The LG V40 ThinQ has an amazing camera that will be touted as such, assuming it also has the ability to travel through time and somehow manages to hit the market in the spring of 2017, a few months before the Galaxy Note 8 does. That’s the gist of the in-depth review French image quality experts from DxOMark conducted over the last few weeks with LG’s latest Android flagship.
While better than the G7 that preceded it, the handset is still vastly inferior to virtually every other device that followed and even scored notably worse than some significantly older models like the aforementioned Galaxy Note 8 and every Samsung-made smartphone released after it, Google’s Pixel 2, and the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.
Even as DxOMark may be markedly late with its review, this in-depth look at the imaging capabilities of the V40 ThinQ shows just how far away the firm’s contemporary phablets are from the very top of what the industry currently has to offer in terms of mobile photography.
Five cameras or not, the triple-lens setup of the back of the Android-powered device struggles with exposure in scenarios wherein outdoor subjects are placed in front of remotely strong backlighting, produces artifacts like aliasing and halos a tad bit too often, and can’t retain the finest of details in low-light conditions. To be honest, that last shortcoming has been an almost universal drawback of mobile cameras for many years now and while manufacturers will never be able to cheat physics, artificial intelligence technologies started allowing them to go the extra mile over the course of the last year or so, so it’s disappointing to see the V40 ThinQ fall short in this regard seeing how this is a device that’s specifically advertised as a particularly smart gadget.
It’s not all bad, of course; indoor shots taken in remotely decent lighting are sharp, noise control is on point, and LG seemingly found a post-processing sweet spot that allows it to deliver vivid colors that don’t look fake, according to the same review. The same strengths and weaknesses of the phablet’s still photography applies to its filmmaking features, with the exception of autofocus that is inconsistent on an occasion, DxOMark concluded.
In overall, LG still has a lot of work to do if it wants to accomplish the extremely difficult task of catching up with Samsung and Huawei, the undisputed leaders of the mobile photography space right now. In fact, Samsung only managed to get back to the top with the Galaxy S10 5G, the very definition of a niche device that isn’t expected to end up in the hands of more than a couple of people. Apple will likely be joining these two this fall, though it remains to be seen what LG is going to do seeing how it hurried up with the announcement of the next member of its V series in order to jump on the 5G hype bandwagon and it’s not like its practices in the high-end segment weren’t already confusing enough a year ago.