LG’s UX, a mainstay of its smartphone line, has always had those who love its clean, bubbly look and intuitive features, as well as those who hate how bloated and slow it is. The latter crowd may have reason to reconsider when it comes to the new LG V10. New features galore star in a video released by LG, as well as a few glimpses at a cleaner, more polished interface that rivals Sony and Asus’ UI tweaks in its efforts to give you features and unique aesthetics while staying out of your way. The skin’s newest iteration will sit atop Android 5.1.1 Lollipop when the V10 ships, with an upgrade to Android 6.0 Marshmallow likely in the cards for early next year.
The first feature shown in the video is “Convenient Experience”, which is shown off in ways such as sending mass-memos to contacts with a few clicks, placing icons, bookmarks and shortcuts on the secondary display and natural motions such as putting your ear to the phone while looking at a contact’s page to call them.
Visual experience is shown to allow a user to customize the area and exposure for a picture and present sharing intents with a flick upward. LG’s new camera UI is briefly seen here and looks similar to that of the LG G4, albeit with the new touches prominently shown. The video takes this opportunity to show off a unique feature; manual mode for videos. In the video, manual exposure and zoom work flawlessly using a simple pinch-to-zoom gesture and an exposure slider. More than likely, more advanced tools are hidden deeper in the UI since this handset is touted as an alternative to professional cameras. You’re also able to direct, isolate and change the volume of sound while shooting a video.
The last leg of the video shows us Audio Experience. This allows a user to customize output with an equalizer and a few other simple controls. This function has been available to custom ROM users for a while, but always requiring complicated workarounds and never integrated with purpose-built hardware. The V10 supposedly has dedicated sound hardware that will make audiophiles give some real thought to carrying their expensive headphones with them.
LG’s new UI looks to be more feature-packed than ever before, even giving those using big-name custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod and Dirty Unicorns a few things to think about. A cleaner, faster experience is shown in the video, but real-world use may tell a different tale. It will doubtlessly have its detractors, but only time will tell if it’s truly a step forward for LG.