Newsletter 
LG Electronics on Tuesday clarified why the pre-production units of its V30 flagship are generating images whose meta data shows an aperture of f/1.69 instead of f/1.6, noting how the company’s engineers intentionally masked this and many other metrics in an effort to prevent leaks. The wrong aperture readings were initially reported earlier this month, with some insiders who got their hands on early units of the device confirming that the aperture of the V30’s main lens is showing up as being almost identical to f/1.7, whereas the South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) advertised it as being one full stop brighter. Original theories explaining the matter mostly revolved around buggy software and incomplete hardware that’s part of all pre-production units which LG distributed to reviewers and insiders, and while the cause of the phenomenon truly turned out to be software-related, it seems that the wrong aperture readings weren’t a bug but a feature.
LG also said that the aperture of its 16-megapixel lens wasn’t the only information that the company opted to mask before officially launching its latest Android flagship but didn’t clarify on the matter. The fact that the V30 has the brightest mobile camera aperture in the industry was announced by the firm in the run-up to the official unveiling of the phablet at the latest iteration of IFA, with LG boasting about the fastest smartphone lens ever created and describing its creation as an industry-first. The aperture of the device’s lens should make the most of its 1.0µm pixel size, especially when accompanied by a 13-megapixel telephoto lens which completes the dual camera setup of LG’s new flagship, the OEM previously suggested.
The LG V30 still isn’t available for pre-orders and doesn’t have a firm release date attached to it, though latest reports indicate that the smartphone will become commercially available at some point in October, whereas advanced orders are expected to go live in the coming weeks. The full retail price of the handset will hover around the $750 mark in the United States but also seems likely to exceed $1,000 in certain markets. LG is hoping that the commercial performance of the V30 will allow its mobile unit to bounce back from its recent troubles, though it remains to be seen how the handset will perform on a global level.