LG V50 ThinQ Review: The Verdict
The LG V50 ThinQ sure is a phone. There's nothing that's particularly bad about it, but other than its status as one of the first 5G phones, there's not much that stands out about it either.
What we love
- Fast performance
- Good triple lens camera setup
- Lovely display
What could be improved
- Design not as refined as competitors
- 5G coverage isn't widely available
The essentials
- Performance: Pretty damn fast.
- Battery: About a day per charge.
- Screen: Top-tier, genuinely a lovely screen.
- Camera: Can take good-to-great photos in most situations, but not quite as good as the competition.
70/100
LG V50 ThinQ Dual Display Review: The Verdict
The LG V50 ThinQ's Dual Display accessory is a hot mess that should be avoided at all costs. While the idea itself is fascinating, the implementation is frustrating to the point where you'll want to set fire to your phone.
What we love
- Free, I guess?
What could be improved
- Typing when using the Dual Display is a challenge
- Impedes standard phone functionality
- Barely an improvement over holding two phones at once
10/100
I froth weird new tech, but it's not enough for tech to be new for the sake of being new. While you'll always make some trade-offs when it comes to new ideas that want to try and change how we use technology, the overall outcome has to be a net positive for the user.
The LG V50 ThinQ is a fairly standard device in itself - it's pretty much what you'd expect from a 2019 smartphone - but it comes bundled with a rather unique accessory: a second screen. It's weird as hell. It's exactly the kind of weird new tech I froth. I mean, a phone with two screens? That's wild, and I love the idea. I just don't love the execution.
[Editor's Note: We've given the LG V50 and the accompanying dual display separate scores, given the bundled accessory can be ignored. Australia is one of the only markets where the dual display is bundled with the LG V50.]
What you should know before buying a 5G smartphone
5G is new and exciting technology, and it will keep getting better. But as with any new technology, there are a few things you should keep in mind if you're an early adopter.
- 5G coverage is scarce at the moment. Telstra is currently the only telco with a publicly available 5G network, and it only covers parts of 10 cities. This will continuously grow, but at present, your 5G smartphone will be spending a lot of time on 4G networks. Read more about Telstra's 5G coverage here.
- 5G speeds aren't quite there yet. While telcos are promising speeds as high as 2Gbps, in real world testing we've found 5G speeds on Telstra's network have typically ranged from 100Mbps to 350Mbps when testing in Sydney. These speeds are nothing to scoff at, but are also readily obtainable on Telstra's 4G network.
- Consistent 5G access seems to use more of a phone's battery. While limited 5G coverage makes this hard to quantify in terms of daily usage, constant access to a 5G network caused our test devices to burn through battery at a faster rate than when connected to a 4G network.
- 5G can be a little bit temperamental. Test devices have at times struggled to maintain a connection and flicked back and forth between 4G and 5G in areas with otherwise good 5G coverage. This could be a factor that further increased battery drain, given it requires the modem to work harder.
None of this is to say that 5G is bad, it's just worth remembering that it's a new technology and very much still in development.
Are two screens better than one?
- 6.4-inch Quad HD+ display
- Snapdragon 855
- 128GB storage, 6GB RAM
- 12MP + 12MP + 16MP rear-facing camera
- 4,000mAh battery
- IP68 water-resistance
Inside the LG V50 box you'll find another screen. More specifically, a case you can snap the LG V50 into. It's kind of like one of those wallet cases: opening it up reveals your phone, but it also reveals another screen to the left of your device. If you don't feel like using both screens at once, you can bend the second all the way around to get it out of the way.
The experience of using the LG V50 with the second screen is akin to using two phones at once. For the most part, the two displays run entirely independent of one another; it's not like a foldable where a single app can take over the entire display. Well, displays. Each screen is essentially its own phone, with its own home screen.
Why? Well, you could run two apps at once. Keep up to date with your group chats on one display, while you thirstily swipe through Tinder on the other. In some ways, this sounds promising. It can even be useful from time to time. You can load up a password manager without closing the app you're in. You can copy text from a document to a chat without shuffling apps. Some games even let you use the second screen as a controller.
But the more you use the LG V50's second screen, the more you start to see how little thought has been put it. To start, with typing on the V50 while the second screen is open is next to impossible. LG might picture a world where you're banging out messages on one screen while binge-watching on the other, but that's just not the reality.
