LG V50 ThinQ 5G and LG G8 ThinQ hands-on review

LG V50 ThinQ 5G hands-on

The 5G-enabled LG V50 ThinQ 5G, which from now on we'll call just V50 for the sake of normality, was the star of LG's show at the MWC this year. It's not a trend-setter, not by a long shot, but it has many of the buzz words right now, and one of them even made it to the model name itself. You can even upgrade it with a second screen ala foldable phone, how about that?

So, the LG V50 is a dual-glass smartphone and that's hardly a surprise. The glass-sandwich body turned out to be quite the timeless design and is often a synonym for premium build and looks. And the LG V5- do look premium.

LG G8 vs. LG G8 vs. LG V50

As often happens with the glass phones, the LG V50 will turn quickly into a smudge fest. But fingerprints or not, the flush black back, the seamless transition into the frame and then into the screen glass - all of these points towards a high-end craftsmanship and you can tell it the moment you get the V50 in your hand.

The entire front is the home of the 6.4" OLED screen of 3,120 x 1,440 pixels, which has an iPhone X-styled cutout. There is no punch-hole selfie camera, which should be the notch killer, but we are not sure we are quite fond of that idea anyway.

The V50's notch has an offset earpiece and two snappers - an 8MP f/1.9 regular cam and a 5MP f/2.2 wide-angle shooter.

The bezels of the OLED look thin enough and the chin isn't as prominent as on cheaper phones.

The LG V50 has a triple camera on its back and none of those snappers is bulging. The main camera is a 12MP f/1.5 shooter, then there is a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto one and a 16MP ultra-wide-angle snapper. The last hole is for the single-LED flash.

The metal frame is as glossy as the rest of the V50. There is a 3.5mm audio port on the V50, a regular USB-C port, and a stereo-speakers setup - the earpiece and a dedicated one at the bottom.

LG V50 ThinQ 5G

There is no in-display fingerprint scanner on the V50. Instead LG makes do with a fingerprint scanner on the rear and selfie camera-achieved face scanning on the front.

The LG V50, just like the rest of the V-series, is IP68-rated and covers 14 MIL-STD 810G standards. LG is yet to disclose which, though.

The LG V50 is powered by the latest Snapdragon 855 chip with 6GB of RAM and features Qualcomm's X50 5G modem. There is also a more advanced cooling system with a vapor chamber to keep that Snapdragon cool under pressure.

Finally, the V50 may be just 8mm slim, but it packs a large 4,000 mAh battery and supports fast charging.

Before we call it a day here, we want to mention that the V50 supports all kind of premium goodies - such as 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC, high-quality voice recording, DTS and Surround sound, Boombox technology for the speaker, and many others. It comes with Android 9 Pie pre-installed.

Oh, and there is one more thing. You can opt to purchase this Dual Screen accessory for the LG V50, which adds, well, a second foldable screen. LG may not have come up with a true foldable smartphone yet, but it surely caught our interest here.

Dual Screen for LG V50 ThinQ 5G

The Dual Screen accessory is a case with a second 6.2-inch 2160x1080px OLED screen that connects to the LG V50 through the pogo pins on its back. The connection is done via the three pogo pins at the back of the V50. The case adds some additional 131g of weight to the 183g of the vanilla V50.

The Dual Screen improves multitasking and gaming by giving you a second screen to work with and will work in either landscape or portrait. So the LG V50 is a foldable phone of sorts.