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Thanks to its ARCore SDK, Google made developing augmented reality applications more accessible and streamlined. To guarantee a consistent experience across devices, the Californian giant has put a certification process in place, through which it ensures the camera, motion sensors, and CPU perform as expected. Among the list of officially supported handsets are the LG G7, V30, V35, and V40 series, which offer the same motion tracking as other certified products. Nevertheless, Google acknowledged autofocus is not correctly working on these phones for the time being, although that shouldn't alter the end user's experience.
Last year, LG promised future software updates for its phones would come faster, thanks to its 'Software Upgrade Center'. Unfortunately, that hasn't quite worked out. Almost all of LG's phones are still waiting on an update to Android 9 Pie, which was released in August of last year. The company just announced its timeline for rolling out Pie in its home country of South Korea, and some models won't get it until the end of 2019.
The LG V30S ThinQ was announced at Mobile World Congress in February, and is essentially a V30 with extra software features and more storage/RAM. Pre-orders for the phone went live in the United States a few days ago, at a price tag of $929.99. That's a lot of money for any phone, let alone one using a chipset from last year.
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LG announced a new version of the V30 at Mobile World Congress this year called the V30S ThinQ. At the time, it wouldn't commit to launching the phone in the US. Now, pre-orders for the North American V30S ThinQ are live, and the price tag is bordering on insulting. The B&H product page lists this phone at $929.99. Yikes.
Back when LG still hadn't officially announced the interestingly-named V30S ThinQ and was merely teasing it, the company mentioned that the new features might trickle down to existing V30 devices. At MWC, LG confirmed that the V30 and V30+ would in fact get ThinQ features. In keeping with that promise, a reader in South Korea who owns a V30+ (a V30 with 128GB of storage) recently received an update that included a few interesting additions from the ThinQ.
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.