Gadgetory

LG decided to begin a new device lineage this year with a phone that has a great camcorder mode a second screen and a body to kill for or rather it's kind of tough to kill but a lot of everything else well as they say the more things change the more the g4 stays the same I'm Jules Wong with pocket pal and we're asking what the big deal is with the LG v10 this is our video review full disclosure we tested a South Korean demo unit in Romania for several days and then also bought our own t-mobile device and have had the chance to roam around Greater Boston with it though we had to replace it once during our test period and you'll see why in just a second the LG v10 is a svelte wildebeest a beveled slab and one tough cookie that cookie starts with the stainless steel frame and it's exposed sightings that are meant to protect vulnerable fracture points for screens the sides and corners of phones that's what LG calls deer guard right there the top bottom and removable back of the phone are covered in dura skin resilient silicon that is able to withstand some shock you can color it in black white beige and in two shades of blue both of those when put together really get to protecting you can see the scuffs here the scratches on the sidings there all those tell of a four-foot fall while I was begging in the middle of the street the body battery and covered sploded onto the asphalt but when put back together everything worked and that Gorilla Glass 4 panel stayed intact this phone has definitely earned its milspec shock rating though we still don't recommend you take a facedown fall with it under the glass it's a quad HD LCD spanning 5.7 inches along with an extra bit at the top that adds 160 pixels to the height all of it is bright enough and sharp enough to be usable in heavy doses of sunlight but of course the big attention our here is that second screen set up and sure it makes an ergonomic isense to move it to the bottom but with the screen of body ratio already in this tight it'd be likely that the two camera units next to that second screen would have to move down with it and honestly I don't think selfie experiences have to be more awkward than they already are and in regards students cameras one of them has an 80 degree field of vision while the other takes in a wider 120 degrees some familiarity as we head back you see essentially the same camera flash laser focus sensor layout as we did on the g4 there with a little mound around bullen's there's some lovely texturing on the volume rocker with a power button that doubles as LG's first smartphone fingerprint sensor on our retail unit yes it's easy to get at and yes it's too fast but both variables are pretty typical for the smartphone fingerprint sensor field as has been the case for most of the G series there's a removable 3000 milliamp hour battery and the holy grail of power users the micro SD card slot LG though is offering only one disk space option with the v10 and we think that the 64 gigabyte storage paired with 4 gigabytes of RAM is definitely something we can live with finally like the g4 there's a Snapdragon 808 processor with all the trimmings and just to be complete about it here are the major antennas LG's general software hasn't gotten any better or worse from the g4 even though it has the extra one upgrade on the Android side there's an aesthetic cohesion in an interface with the he was keeping to earth and sky tones and a whole bunch of circles overall but it still wouldn't be our first choice for an Android UI keyboard height toggles have been moved to a settings menu thus preventing accidental adjustments we're grateful also for the customizable nav bar with a notification trigger and dual window apps though we'd wish that LG supported more of them after all it's 2015 and another Korean om isn't resting on its laurels of course we'd be remiss to neglect how that second screen figures into the UX other than notifications which have an extra line of room compared to the typical info blast there are six screens that can fill up the space at any given time from what amounts to a text screensaver to playback controls agenda display to OneTouch quick contacts and recent app multitasking to some attempted and note features all in all we think it's a better way of implementing something Samsung tried to do with its edge features instead of dealing with an on body curve the features are actually tucked out of the way enough so that you aren't able to mess with them while using your phone normally the second screens on when the main display is on and agnostic on when that is not so you can get a quick flashlight going the second screen is a better take on a more present multitasking experience than what we've seen before though it still requires the shimmy or a second hand we think it's well worth the tap savings though if you went through even the edge route the camera picture hasn't changed much since the g4 at least physically on the rear both of those front faces are 5 megapixels each the pro viewfinder for stills remains pretty much the same as does the audio and simple view finders and the product these sensors put out are just as good as the g4 s although we seem to notice a slight bit more of watching noise and poorly lit situations but HDR typically fixes that up focus can be a little tricky to hunt for in dim situations with long distance contrast even with that laser all that said though in most bright and dark conditions they're going to get a great picture the new and neato snap mode lets you record in stitch video clips from all three cameras to create a crazy montage up to 60 seconds long and also a quick video editor is included with granular speed controls and automatic montage condensation these tools are pretty elemental but it's more than what the average device offers and we're grateful for them the pro video viewfinder is much the same as the stills one but here there's also a toggle for the three microphones on the device controlling directionality sensitivity and wind noise filtering honestly the sound isn't anything to write home about if you're using the phone to share the serious video you'd probably bring your own equipment any other points of granularity like the framing bitrate as well as a cinematic ratio for 1080p shooting actually proves to be very useful for the inner filmmaker in us oh is and panin skin at 1080p can do wonders for shop tracking shots if I'm walking and also for most pans and tilts however like the g4 if you rock the boat too hard even with Elias you'll get Warped patches hearing they're not so good for the queasy viewer but it's not particularly bad rolling shutter is handled better than most other phones and it certainly isn't a deal-breaker you also have to take note of the late see in the viewfinder while shooting which can be as much as half a second but the v10 wheel shoots great video if you take care with it like a regular camera you can say the same about the g4 but having more control over what you're shooting definitely helps and to that it's the v10 that gets the point here data speeds have been decent cross our testing in Romania and the u.s. call quality is of the norm there's 32 bit DAC support for lossless audio files but on our judgment with studio monitors we haven't been able to tell any superiority in clarity the speaker on our retail unit is adequately loud but it has a tendency to ebb in volume for a few seconds especially if you've been blasting the unit for a while it's a peculiar and rather disappointing bug that hasn't shown its phase in our review so take that for what you will on the software side the device does pass our gaming tests with flying colors heat is better dispersed throughout the massiveness of the v10 and it helps that the grippy silicon pattern keeps your cock in the face of sweat enough about your endurance what about the phones in a word man our South Korean review unit was plagued with issues that hobbled screen on usage - barely an hour our american retail unit was a little more forgiving with very frequent usage and either a lot of streaming radio or video shooting we've gotten three to four hours of screen time per charge there are a couple of ameliorating factors here one of them is quick charge 2.0 where the best that we've seen it fill an empty tank is about an hour there's also that removable battery which you can replace it with a fresh extra and while there's no built-in wireless charging as our michael fisher showed us with the g4 and from the looks of the v10 s cover there's a quick and cheap hack you could fix up t-mobile selling the v10 at $600 full retail well at AT&T it's more like $700 the death star is promoting it as a productivity tool but really that's the note series big magenta is propping up the video features and if you're an indie filmmaker well that's great but while it helps you me and the rest of us a pocket now to frame the phone for one special use though certain niche would come - we think that LG had a great base line for a phone that it added a lot of thoughtful features - everyone can use a little more drop insurance in life everyone could afford to save a bit of app hassle and everyone would definitely like more time off the wire now you could save at least $100 and get a moto X or HTC One a9 and not get any of those features and if you spend an extra few bucks you'll be getting a base-model note or iPhone and there isn't anything base-model about the v10 at a Midway price point you're buying the most you can get out of an LG smartphone and that's certainly no compromise this review has been a long time coming and we certainly thank you for being patient with it if you liked it well give us the thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already also follow us on our social media pads where we are at pocket now and I'm at Greenpoint Zero on Twitter for all the PocketNow team I'm Jules long there's more later you