An app's keyboard is tied to the screen your app is on, so typing becomes awkward. You can try to use only one hand, you can awkwardly float the other above the join, or you can rotate the phone to landscape and lose all but a sliver of the app you're in. No option is ideal.
If you're using LG's custom Android keyboard, you can tap a button to send the keyboard to the second screen, but this entirely defeats the point. Using one screen for an app and one screen for the keyboard isn't exactly a great use of space. A regular phone can do that just fine with one screen.
In order to respond to a message or email, I found myself just bending the V50's dual display around, turning it into a super chunky single screen phone. This creates even more problems.
So, the dual display has three states:
- Closed, where it's kind of like a book where no displays are visible
- Open, where both displays are visible
- Wrapped around, where both screens are exposed but in different directions
These all have issues.
When the dual display is closed, you can't see your notifications. There's a notification light, but you won't get any details until you open up the phone. There's also no way to answer phone calls without unlatching the display.
When the dual display is open, you've got a whole spate of issues, like the aforementioned typing situation. In addition, the volume rocker is hard to reach, the phone feels unbalanced, and the screens are different sizes, which bugs me to no end. Using the dual display also impacts the battery; the V50 only gets you around a full day per charge, and switching on the second screen reduces this further.
And when the display is wrapped around, it hides the rear-facing cameras and the fingerprint reader. This means unfolding it to take a photo, or unlock it (if you don't want to use facial recognition or bang in your pin). In-screen fingerprint readers are still a bit hit and miss, but this a situation where one would have been useful.
In the end, the best option was just removing the dual display. While this strips the V50 from truly unique functionality, it goes from being an awful gimmick to just an average phone, and I know what I'd prefer.
Back to one
As a normal smartphone, poorly thought accessories aside, the LG V50 is fine. It's definitely a phone. But other than 5G connectivity, there's not much that makes it stand out from the crowd, and 5G isn't a genuine selling point yet.
The LG V50 ticks most of the boxes you'd expect from a top-end 2019 device. There's a top of the line Qualcomm processor, there are three rear-facing cameras, there's a big notched display that looks great, and hey, there's even still a 3.5mm headphone jack. There's nothing that's explicitly bad about the LG V50 - there's even plenty that's good - but amid stiff competition, it just doesn't excel.
On the back you'll find three cameras, as in par the course on a 2019 smartphone. You get a primary lens, a 2x zoom lens, and a wide-angle lens. It's a reasonably versatile camera setup, and for the most part, it's good. It's just not quite as good as the competition. For example, lowlight performance isn't bad, but it doesn't compare to what you'd get on the Huawei P30 Pro or the Google Pixel 3a. Credit where credit is due however, the LG V50 does a great job of minimising fisheye distortion on the wide-angle lens.
In the same vein, the LG V50 battery isn't terrible, but it's nothing to write home about either. You'll get a single day per charge, potentially with a slight buffer depending on how hard you push it. It is definitely the kind of phone you'll need to charge every night, however.
Lastly, the LG V50's industrial design isn't quite as refined as what we're seeing on the competition. The finish isn't seamless, which means there's noticeable friction where aluminium meets glass. This probably sounds like an extremely nitpicky complaint, but we're now at a stage where even sub $500 phones feel more polished.
Who is the LG V50 ThinQ for?
The LG V50 exists in a sort of no man's land. The dual screen accessory has potential as a foldable-lite type situation, but it hasn't been thought out enough to make it usable on a day-to-day basis. As a phone itself, the LG V50 is fine, but you're paying a steep premium for 5G connectivity while getting a phone that can't quite command the price. If you were gifted the LG V50, you wouldn't hate it. You just probably shouldn't go out of your way to buy one.
LG V50 ThinQ camera samples
I don't want an LG V50 ThinQ, what else can I buy?
OPPO Reno 5G
If you're desperately after a 5G smartphone, the OPPO Reno 5G is the cheapest out of the bunch, making it a pretty sensible buy. It's also a great all round smartphone, thanks to a versatile camera setup, a swanky notchless design, and good battery life.
Wait for a foldable
If you're curious about the LG V50 ThinQ's Dual Display accessory, we'd say you're better off waiting for a foldable smartphone like the Huawei Mate X or the Samsung Galaxy Fold, where the software has been optimised for the design.
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