LG V30 review: All screen

Gallery

LG V30's Gallery app supports Albums and Timeline views. In both, you can pinch zoom to change the size of thumbnails and in Timeline view this has the added effect of moving between photos grouped by day, month or year.

You can easily bring in more photos on the device - the V30 supports DLNA (so you can view photos stored on computers on your network) and cloud support. It's pleasingly comprehensive - Drive, Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive are supported (with most phones you get just one of those or not even that much).

Albums • Camera reel • Timeline view • Cloud sync

The Memories screen takes photos and videos and creates a short video out of them (the content is grouped by time and location). Collages and slideshows take just a few taps to create and then the Play on other device option will use Miracast to send your media to your TV.

The image editor is a very straightforward one. You get filters, cropping, and rotation, and you can edit image parameters like Light, Color and Pop. Light and Color can be expanded offering more granular control.

Viewing an image • Image details • Editor

Music player

The V30 has both an in-house Music player and Google Play Music. The LG app has the fine sound presets that make the best use of the V30's quad DAC. The app also comes with DLNA and cloud support (same as the Gallery: Drive, Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive), accessing your music library is a breeze.

The Now playing interface makes use of the squares concept with the album art on top (still couldn't find any for our Sting album, though), and controls on the bottom. Go into landscape and a playlist shows up in the right square.

DLNA and Cloud access • Album view • Now playing • Same, but in landscape

For lossy music formats you have access to the equalizer (it's disabled for FLAC/ALAC). It has a QuadBeat setting for LG's own headsets, Bass, Treble and Vocal boosters too. A 5-band equalizer is on hand for those who want manual control. For those who'd like to fool around there's pitch and speed control too.

Equalizer presets • Custom EQ • Pitch and speed control, because why not

Within the Hi-Fi Quad DAC settings you can select sound presets with wacky equalizer curves you can't realistically recreate on your own. There are digital filters too for changing the sound characteristics and you can also set the volume for the left and right channels independently.

Quad DAC settings

FM radio

The V30 has an FM radio receiver, a rarity among flagships. It could be a regional thing, though, so if it's crucial to you, check beforehand.

The app is the same we had on the G6 and is one of the slickest-looking we've seen. It supports RDS so it will pull the current station's name along with whatever gibberish it's broadcasting. It only does it for the current station and not for the entire list of stations. You can name 6 favorite stations, there's an option to output through the speaker (headphones still needed for reception), and there's a sleep timer as well. No recording though.

FM Radio player

Video player and editor

There's no dedicated video player, you launch videos from the Gallery or the File browser, which is fine by us. Both apps have cloud support. You get thumbnails for seeking preview, a screenshot shortcut in the interface, and a GIF maker (5, 10, or 15 seconds length).

The video player supports QSlide if you want to view the video in a small, floating window. You can also manually load a subtitle file and change the font.

Video player • Player settings • Subtitle settings

There's a video editor that lets you cut out parts of the video (the Auto option picks the best 15/30/60 seconds of video). It can also change the playback speed for parts of the video to create a dramatic effect.

Stellar audio output

The LG V30 aced the first part of our audio test. The smartphone showed perfect audio accuracy with an active external amplifier and delivered very loud output.

Things were just as impressive when you plug in a pair of headphones. Volume remained among the highest out there, while the clarity of the output was great. Stereo quality took a small hit, but even that remained better than most competitors out there.

Better yet, if you enable the Quad DAC option from the settings you get even louder output without sacrificing anything in terms of quality besides some extra stereo crosstalk with headphones. A truly impressive performance by the V30 here.

LG V30 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.