LG and AT&T have just announced the latest smartphone that is heading to AT&T stores, and that is the LG V35 ThinQ. This is a device that was rumored for quite a few weeks now, and AndroidHeadlines said it was going to be an AT&T exclusive in lieu of the LG G7 ThinQ that AT&T is not carrying. And now it is official. It is essentially a LG V30 on the outside, with LG G7 ThinQ specs under-the-hood. So AT&T customers will be getting the best of both worlds here, and that includes the OLED display. AT&T had a few issues with the regular G7 ThinQ, which is why it wanted this V35 ThinQ on its shelves instead.
Everything that everyone knows and loves from the LG V30 is here on the V35 ThinQ. That includes pretty small bezels on the top and bottom of the device, along with a Quad HD+ OLED display. Under-the-hood, there’s a Snapdragon 845 chipset along with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. That’s slightly different from the V30S ThinQ that the company debuted at Mobile World Congress in February – which had 128GB of storage. The micro SD card slot is still here, so that customers are able to expand their storage, should they need some extra space. There are dual-cameras on the rear of the V35 ThinQ, both of which are 16-megapixel sensors, and a 8-megapixel front-facing sensor for taking the all-important selfies. There’s also a 3300mAh capacity battery powering the show here. So it’s a lot of what LG customers already know and love, but slightly updated and now available on AT&T.
LG is offering the V35 ThinQ in a new color that actually looks black until you put it in the right light, and then it looks navy blue. It looks really nice actually, but the back is still glass and with it being in a darker color, that means that it is going to attract fingerprints, and that was definitely true during our limited hands on with the device. It does look really nice, and the power button/fingerprint sensor as well as the dual-cameras, really blend in on the back. Speaking of the fingerprint sensor, it is still on the back, and it does also work as a power button like on the V30. That G7 ThinQ feature did not make its way over to the V35 ThinQ, and some may be happy about that. Another hardware feature that didn’t make the move is the dedicated Google Assistant button. That means you’ll have to bring up Google Assistant the old-fashioned way, long-pressing the home button or saying “Hey Google”.
Some of the major changes on the V35 ThinQ are actually in the software. If you’ve used the V30 or G7 ThinQ, there’s going to be a lot of similarities here. All of the AI features in the V30S ThinQ and the G7 ThinQ are all here in the V35 ThinQ. That includes AI Cam, which does pretty much work the same as on previous devices, and that’s because the software has not yet been updated (LG informed us that the software is from a partner and it hasn’t been updated past version 1.0 just yet, but that should happen in the coming future). There is also Google Lens support in the camera, so you can take a picture of something and Google can recognize it and also tell you where you can buy it. From the G7 ThinQ, we also have the Super Bright Camera and Portrait Mode. It works pretty similar to the G7 ThinQ, and while we did use it during our hands on, we were outside on a very sunny day in New York City, so results were a bit skewed since the lighting conditions were nearly perfect. We’ll have to wait until we get a review unit in our hands for more testing to see just how well it works.
The LG V35 ThinQ is a LG smartphone for those that don’t want a notch, those that want an OLED display and a great camera. And that’s essentially why AT&T passed on the G7 ThinQ, and talked LG into making the V35 ThinQ, and that might have been a wise choice. It’ll be interesting to see how well the two devices do, but where the V35 ThinQ is an AT&T exclusive, it likely won’t surpass G7 ThinQ sales in the US.
