-C port that is capable of Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0+ to quickly charge the 5000mah battery inside. I figured I’d try and do a quick test of that though so we can see how quick it acutally is.

And while we’re at it, an albeit unscientific test for how long it takes to drain streaming a 1080P video from YouTube.

The device also supports Qi wireless charging which also works through that dual screen case by the way and they have a clever magnetic cable adapter you can put on the included charger to be able to charge the phone through the case via that, as well.

Under the hood, we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset paired with 8GBs of RAM.

Security-wise there is an in-display fingerprint scanner that I have to admit feels a little sluggish and finicky to me and we don’t have any option for facial recognition in the settings that I can find.

For connectivity, we have Wifi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 with AptX HD for higher quality audio streaming, and Sub6 5G in all models except Verizon’s who will have a custom mmWave model to be able to take advantage of their mmWave 5G network (for more info on what all that means, you can check out my Decodr episode on What is 5G here).

Moving around the back, we have our centered camera system.

Firstly, we have a ToF sensor to help with depth information and make portrait mode and some AR functions work better.

Then, we have our main 64MP camera with an aperture of f1.8 and a 78-dergee field of view. The sensor is 1/1.7” in size with 0.8-micron sized pixels. Now, by default these are binned in 4×4 squares in order to increase each pixels size to get better low light performance and dynamic range with less resolution. So we end up with 16MP image with 1.6-micron sized pixels.

Now, that’s not as large as the S20 Ultra and Find X2 Pro’s of the world so you won’t see as much natural bokeh (the blurred separation between a subject and the background) as you would with those phones, but you do still get some.

That main sensor also has optical stabilization, dual pixel autofocus, and instead of putting a telephoto camera on the back here in addition to the main like they have in the past, tapping on the telephoto icon in the camera UI will actually crop the sensor to achieve a 2x zoom and it doesn’t look bad actually.

Now, using this cropping method is the equivalent of putting the same lens on a full frame sized sensor camera vs a lens meant for a smaller APS-C sized sensor for example.

Because the sensor is smaller (or in this case they are using a smaller part of the sensor) the field of view you see is that of if you zoomed in.

So of the 64MP they’re using 32MP of the middle of the sensor and that crops the image 2x since it’s half the original sensor size. They apparently do this up to 10x but clearly there is something else at work here since no matter what size I take a photo at, I’m getting a 16MP image…

Now, without going into it further than that, suffice it to say that the effect is definitely much better than just digitally zooming but head to my instagram, twitter, and facebook that I have links for below for side by side camera comparisons of it next to other

Besides that main camera and it’s crop zoom, we also a wide angle 13MP f1.9 117-degree field of view 1/3.4” sensor with 1-micron sized pixels and can I just take a second to say, that it’s funny to think about how a wide-angle lens is a standard on flagship phones now and LG was the first to do it back in 2016. Just feel like they could use a little credit.

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The phone can shoot in 8K at 24fps can also shoot in HDR10+, do 4K at 60fps, and has a steady cam mode to stabilize the video as well (but brings it down to 1080P)

LG has also added some interesting audio options using the 4 built-in microphones we have on this phone (the V50 had 2 by the way).

We have your standard stereo recording mode but then we have ASMR mode which amplifies the subject so you can hear even softer sounds. The term ASMR stands for Automous Sensory Meridian Response and it refers to the feeling of tingling and relaxation that a person can get from hearing specific sounds often associated with relaxed whispering.

If all of this sounds ridiculous, please YouTube ASMR and enjoy just how ridiculous it actually can get. Regardless, the phone does make it easy to make these types of videos that you would otherwise need a more senstive mic for but also as you can tell here, just does an interesting job of amplifying even faint sounds like rain for example, which is actually useful.

We also have Audio Bokeh they’re calling it which is similar to Samsung’s Audio Zoom which has the device try and isolate the sound of a subject that you tap on versus the surrounding noise. Also, could be useful.

• Time-Lapse: You can record a video select the speed at which you want the video to be sped up when played back or select Auto to let the device decide based on the length and action in the shot.
• Portrait: Uses software to blur the background behind a subject to create a faster aperture look from a mirrorless camera, for example.
• Sticker: Let’s you add 3D AR stickers to a face, think Snapchat/Instagram filters.
• Panorama: Standard panoramic mode to let you start taking an image and pan the camera to have it stitch multiple images together to capture a wider, panoramic image.
• Manual Camera: Let’s you manually control things like ISO, shutter speed, etc.
• Manual Video: Same as manual camera but for video.
• Slow-Mo: You can choose to have the entire video be in slow mo meaning it’ll record it in 120fps at 1080P and then you can choose what parts are slow and what parts are not after or you can select part-time slow mo which lets you tap the screen while recording to record 960fps 0.5 second sections (up to 5 in total per clip).
• YouTube Live: An integrated way to go live to YouTube directly from the camera app.
• AR Stickers: This actually seems to just open Google Playground, their AR app for adding 3D items into the real world.
• Cine Shot: Lets you easily create cinemagraphs by taking a video, having it show you an image from the video and allowing you to draw on the part you want to have motion.
• 360 Panorama: Which lets you take a full 360-degree panoramic shot.

