LG V50 ThinQ 5G Review _ A Solid Phone, But Is It Ahead Of Its Time

The LG V50 ThinQ is a 5G-enabled smartphone that offers a range of features and improvements over its predecessor, the V40. One of the standout features of the V50 is its ability to take higher-quality photos with better low-light performance. The phone's primary camera can capture up to 10-bit color at up to 120fps, and it also features a telephoto lens that allows for zoomed-in shots without losing detail. Additionally, the V50 has a secondary lens that provides a wider angle of view, making it ideal for group selfies.

The LG V50 also offers advanced camera software features, including video portrait mode. This feature adds a blur effect around the subject during video recording, creating a bokeh-like effect similar to what's seen in still photography with Portrait Mode. While this feature doesn't work as well on video as it does on stills, it's still an interesting and useful addition to the camera app.

On the other hand, the V50 has some notable drawbacks. One of the most significant is that it lacks a standout feature that sets it apart from its competitors. Unlike previous LG phones, such as the V40 and G8, the V50 doesn't offer anything particularly new or exciting. This makes it difficult to recommend to potential buyers who are looking for a reason to upgrade.

Furthermore, the V50's software feels dated and not as polished as some of its competitors. For example, when installing apps, the user interface can be frustratingly unintuitive, requiring manual tweaking to get everything organized just right. Similarly, the camera app itself has been criticized for being clunky and difficult to navigate. These issues may deter some potential buyers who prioritize a more streamlined experience.

Another point of contention is the pre-installed software that comes on the V50's Sprint model. This includes a number of games that can't be uninstalled, which some users will find annoying. As an added inconvenience, these games take up valuable storage space and may slow down the phone over time.

The LG V50 also has a relatively weak battery life compared to its competitors. Even on 4G LTE, the phone only lasts around 30% of its capacity before needing to be recharged. If you plan to use the phone extensively throughout the day, especially for activities that require heavy usage like gaming or video streaming, you may find yourself running out of power sooner rather than later.

However, when it comes to 5G connectivity, the V50 fairs better. In a test conducted by the author, the phone lasted around 10 hours and 30 minutes on a single charge while playing a YouTube video at max brightness over Wi-Fi. This is comparable to some of its competitors, including the Samsung Galaxy S10+, which also offers impressive battery life.

It's worth noting that not all 5G networks are created equal. The LG V50 is only compatible with Sprint's mid-band 5G spectrum, while Verizon uses millimeter wave technology in many areas. This means that users may not be able to access 5G service even when in a city where it's available.

Finally, the V50 is priced at $1,152 on Sprint and $1,000 on Verizon, making it one of the most expensive smartphones on the market today. Given its relatively weak features and lackluster performance compared to other options, it's difficult to justify such a high price tag. Unless you're specifically looking for a 5G phone with a certain set of features, there are far better alternatives available at lower price points.

