LG V20

From the moment I held the V20 in my hands, I couldn’t help but think that the design was more function over form. The longish phone feels slightly top heavy and, ergonomically-speaking, it is not as streamlined as some other flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7, the Google Pixel, or even the LG G5 (review) for that matter. But, the phone is long and slightly unwieldy for a reason: it has two camera modules on the rear and a secondary display as well - both of which are placed near the top.

The LG V20 has a dual camera on the rear like its sibling the LG G5. The primary camera is a 16MP shooter uses a 1/2.8-inch sensor with an f/1.8 aperture. The secondary supporting lens is a wide-angle 8MP camera which has a larger 1/4-inch sensor but a smaller f/2.4 aperture size. Although, the thing about the secondary lens is that it can go as wide as 12mm or 135-degrees in common parlance. Now that we are done describing the technical mumbo jumbo, let’s understand if that secondary wide angle lens makes any sense or not.

When it launched in the US, the V20 was the first smartphone - even before the Google Pixel - to ship with Android 7.0 Nougat. Obviously, you do not get stock Android UI and have to make do with a heavily-skinned version instead. LG uses its homegrown UX 5.0+, which is one of the most aggressive skins I have used on a smartphone. Firstly, by default the home screen does not have an app drawer but thankfully I could download a separate Home and App drawer extension to satiate my irritation.

The LG V20 comes fitted with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, which also includes the Adreno 530 GPU. The phone comes with 64GB of internal storage and you can expand it by up to 2TB using a microSD card. Now, that is more storage space than you can possibly need. You also get 4GB of RAM, which should be more than sufficient for every day usage.

The LG V20 is a haven for multimedia enthusiasts. It offers an excellent 32-bit DAC, which can enhance your music listening experience by leaps and bounds. In my testing I noticed that to make full use of the in-built DAC you need to use uncompressed file formats like FLACs. The DAC won’t necessarily improve the sound quality of your .mp3 files because they are already compressed to an extent that all the details are lost. You also need to use a decent sounding pair of headphones to actually use it to its full potential; even the bundled B&O Play headset won’t cut it. I used my reference headphones and found that there was a marked improvement in the soundstaging and the imaging as well. Use a player like PowerAmp to make full use of the V20’s capabilities. Additionally, LG also bundles a very high quality voice recording app called HD Audio recorder, which is pretty efficient even with the built-in mics. I was completely blown away by the sound quality.

Now that you have come this far, here’s an interesting titbit: this review is close to 2,500 words long. And, even if I were to just list the features of the LG V20 I would have had to write at least 1,000 words. What I am trying to say is that LG has packed the V20 with everything you’d want from a smartphone. But I am still slightly hesitant in recommending the phone outright. Why? Well, the V20 is available at an hefty sticker price of Rs 54,999 and my only concern is that equally good (or even better) phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (review) and the LG’s very own G5 are available at a cheaper price. Also, since you are spending so much money anyway, you might as well buy the best Android smartphone in the market right now - the Google Pixel XL (review).