Besides these modes, there are a couple of interesting AI CAM modes in the camera settings.

• Auto Scene Optimizer: Which adjusts the color based on what it recognizes in the image. This isn’t interesting frankly since it’s on most flagship phones now, and I personally don’t like this feature on any of those phones so I just turn it off.
• Action Shot: This is more interesting. When you turn this on it recognizes if an object is moving and then tries to minimize motion blur in the image (an issue that Samsung phones have in particular in lowlight so interesting to see that here trying to make sure the same doesn’t happen with them maybe).
• Composition: With this on you can go in after a photo is taken and it’ll show you what it though was a better composition of the phone based on what it thinks the subject was. Something again, I won’t ever use but is interesting at least.

Now, let’s talk about the, more often than not, included dual screen case.

The case has an identical screen to the phone, even with the included notch for the camera that isn’t there as well as the hole for the speaker. (By the way, I’m pretty sure this comes down to the fact that they wanted to save on manufacturing costs because having to make a new screen without a notch would cost a lot more than just reusing the same panel as the phone).

The phone slides in onto the USB-C plug in the bottom and the screen then uses the power and connection from that to operate.

The hinge is a 360-degree one that allows you to position it from closed to folded all the way back (where it will automatically turn itself off if you do) and anywhere in between thanks to the fact that it has a pretty sturdy hinge.

On the back, we have a small monochrome display that shows the time, date, battery level and notifications.

To use the second screen, you have to tap the floating icon that appears and select turn on Dual Screen.

After that, your second screen works very much like a separate phone in many ways. It has it’s own launcher/home screen, it’s own wallpapers (annoyingly), and for the most part you’ll be using it with it’s own app open on it and another on the original screen.

Now, you can go into the settings on the dual screen and enable any of the Google apps (the only ones that work right now) to span across both screens, but let’s face it, the gap in the middle makes that look ridiculous, and the fact that LG doesn’t even enable this by default tells me they don’t really expect you to use it that way either.

Instead it sort of feels like a dual monitor setup for your phone. You can open anything on the main screen and tap that floating icon to decide whether to move the content to the dual screen, swap the content with the dual screen, or move the dual screen content to the main screen.

So that will be useful to anyone who wants to have a split app experience that’s a bit better thanks to much more room than just using the software version on another phone.

There are also some interesting implementations that LG has added to make it a bit more useful, too.

For example, if you use LG’s keyboard you can actually move it to one of the screens (I move it to the phone with the content on the second screen for stability but it works both ways) and then kinda use it like a laptop (albeit not as comfortably or efficient, but you could).

And similarly, and maybe more useful to me, is the fact you can use the included LG Game Pad app to either choose from a collection of controllers they have included or even create your own and so long as the game supports Bluetooth controllers you can make one and have it map to any of the buttons on the screen. You could even make one of these for each of the different games you play. Honestly, pretty clever.

But let’s go over some of the more stand out features which most of which LG conveniently puts in their own section of the settings called Extensions.

• Smart Cleaning: A simple app to help you clear up unused storage and memory on the phone as well as test various hardware yourself.
• Context Awareness: This let’s you choose to have various settings like WiFi, Bluetooth, sound profiles, etc. to change based on whether you’re at home, away from home, work, etc. and you can have it autolaunch and a specific app when you either plug in headphones or connect via Bluetooth.
• Screen Recording: We have a built-in screen recorder which you can use by swiping down and tapping it in Quick Settings–they also have a setting to include yourself in the video either as a photo or video and you can adjust the size of “you”.
• Dual App: Something a lot of manufacturers now include but it’s handy for people who want to use two separate accounts for the same app by essentially installing two versions of it.
• Pen: We also have pen support which is cool. I didn’t see a pen available to buy on any of the carrier sites nor was one included but apparently you can buy a dedicated one from LG (only being marketed in Europe it seems and not North America). Also, thanks to the inclusion of the Wacom AES driver installed on the V60, any Wacom AES capable stylus should work (and also on the dual screen, by the way). Adding a bit more functionality to the device for sure.