Hands On With the LG V30S+ ThinQ

BARCELONA—The LG V30S ThinQ unveiled at Mobile World Congress is a bunch of absurd camera modes disguised as a new telephone. The good news is that LG is offering significant software upgrades to existing V30 and V30+ owners, as well every bit two elegant new colors of its 2022 flagship telephone. Just those positive steps are overcast a bit by LG'due south insistence that this is a new telephone, and its attempt to make "ThinQ" a thing.

New or Non?

Let's get the hardware out of the way: The LG V30S ThinQ, a phone clearly named by committee, is simply an LG V30 with 6GB rather than 4GB of RAM, 128 or 256GB of built-in storage, and nice shimmery new blueish and grayness colors. Those are the but hardware changes hither, and they certainly aren't worth a new proper name. (Ii new names, actually: The 256GB version is the LG V30S+ ThinQ, which is the one we saw.)

"The overall hardware design is exactly the same; the color is the divergence," said Ji Youn Lheem, chief strategic designer at LG's design lab.

But the software is pretty cool—and even libation, it's coming to existing V30 units, although LG wouldn't tell usa exactly when. The major changes are in two new camera modes, Vivid mode and AI Cam, both of which nosotros tested for a little while at LG's launch effect.

Bright way appears as a button on the screen when you're in a very night location. It groups together sets of four pixels to reduce the V30's resolution from 16MP to 4MP while significantly brightening photos. Although focus lag was sometimes an effect, information technology definitely works. Nosotros compared the V30S+ with an iPhone X, and found that the V30S's images were significantly brighter and less noisy. That said, both the V30S+ and iPhone's images improved past quite a lot with a little chip of in-phone image editing. After applying some filters, the iPhone's picture had improve colors, while the V30S+ moving picture was less noisy and compressed.

Notation that this was all on a pre-production unit of measurement (and then pre-production, it dosen't even take the phone'south proper noun on the back), and then the software could further amend before launch.

(That image to a higher place shows photos on the V30S+ and the iPhone 10 earlier we did any retouching or filters.)

AI Cam, which comes from tertiary-party vendor EyeEm, tries to ID elements in a visual scene to lock ane of eight photo modes, such as food or portrait fashion. It's kind of hilarious because when you plow it on, you see the AI churning, in niggling white subtitles, through guesses almost what'due south on the screen: fish? hand? close-up? before locking into its way after five to ten seconds. It identified people and nutrient correctly.

"This is done inside the phone, not in the deject," Ian Hwang, LG'due south production good said.

A 3rd photograph mode, QLens, combines a QR scanner and image search engine for shopping or image identification. We've seen this in a lot of third-party apps and on Samsung and Google phones. It identified several products correctly enough to evangelize Amazon links for them.

The V30S is also extending LG'due south existing listing of device-specific Google Assistant voice commands to be able to trigger the new camera modes. (LG lists the full set of new voice commands hither.) The phone will also accept new Google Assistant voice commands to control LG appliances and home entertainment devices, such as "Hey Google, cheque the fourth dimension remaining on my washing motorcar."

Considering LG is invested in the slightly quixotic thought that the V30S+ ThinQ is indeed a new phone, it didn't spend enough time playing up the fact that AI Cam, Brilliant Fashion, and the new voice features will be back-ported to existing V30 devices. This is bang-up news in an Android globe where phones all too often don't get upgraded.

What The ThinQ?

We accept to talk virtually this ThinQ thing. It's LG's attempt to wrap up and brand its smart dwelling and AI technologies. Apparently, it's pronounced "sparse queue," which makes no sense because as an AI brand, it should probably be pronounced "think." The concept is fine, in that it'southward an attempt to bring together AI features in all of LG'southward home electronics brands. Only the brand itself is but non very skilful.

If in that location was any new hardware in here to accelerate AI, maybe, just maybe, there would be a faint justification for the branding. Just whereas Apple and Huawei are touting their AI hardware components, the AI here doesn't even run on the Hexagon DSP in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor (which would be Qualcomm'southward equivalent in terms of AI hardware)—it's just a routine run on the CPU.

"We are attaching ThinQ to the cease of the name because AI is going to be an important part of our product strategy," Hwang said. That actually makes it sound similar someone at HQ is tacking the discussion on because of some perceived corporate initiative, not because of anything specific most this production.

LG wouldn't commit to whether or non the V30S+ will be released in the US. It will launch in Korea in "a week or ii," LG spokesman Ken Hong said. Check back soon for more details.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/apple-iphone-x/19744/hands-on-with-the-lg-v30s-thinq

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