LG V40 ThinQ ups the smartphone camera game

LG has two big smartphone releases in a year: one for its G series and another for the V series. The former is more “mainstream” flagship, while the latter lets the company experiment a bit with what it can offer its users—usually this revolves around entertainment or content creation space. And so, we get the LG V40 ThinQ or LG V40, as we’ll refer to it from here on. 

You get a lot of the same specs of the G7 here. It has the same look and build as the G7 with an aluminum frame and glass panels covering the front and rear. This time, though, you get a bigger 6.4-inch OLED display. Like the G7, the V40 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, 6GB of RAM, and 64GB internal storage (which is expandable via microSD). Its single speaker comes with the G7’s BoomBox system and it offers the same haptic feedback as the G7. The Google Assistant button is present here, too, but if you find no use for it, then you can disable it (no remapping here). Its interface is the same as the G7 and, unfortunately, it still runs on Android 8.1 Oreo. Battery gets a slight bump up at 3,300mAh.  
What makes the V40 worth considering though is the new camera system it packs in. You get five cameras in one phone, giving you a whole arsenal of tools to play around with and get the shot you want—without needing extra accessories. No, LG didn’t pack in all the cameras at the back of the phone. You get a three-camera setup at the back and two front-facing shooters.  

The great thing about what LG did is that each sensor has a specific job it performs. You get the standard main camera, one super wide-angle camera, and one telephoto lens at the back, and then you get a main front-facing camera and a wide-angle secondary camera. 
For the rear cameras, you get three different specs across the sensors. The main is a 12-megapixel, f/1.5 lens sensor with 40 percent larger pixels than the G7 and a 78-degree field of view. While it has lower resolution than the G7, its larger pixels promise better low light capability. The super wide option has a 16-megapixel sensor and a 107-degree f/1.9 lens, which is similar to the super wide camera on the G7. And then there’s the new telephoto camera (a first for LG), which has a 12-megapixel, 45-degree f/2.4 lens. This gets you about two times closer to your subject than a standard camera.  

A downside to this different lens is you get different quality image from each one. It’ll also be up to you if you’d want to switch between them, but we’d suggest playing around with each one to find out what will work with what shot you’d want to get. LG lets you preview the shots you take right within the camera app, which is a great thing. And there is a new Triple Shot mode that lets you take photos using all three cameras with one press of a button. It takes these photos consecutively and gives you a full resolution copy of each photo plus a stitched together animated clip. 
For the front, you get the standard selfie camera with 8 megapixels and an 80-degree f/1.9 lens (which is the same as the G7) and a wide-angle camera has a 5-megapixel sensor and a 90-degree, f/2.2 lens, which is only slightly wider than the standard camera. 
There isn’t an official release date yet locally but the pricing for the V40 starts at US$900 (approx. P49,000). It comes in Aurora Black, Platinum Gray, Carmine Red, and Moroccan Blue. 

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