When it comes to flagships, LG has had a split strategy for the past few years. Its G-series phones, usually launched around March, are more typical flagships, while the V-series models launched towards the end of the year are more experimental and offbeat. Last year's V20 had a secondary screen, dual cameras, reinforced aluminium body and high-end audio. We didn't mind having any of those features, but they didn't exactly make us want to run out and buy it either.This year there's a new strategy at play. The main features of the LG V30+ are its top-end hardware and focus on design - in fact, this might be the best looking phone that LG has ever produced. Could this be the one that finally propels LG to the top of the sales charts? We can't wait to find out.

Look and Design
The phone is carved out of Corning's Gorilla Glass 5 - Corning Gorilla Glass 4 covers the rear camera module however - and is joined together by a metallic frame at the centre. It's a solidly built smartphone for the most part, but, glass - even Corning - has its bad days. Be nice, and it should serve you well. LG, on its part, does ensure the V30+ is built like a tank - much like the G6 before it, which was also all glass and metal by the way - by checking all the right boxes on paper. The only problem with this design is that both the front and rear are extremely slippery - the V30+ slid out of our trouser pockets on more than one occasion, especially when we were sitting in a car, and wouldn't stay put on any surface that was even slightly inclined. We were afraid of scuffs and scratches showing, but that didn't turn out to be a problem during our review period, at least.
 Speaking of which, the V30+ isn't a phone designed for people with small hands. LG, somehow, has managed to re-define the concept of tall aspect ratio phones. In that, even though the V30+ is a bezel-less phone with an unusual 18:9 aspect ratio, it is long and it is wide, both at the same time. Unless you fire up that display, you'd be hard-pressed to know, whether this is an 18:9 phone or a standard 16:9 one. It is way more accommodating than other similarly sized phones though.
The power button is on the back, which is LG's one consistent brand differentiator. We personally find this inconvenient, but with face recognition and gesture shortcuts, it's easier to live with than before. There's a fingerprint sensor on the power button itself, and at least that winds up being where it needs to be. Above that is the dual camera bump which thankfully protrudes less than 1mm. Though you can't see it, the LG V30+ is IP68 certified for water and dust resistance. The only other interesting point to note is the "Made in India" stamp below LG's logo.
0 volume buttons are on the left, and there's a hybrid dual-SIM tray on the right. There's a USB Type-C port and a single speaker cutout on the bottom, and a 3.5mm audio socket on the top. In the box, LG includes a microfibre cloth, an oversized Quick Charge 3.0-compliant charger, a USB Type-C cable, a nice-looking headset, and the usual leaflets.

Display
The USP of the V30+, according to LG, is its big bezel-less display. The phone comes with ridiculously slim bezels allowing the display to take up over 80 per cent of its front side: a concept also seen in Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 and Apple's iPhone X. Much like the Galaxy Note 8 and the iPhone X, the V30+, also uses an OLED panel. The V30+ is in fact LG's first true flagship phone, in a long time, to come with a curved OLED -- built by LG itself and called Full Vision by the company -- display which is also HDR 10-ready. The V30+, as a result, is also compatible with Google's Daydream virtual reality platform.
Picture this: the V30+ has a 6-inch QHD+ 18:9 P-OLED display with a 2880x1400 pixel resolution which roughly translates to 538ppi. Frankly, you can't ask for more. But you will, once you fire up the V30+, and use it for sometime. It's like you're teleported to a whole new dimension. It's like the V30+ is a whole new being on the inside: dull and life-less: aching for life.
It's not that bad you know, I try to comfort myself. Colours look good, rich and vibrant too, so do the brightness levels. I like that just like Samsung's high-end Galaxy S phones, the V30+ also gives me an option to tinker around with the resolution -- which is useful when I am looking to save battery -- and as many as five different modes to correct colour temperature, and an always-on display that's nothing short of futuristic. But paper specs aside, the V30+ is not even in the same ball park as the Galaxy S8/S8+ or for that matter any other Samsung phone that uses an OLED screen. Heck, it's not even in the same ball park as the HTC U11 , which uses LCD. It's quite bad actually, I realise. There's no turning back.
It's not so much about colours failing to pop out of the screen, as it is about them being uneven and inconsistent. Colours are all over the place on the V30+: whites don't look white enough, grays don't look gray enough, so on and so forth. The effect is particularly pronounced when you have multiple colours on the screen: look closely and you can see colours don't really blend all that well and appear patchy or grainy. Add to it, a bluish tinge that's quite evident across the screen, every time you tilt the phone even by the smallest angle and clearly you get a recipe for disaster.
But I have to say, I being a reviewer have a curious eye. Also, I am in the habit of changing phones way too frequently. Chances are, you the buyer, may not find the V30+' screen a deal-breaker -- for me it is -- so I would suggest, don't write off LG's new phone without having a look at it in person. While you're at it, make sure to check out the screens of the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the iPhone X or the HTC U11 as well, just to be sure.