In conclusion, the LG V50 ThinQ is a solid smartphone with some notable improvements over its predecessor. However, its lack of standout features and dated software make it less appealing to potential buyers. The pre-installed software is also a major drawback, as well as the relatively weak battery life compared to competitors. When it comes to 5G connectivity, things are still uncertain due to the different spectrum technologies used by various carriers. Given its high price point and limitations, we would recommend skipping the LG V50 in favor of other options on the market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe LGV 50 thinkyou is the first phone from LG that supports 5g that means you can use it to connect to the next-gen network and access superfast download speeds think downloading a 2 gigabyte game in just 25 seconds now the V 50 is a good phone but is it worth the more than thousand dollar asking price well let's find out first off what do I like about the LGB 50 thank you well it's the screen it's got an OLED display it's 31 20 by 1440 resolution so it looks nice and sharp it's colorful and it also is easy to read in broad daylight so no real complaints there it's a really good screen to view content on I do wish LG had played around with the design a little more we're seeing the notch fade out now as phones come out with hole punch cameras and pop-up cameras like 1 plus and samsung phones so it would have been nice to see something different there rather than exactly the same as what we saw on the LG b 40 thank you the front is protected by Gorilla Glass 5 and the rear is protected by Gorilla Glass 6 now a couple of changes are on the back design it's still very similar to the v40 but you can see a god-awful 5g logo at the top which I really don't like because it lights up yellow when you're connected to 5g and I really don't need to tell the world that I'm connected to 5g so I really hope that this is removed for future 5g phones from LG now one other thing that I really like is what they did with the camera module and they also did this with the LG G 8 they basically removed the housing and made it so that it sits flush with the rear glass so it looks like it's just sitting right under that glass with no other extra flourishes or modules surrounding it it looks really nice really elegant and I really like that if you're an audiophile the v50 is a dream come true there's a 32-bit quad tag there is stereo speakers which are amplified by the boombox feature that L dreams produced last year basically you can place it on certain surfaces and it'll amplify the sound and it sounds pretty good too now there's also support for high res audio formats as well as apdex HD DTS x 3d and all of that is boosted by the fact that there is a headphone jack and who doesn't love that the v50 is a flagship Android phone so that means it's the same story as any other flagships this year you're getting the snapdragon 855 processor and there's six gigs of ram that basically means you can throw any game at this thing and it'll be perfectly fine I threw pub G mobile fortnight pack o forever Altos Odyssey all sorts of games and the v50 handle bit like a pro I don't think you really have anything to worry about in terms of performance on this phone the V 50 doesn't feel too unwieldy though I do have large hands so I may be biased but it feels comfortable in the hand and I didn't have too much trouble reaching certain parts of the screen though I did have to shift my position a little bit I do like the curved edges on the front and the back which make it overall feel a little more ergonomic on paper you're getting the same exact camera as the LG v 40 thinkyou it's a 12 megapixel standard lens with an F 1.5 aperture a 12 megapixel telephoto lens with an F 2.4 aperture and a 16 megapixel wide-angle lens with an F 1.9 aperture now those might be the same specs but the results are actually quite different because LG has improved the camera software digitally I didn't like too much of what I got with the lgb 40 but with the digital enhancements I'm enjoying what I'm capturing with the v50 details are strong colors are accurate though it does seem to struggle with HDR or high contrast in areas the cameras still struggle with low-light particularly the wide angle and the telephoto lenses but there is a new feature called night view in the camera that takes multiple photos stitches them together and produces one strong photo it's actually quite similar to the pixels nitesite feature except it doesn't use AI as much and I actually think the pixels nitesite is a little bit better but the LG v fifties night view does a pretty good job of holding up but the best feature of the camera is the fact that you have those multiple lenses it's incredibly versatile to be able to switch to a wide-angle lens to get more in your shot or zoom in with the telephoto lens to two times to get a little closer and I think they all work really well although I do think the camera app is a little slow and that could be improved there are two cameras on the front one is an 8 megapixel F 1.9 lens paired with a 5 megapixel F 2.2 lens there's nothing fancy going on here it's just an extra wide angle lens so you can get group selfies if you have multiple people in your shot selfies aren't as detailed as I like and they tend to overexpose in areas with high contrast but I do like the fact that you have that secondary lens to get a few more people in the shot another new feature is video portrait we saw this on the LG g8 essentially it's adding a blur effect around a subject during a video kind of similar to portrait mode when taking stills it doesn't really work that well but it's also not terrible you can kind of see the blurred and fuzzy looking effect which makes it really obvious that it's software-based now what do I dislike about the V 50 well the big one is that it's just a bit boring there's not really any one standout feature and a lot of it we've seen before on the LG v 40 and the LG G 8 so really apart from the fact that it can connect to 5g which we'll get to in a bit it just doesn't stand out there are things I don't really like about