LG V30+ Review: The videographer's smartphone arrives

The Pitch

Somewhere along the line, LG’s V30 became ‘the videographer’s smartphone’.

It’s not quite clear when this happened. Nor is it clear whether or not this was some kind deliberate marketing move on part of LG or whether it was an early observation by the tech press that found its momentum as an informal tag-line for the device. Regardless, label is nothing if not apt. 

Considering the circumstances, shifting gears towards a play for the burgeoning content creator market actually makes a lot of sense for LG. The arms race for the perfect portrait mode was already a difficult one for LG to keep pace with, even before Google got involved the Pixel. In fact, there’s a pretty clear comparison to make between this approach and what Nokia have done with ‘The Bothie’ camera on their flagship Nokia 8.

If you can’t build a camera that does it better, build one that does something different.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this angle was deemed too niche for Australian customers. Sort of. While the original V30 won’t be getting an Australian release, the beefier V30+ is - and there's a lot to like here.

The V-series has always been LG’s playground for the more ambitious fare left out of their more-mainstream flagship G-series - and all the better for it. The V30 continues that trend in good form and makes for a solid alternative unswayed by the Note 8’s S-Pen and Huawei’s AI-powered photography.

Specs

The LG V30+ is an Android-based smartphone (running 7.1.2 Nougat and LG’s UX skin) powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and a thrifty 4GB of RAM. It’s packing a bezelless 6-inch QHD (2880x1440 pixels) OLED display, 128GB of on-board storage and a 3300mAh battery.

There’s a fingerprint scanner on the back, headphone jack down the bottom edge and dual-sim slot on offer. The V30+ also comes IP68-rated against water damage and supports Qi wireless charging.

In terms of the cameras, the V30+ practices a very similar dual-lens setup to the G6. It’s got a dual shooter on the back, pairing up a 16-megapixel f/1.6 standard lens with a 13-megapixel wide-angle lens.  Then, on the front, it comes equipped with a 5-megapixel Wide-Angle lens.

The major differences here between the V30+ and the regular V30 are largely technical. The former comes with double the internal storage (128GB vs 64GB) and bundled with a set of QuadPlay earbuds.