LG has been on a roll of late. With the success of the LG G4 and the recent launch of Google’s Nexus 5X, the company’s bashing down barriers that it previously faced in the smartphone industry. And now, it can even claim to be first in some fields.
Take it’s new LG V10 for instance. It has two screens, two front cameras and is its first phone to feature a manual mode video recording, similar to that of its stellar manual camera mode.
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Moreover, we’re fairly sure that there are quite a few LG G4 owners wondering why the G4 didn’t feature these niceties, but the new V series aims to “provide a rich multimedia experience,” according to the presser.
For starters, we totally understand where LG was going with its aesthetic. Ditching the leather for silicone and stainless steel, the V10 is easily one of the most lust-inducing phones we’ve seen for many a year.
The second screen, although largely hidden alongside the dual front cameras, can display anything from icons to notifications to strange inspirational quotes (if you’re that way inclined.
As for the screen proper, it’s a 5.7-inch 2560×1440 unit, with a Snapdragon 808 under the glass face, 4GB of RAM nestling alongside it and 64GB of internal storage to boot. There’s a microSD card slot too, so LG hasn’t ditched all sense.
There’s also a fingerprint sensor at the phone’s rear, which will definitely mean LG’s taking full advantage of its latest Nexus experience.
But the real wow factor is in the LG V10’s imaging abilities.
“The LG V10 was designed from the ground up primarily as a multimedia smartphone for the sharing ecosystem, notes Juno Cho, LG Mobile’s CEO and president.
“We heard from many customers that until the G4, they weren’t comfortable going on vacation or outings without a separate camera. With the V10, we hope to do for video what the G4 did for photographs.”
There’s the LG G4’s 16MP rear sensor at the back, but the software has been given a massive facelift. LG claims that it’s the first smartphone to feature manual video controls, which allows users to tweak “options such as shutter speed, frame rate, ISO, white balance and focus while recording.” Moreover, consumers can also record video in various formats, including 21:9 cinematic.
There’s a 5MP sensor up front with two separate lenses as well: one features an 80 degree standard angle and the other a 120 degree wide angle. LG’s reason for this?
For the wide angle shot, the V10 employs a sophisticated software algorithm to combine images from the two separate lenses which are just far enough apart to provide two different points of view. The ability to take group selfies without a selfie-stick has never been easier.
Overall it sounds like a great device, but there are problems on first glance. For one, it weighs nearly 200g, which is sumo for smartphones. There’s also the annoyingly small 3000mAh battery, and if it’s anything like the LG G4 battery life, users won’t get much recording time from the device at all.
But that remains to be seen.
The LG V10 will launch in Korea before the States and other Asian countries but no availability or pricing information has been made available. All we can hope for is that this monster makes it to South African shores too.