the software either it just feels a little dated it is running Android 9pi but things like when you install an app and you have to keep telling the app drawer to organize alphabetically every time you install an app it's kind of annoying or in the camera where you have to go in and customize the UI yourself because LG made a unintuitive camera app little things like that make me resent it a little bit but also the worst offender is the amount of blood wear that's pre-installed this is the sprint model and that one just comes with a whole host of games some of which you can't uninstall so that's disappointing it's a four thousand milliamp hour battery in the LGB 50 but it's also the weakest link in the phone on 4G LTE we've been testing it and generally come down to about 30% at the end of the day and if we plan to take the phone out for a longer period of time later into the night say going to a bar then you might potentially end up with a dead phone it's definitely not a full day of battery with heavy use but you can definitely get a full day with medium or light usage now on 5g things can be a little different I tested it for about four hours with lots of speed tests and the screen just being on for a long period of time and the battery dropped to 50% in that time and really it's difficult to say whether that's good or bad because that usage is completely different as to what we would normally use the phone for so we'll have to do further longer testing when 5g from Sprint specifically comes to New York City in our own battery test the phone lasted for 10 hours and 30 minutes and that's with running a YouTube video on 1080p with max brightness over Wi-Fi how does that compare with a similar phone well the galaxy is 10 plus has at 4,100 in the Empire battery and it lasted for more than 14 hours so there are phones out there with better battery life and they don't cost as much a couple notes on the V 50s 5g first it's not interoperable so that means you won't be able to use the V 50 on Sprint and connect it to Verizon's 5g network and vice versa you won't be able to use Verizon's of V 50 on Sprint's 5g network they'll connect ail 4G LTE with no problem it's just that different carriers are using different 5g spectrum mid band for Sprint for example millimeter wave for Verizon and they won't really play well with each other and that's gonna be a common theme with 5g devices going forward second 5g is only available in select areas of select cities so even if you are in a city it doesn't mean that you're gonna get access to 5g all the time you can also only by the V 50 in the cities that 5g service is activated at the end of the day it comes down to price and access to 5g now on price the Google pixel 3 the Galaxy S 10 the Galaxy S 10 II these are all better overall phones and they're cheaper too and on 5g most people won't really be able to access that 5g network at least for a few more years so it really doesn't make sense to shell out so much money for a 5g capable phone the V 50 think you costs a thousand one hundred and fifty-two dollars on Sprint and $1000 on Verizon and I think you should skip it it just really makes no sense to buy a 5g phone right now hey everyone thanks for watching if you have any thoughts about the V 50 please add them in the comments section otherwise like subscribe hit that Bell for notifications and head to digital Transcom for morethe LGV 50 thinkyou is the first phone from LG that supports 5g that means you can use it to connect to the next-gen network and access superfast download speeds think downloading a 2 gigabyte game in just 25 seconds now the V 50 is a good phone but is it worth the more than thousand dollar asking price well let's find out first off what do I like about the LGB 50 thank you well it's the screen it's got an OLED display it's 31 20 by 1440 resolution so it looks nice and sharp it's colorful and it also is easy to read in broad daylight so no real complaints there it's a really good screen to view content on I do wish LG had played around with the design a little more we're seeing the notch fade out now as phones come out with hole punch cameras and pop-up cameras like 1 plus and samsung phones so it would have been nice to see something different there rather than exactly the same as what we saw on the LG b 40 thank you the front is protected by Gorilla Glass 5 and the rear is protected by Gorilla Glass 6 now a couple of changes are on the back design it's still very similar to the v40 but you can see a god-awful 5g logo at the top which I really don't like because it lights up yellow when you're connected to 5g and I really don't need to tell the world that I'm connected to 5g so I really hope that this is removed for future 5g phones from LG now one other thing that I really like is what they did with the camera module and they also did this with the LG G 8 they basically removed the housing and made it so that it sits flush with the rear glass so it looks like it's just sitting right under that glass with no other extra flourishes or modules surrounding it it looks really nice really elegant and I really like that if you're an audiophile the v50 is a dream come true there's a 32-bit quad tag there is stereo speakers which are amplified by the boombox feature that L dreams produced last year basically you can place it on certain surfaces and it'll amplify the sound and it sounds pretty good too now there's also support for high res audio formats as well as apdex HD DTS x 3d and all of that is boosted by the fact that there is a headphone jack and who doesn't love that the v50 is a flagship Android phone so that means it's the same story as any other flagships this year you're getting the snapdragon 855 processor and there's six gigs of ram that basically means you can throw any game at this thing and it'll be perfectly fine I threw pub G mobile fortnight pack o forever Altos Odyssey all sorts of games and the v50 handle bit like a pro I don't think you really have anything to worry about in terms of performance on this phone the V 50 doesn't feel too unwieldy though I do have large hands so I may be biased but it feels comfortable in the hand