LG V30 Stresses Camera, Software for Videographers

At this forenoon's formal introduction of the LG V30 smartphone, what impressed me was the focus on the camera, photography, and about importantly, videography, as the standout aspects of the device.

Juno Cho, President of LG Electronics Mobile Communications, said the V30 represents "a new era for smartphone videography," and talked near how it was designed for the "transition from storytelling to story showing," in his opening remarks.

Later, Andrew Coughlin, who leads the visitor's business organization in Northern Europe, said that 76 percent of smartphone users have videos more than once per week, and noted that 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every infinitesimal and ane billion hours of video are watched on YouTube daily. He said that not only are mobile phone users taking more video, they are now more likely to use filters, edit the video, and add groundwork music, and every bit a event, the standards for habitation video have risen.

From a hardware perspective, the biggest change related to the photo and video features in the V30 is the addition of a F1.6 "crystal clear" lens. With an F1.6 aperture and a glass lens rather than the more than common plastic one, LG says the new camera will be the brightest on the market place, allowing for better dynamic range and better detail in both bright and dark calorie-free. It also has a new xvi-megapixel sensor.

In addition, the phone also has a 13-megapixel wide-angle rear camera, improved to cut baloney at the edges past one-third compared with LG'due south previous wide-bending lens.

When I've been using an LG G6, I've found the similar dual rear-camera setup to be quite useful, and found the wide-angle lens lets me take photos I haven't been able to capture with most other phones.

Coughlin and David Franco, Director of Photography for Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, amongst others, demonstrated the new video features, which are featured in a variety of new software elements on the device.

V30 Cine Effect

1 of these is a CineVideo effect, which lets you lot choose the color palette for your video (from 15 preset options), as well as control the intensity of the colors, to create vignettes that better stand for the mood y'all would like to capture.

V30 Point Zoom

Another new feature is chosen Point Zoom, which lets y'all select an area of the screen to zoom into; the phone and then creates a overnice, smooth zoom of the area you lot selected. It's hard to judge how well this works in a demo area, but both of these features looked surprisingly like shooting fish in a barrel to use when I tried them later.

Other features related to videography include the keeping of a log profile for post-production employ by professional users, and a technique called RAM or "Receiver As a Mic" designed to improve the sound recording by the V30, enabling improved capture of loud music, at a concert, for example, of up to 140 decibels.

Another photographic camera feature is called Graphy, which advises you when you are in manual mode, designed to aid yous select photographic camera settings for a called photo. LG highlighted the device's Howdy-Fi sound features, including a 32-bit DAC, digital filter, and a series of sound presets (including enhanced, detailed, live, and bass modes) along with earphones by B&O Play.

The basic blueprint of the phone follows the G6, and the V30 sports a 6-inch display with an xviii:9 ratio and Quad HD+ (2880 by 1440) resolution.

This is LG's first phone to have an OLED "Fullvision" brandish, and the company fabricated a point of talking about how its expertise with OLED TVs informs the display. (Annotation that while the bezel itself is very slim, and has a slight curve, this is still a flat display, not the curved Super AMOLED used in the Samsung G8 and Notation 8.)

It'south just 7.3mm thick and weighs 158 grams, which makes it lighter than the G6 despite the larger screen. The dual camera unit on the rear is notably smaller than the i on the G6 despite the newer photographic camera. The home push on the back remains located far below the camera, making it less likely that you'll smudge the lens when going for the dwelling house push button than on the recent Samsung units. It has a lenticular pattern on the back to avoid fingerprints. Overall, it looks quite proficient, though it's hard to say that any of today's smartphones actually stand up out. They all wait very dainty, nevertheless very similar. (This is more than a competitor for Samsung'south Galaxy S8+ than the pen-based Annotation eight.)

The phone is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 that we've seen in most of this year'southward loftier-end Android phones, with a Qualcomm executive pointing to the flake as enabling the HDR video recording features of the device, likewise as highlighting the Adreno 540 graphics and an x16 modem supporting Gigabit LTE.

It as well supports Google Fantasize and the company made a big deal of its tight integration with Google Assistant. Google's Scott Hoffman explained how LG and Google have worked together on letting the assistant use voice commands to control features on the phone, such every bit turning on cinema mode or the wide-angle camera. This phone will include the first support for Korean, with more languages to follow. Yous can use voice recognition or facial recognition to unlock the telephone.

Other features include IP68 standard water- and dust-resistance; a redesigned thermal pad and oestrus pipe and then the unit of measurement doesn't experience as hot; a 3300 mAh battery with support for wireless charging and fast charging; and a more powerful always-on display.

Overall, I thought the V30 looked corking, and seems especially suited for people who have a lot of video. I'k looking forwards to seeing if it really tin brand my videos look better.

Here'southward PCMag'south preview.