LG rolled the V30 out late last year with a few notable features, at least for LG. That phone had the first OLED panel on an LG phone in several years, and it didn't have the extra ticker display that defined older V-series phones. It turns out LG isn't done with the V30 yet. As rumors indicated, LG is releasing a new version of the V30 called the V30S ThinQ (yes, that's the name) with AI camera goodies. With a new name and features, you might expect this phone to be at least modestly different than the last V30. Well, ThinQ again.

Not a new phone

The convoluted tale of the V30S ThinQ can be told in two parts: hardware and software. Let's talk a bit about the hardware first. This phone is the LG V30 with 6GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. That's literally all that's different on the inside. The regular V30 has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (128GB in the V30+). It comes in either moroccan blue or champaign gray colors. Here's the spec sheet just for fun.

SoC: Snapdragon 835

RAM: 6GB

Storage: 128-256GB

Display: 6-inch 2880x1440 OLED

Battery: 3,300mAh

Camera: 16MP standard camera, 13MP wide-angle camera, 5MP wide-angle front camera

Software: Android 8.0

Measurements:151.7x75.4x7.3mm

The cameras, display, and industrial design are the same as the V30. If you're concerned about the display, it seems to still suffer the same issues I saw with the V30 at launch. The colors are bright and striking, but there's so much grain and blotchiness—it's much worse than the Pixel 2 XL (also an LG OLED). I should note: this is a pre-production unit.

On the software side, all the AI features are contained in software. There's no hardware component that does AI processing a la Huawei's Kirin 970. The V30S ThinQ can identify eight types of objects like flowers, food, people, and so on. This is running on the CPU, and it seems a little slower to identify objects than the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. You've got to turn on AI Mode, too. It pops up all these vaguely accurate descriptions of objects, even if they aren't things that have a mode attached. When the phone finds something it can work with, you have to tap the AI button to activate the filter. That will allegedly tune the photo for the subject. There are actually several different filter strengths shown. I don't feel like these settings change the images for the better.

There's also a "QLens" feature, which you activate via a button right next to AI Mode. You can think of this a bit like Google Lens... but worse. There are three settings: shopping search via Amazon, visual search via Pinterest, and QR code scanning. Why can't the phone do all these things at the same time? QC codes work without issue, but both shopping and visual search are very much hit and miss. Logos seem to help the shopping search ID products, but the visual search never does better than a general guess. This just feels like a gimmick no one will ever use. The previously announced Google commands for LG's camera features are included as well.

Using the auto-filter on food, results on the bottom (left modified, and right modified)

Lastly, there's the low light camera mode. The phone's 16MP camera can act as a 4MP sensor when it detects light is too low for a good shot. You can turn this feature on and off, and I don't know if I'm not convinced it's worth using. The photos are brighter, but they also look very soft and the shutter lag is extreme. See below for Ryne in a dim room with and without low-light mode.

Ryne with and without low-light mode.

Conclusion

Again, this is a pre-production device. The camera AI might work better when it launches for real. Whether or not the AI features work well in final phones, you won't have to buy the V30S ThinQ to get it. LG is planning to port the AI camera features back to all V30 devices. After all, there's no hardware dependence in the "new" phone. However, LG tells us a few features might not make it to the ported version but couldn't say in particular what would be missing. We're waiting for clarification.

The LG V30S ThinQ will launch in Korea soon, but other markets are up in the air. The company is still discussing when or if to sell it in North America. Pricing will vary by market.

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