and I didn't have too much trouble reaching certain parts of the screen though I did have to shift my position a little bit I do like the curved edges on the front and the back which make it overall feel a little more ergonomic on paper you're getting the same exact camera as the LG v 40 thinkyou it's a 12 megapixel standard lens with an F 1.5 aperture a 12 megapixel telephoto lens with an F 2.4 aperture and a 16 megapixel wide-angle lens with an F 1.9 aperture now those might be the same specs but the results are actually quite different because LG has improved the camera software digitally I didn't like too much of what I got with the lgb 40 but with the digital enhancements I'm enjoying what I'm capturing with the v50 details are strong colors are accurate though it does seem to struggle with HDR or high contrast in areas the cameras still struggle with low-light particularly the wide angle and the telephoto lenses but there is a new feature called night view in the camera that takes multiple photos stitches them together and produces one strong photo it's actually quite similar to the pixels nitesite feature except it doesn't use AI as much and I actually think the pixels nitesite is a little bit better but the LG v fifties night view does a pretty good job of holding up but the best feature of the camera is the fact that you have those multiple lenses it's incredibly versatile to be able to switch to a wide-angle lens to get more in your shot or zoom in with the telephoto lens to two times to get a little closer and I think they all work really well although I do think the camera app is a little slow and that could be improved there are two cameras on the front one is an 8 megapixel F 1.9 lens paired with a 5 megapixel F 2.2 lens there's nothing fancy going on here it's just an extra wide angle lens so you can get group selfies if you have multiple people in your shot selfies aren't as detailed as I like and they tend to overexpose in areas with high contrast but I do like the fact that you have that secondary lens to get a few more people in the shot another new feature is video portrait we saw this on the LG g8 essentially it's adding a blur effect around a subject during a video kind of similar to portrait mode when taking stills it doesn't really work that well but it's also not terrible you can kind of see the blurred and fuzzy looking effect which makes it really obvious that it's software-based now what do I dislike about the V 50 well the big one is that it's just a bit boring there's not really any one standout feature and a lot of it we've seen before on the LG v 40 and the LG G 8 so really apart from the fact that it can connect to 5g which we'll get to in a bit it just doesn't stand out there are things I don't really like about the software either it just feels a little dated it is running Android 9pi but things like when you install an app and you have to keep telling the app drawer to organize alphabetically every time you install an app it's kind of annoying or in the camera where you have to go in and customize the UI yourself because LG made a unintuitive camera app little things like that make me resent it a little bit but also the worst offender is the amount of blood wear that's pre-installed this is the sprint model and that one just comes with a whole host of games some of which you can't uninstall so that's disappointing it's a four thousand milliamp hour battery in the LGB 50 but it's also the weakest link in the phone on 4G LTE we've been testing it and generally come down to about 30% at the end of the day and if we plan to take the phone out for a longer period of time later into the night say going to a bar then you might potentially end up with a dead phone it's definitely not a full day of battery with heavy use but you can definitely get a full day with medium or light usage now on 5g things can be a little different I tested it for about four hours with lots of speed tests and the screen just being on for a long period of time and the battery dropped to 50% in that time and really it's difficult to say whether that's good or bad because that usage is completely different as to what we would normally use the phone for so we'll have to do further longer testing when 5g from Sprint specifically comes to New York City in our own battery test the phone lasted for 10 hours and 30 minutes and that's with running a YouTube video on 1080p with max brightness over Wi-Fi how does that compare with a similar phone well the galaxy is 10 plus has at 4,100 in the Empire battery and it lasted for more than 14 hours so there are phones out there with better battery life and they don't cost as much a couple notes on the V 50s 5g first it's not interoperable so that means you won't be able to use the V 50 on Sprint and connect it to Verizon's 5g network and vice versa you won't be able to use Verizon's of V 50 on Sprint's 5g network they'll connect ail 4G LTE with no problem it's just that different carriers are using different 5g spectrum mid band for Sprint for example millimeter wave for Verizon and they won't really play well with each other and that's gonna be a common theme with 5g devices going forward second 5g is only available in select areas of select cities so even if you are in a city it doesn't mean that you're gonna get access to 5g all the time you can also only by the V 50 in the cities that 5g service is activated at the end of the day it comes down to price and access to 5g now on price the Google pixel 3 the Galaxy S 10 the Galaxy S 10 II these are all better overall phones and they're cheaper too and on 5g most people won't really be able to access that 5g network at least for a few more years so it really doesn't make sense to shell out so much money for a 5g capable phone the V 50 think you costs a thousand one hundred and fifty-two dollars on Sprint and $1000 on Verizon and I think you should skip it it just really makes no sense to buy a 5g phone right now hey everyone thanks for watching if you have any thoughts about the V 50 please add them in the comments section otherwise like subscribe hit that Bell for notifications and head to digital Transcom for more\n"