Software
LG's UX software -- which is based on Android 7.1.2 Nougat in the V30+ -- may not be the best looking in the business -- in fact it's ugly and cluttered -- but at least it's well optimised with the available hardware. It's smooth sailing 9 out of 10 times, but, if Samsung could design a whole new level of user experience for the Galaxy S8, I don't see why LG can't. It's high time that it should. And maybe get rid of some bloat or unwanted apps along the way as well.
 said that, LG's take on Android isn't entirely a lost cause especially when you compare it with the UIs employed by certain Chinese OEMs who blindly follow the iPhone with no thought or logic. LG's UX is totally different from its peers in look as well as functionality. It may take some time getting used to initially but once you're through that phase it's pretty much a smooth ride. The software also offers a lot of customisation options, which should impress those who like to tailor-make the way their phone looks.
Unlike its predecessor, the V30+ dumps LG's trademark secondary ticker screen for a floating bar feature that can be customized to fit up to five apps for easy access. I chose to ignore it -- and disabled it right from the get-go -- altogether but there can still be takers for the concept.

Specification
In some countries, LG sells the V30 and V30+ through different carriers, though there are zero cosmetic differences between them. They both have the same processor and screen. The V30, which has not been launched in India, has 64GB of storage and might or might not ship with B&O Play headphones in the box, depending on country. What you need to know is that the V30+ which has been launched in India has 128GB of storage, and you get LG's own Quadplay headset which is also touted as extremely high quality. Those are the sole differences between models.
It's also easy to see that there are several similarities between the LG V30/ V30+ and the Google Pixel 2 XL, which of course LG manufactures for Google. They have nearly identical specifications, right down to the 6-inch pOLED screen that LG developed itself. The panel has a resolution of 1440x2880 and supports the HDR-10 standard. It's extremely crisp and bright, and there's an always-on mode that lets you see the time and notifications when the phone is in standby, without taking too much of a hit to battery life.
However, the big problem is that the V30+ suffers from exactly the same colour shifting issues as the Pixel 2 XL. Just by tilting the phone side to side, you can see the colour tone change. Whites take on a pink or blue tint depending on the angle you hold the phone at. This is something we're going to pay a lot of attention to when evaluating the usability and performance of the V30+.
The processor at the heart of the V30+ is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. LG missed out on this hardware when it decided to ship the G6 ahead of its competition, so this actually makes the V30+ LG's first true flagship phone of the year. Unfortunately, Qualcomm has just announced the Snapdragon 845 which will undoubtedly power most of the next wave of flagship phones just a few months from now, and this phone could feel dated then.
There's 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You can add up to 2TB more using a microSD card, though you'll have to sacrifice a second SIM because of the phone's hybrid dual-SIM design. Of course 4G and VoLTE are supported. The battery capacity is a generous 3300mAh, and wireless charging as well as Quick Charge 3.0 are supported. You get all the necessary standards including Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and GPS.

Performance
Needless to say, with hardware like this, the V30+ was consistently snappy and responsive. It doesn't get too hot when stressed, and there's nothing that we can really fault - except for the screen's colour shifting problem. This can be dealt with when watching movies, as long as you stay perfectly still, but with games that use the phone's use motion sensors for control, the shifts as you turn and tilt the phone can be jarring. This is a really aggravating flaw that feels even more frustrating because of how good this phone is otherwise.
We got scores of 143,739 in AnTuTu; 1,925 and 6,174 in Geekbench's single-core and multi-core tests; 37,183 in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited; and 55fps in GFXBench's T-rex test. We've seen higher scores from other phones based on the Snapdragon 835. You can get better framerates in games by manually reducing the output resolution, either within the Settings app or using LG's game overlay menu.
The single speaker on the V30+ is loud and crisp, but we're a little disappointed to lose the front-facing stereo speakers that the Pixel 2 XL has. We found ourselves muffling the grille on the bottom very often when playing games with the phone in both hands. As far as the much-touted audiophile features go, the quad DACs do seem to make a difference. You can turn the feature on or off through a toggle in the Quick Settings panel, and adjust presets in the Settings app. We tried a few FLAC files and streamed some Apple Music tracks as well, and found that sound was deeper and richer than we're used to.
The bundled earphones were a notch above the usual quality you'd get in a phone's box, but weren't worth getting very excited about. It was hard to get a good seal with the included rubber eartips, and we think anyone who cares about audio would choose something better.
Battery life turned out to be pretty good. We were able to use this phone quite heavily, with lots of photography plus some time spent playing games and streaming audio and video, and still made it to the end of a day without feeling too much anxiety. Our HD video loop test ran for 12 hours, 14 minutes. We also observed that the V30+ could be charged from zero to 100 percent in approximately two hours.

Camera
Speaking of the camera, the LG V30+ comes with a dual camera system on the rear, consisting of one 16-megapixel standard angle (f/1.6 aperture) and one 13-megapixel 120 degrees wide angle (f/1.9 aperture) lens. LG is touting the V30+' rear camera system as the world's first camera system to ship with an aperture of f/1.6 which should technically entail in outstanding low light photography. In addition, the dual camera system on-board the V30+ uses crystal clear glass lens instead of plastic and that should also aid in better photos, according to LG.
In the V30+, while one of the rear cameras has what you can call a regular lens, the other one has a wider lens. A wider lens means the phone's rear snapper can cover a larger area with a distinct fish-eye effect on the edges. It kind of gives you a 3D-like panorama sweep of what you're clicking without having you to move your phone in a certain manner. LG says that it has worked to minimize the fish-eye effect in the V30+ so wide-angle shots look more true-to-life than say on the G6 that also included a similar setup.
Switching between the two lenses happens seamlessly with just a tap on a toggle that rests comfortably on the screen all the while that you have the camera app up and running. It's actually quite fast to switch and is as fast to focus and shoot. In fact you never lose a breath while switching between the two lenses which makes the V30+ all the more fun to play around with. Every time I took a regular picture, I made sure to click the same shot again with the wider lens just to see how things looked from a wider perspective.
As for image quality, it's fantastic especially in good light. Both the rear cameras boast of excellent dynamic range. Images do tend to have a slight tendency to become overexposed and look artificial but then that's the way LG's post-processing algorithm (much like Samsung's) works anyways, so that really doesn't take away the fact that the V30+ ships with some attractive cameras. The image quality of the wider lens toting camera may not be in the same league as the regular, but it more than compensates for its hit-or-miss performance courtesy its wider scope.
The V30+ can also stand toe to toe with the best in the business, when it comes to low-light photography. The V30+ clicks pretty detailed -- if a little over-sharpened -- photos in tricky and low light situations making it one of the best flagship camera phones in the market right now.
The V30+ dual camera system has been built not only to take outstanding still photos, it has also been designed to shoot pro-level videos. The V30+, to begin with, can shoot 4K videos at 30fps in log format. The V30+, in addition, comes with as many as 15 different color grading presets to add a cinematic look to videos, and a specialized mode called Point Zoom that allows zooming into any selected area within the frame while recording.
The front 5-megapixel camera, is on the other hand, a forgettable affair.

Conclusion
Overall, it's clear that LG has managed to improve by leaps and bounds this year, first with the G6 and now with the V30+. It looks phenomenally good and will appeal to people who love having a lot of features to play around with. Of course, there are still rough edges to be worked on, mostly in terms of the user experience. There's no point in having a beautiful phone with an immersive display if that screen itself is flawed. Similarly, having dozens of camera modes and tool should be secondary to the actual output quality. This is exactly the kind of device that looks dazzling at first glance and has an impressive spec sheet, but really needs some time spent with it to uncover its true nature.
Another thing well worth pointing out is that LG has really done well in terms of pricing. The V30+ has been launched at a much lower price than the V20 and even the G6, and early buyers get a free wireless charger. As such, it is slotted neatly between the OnePlus 5T and the Samsung Galaxy S8. It's also significantly less expensive than the 128GB Pixel 2 XL, and all you really miss out on are Google's AI features and camera.
If you are considering buying the LG V30+, we would strongly suggest that you first try it out at a physical retail store to see if you can live with the screen. If it isn't a problem, you should be quite happy with this phone.