LG V30 (Coming Oct 5th, $800)

You interested in the V30?

  • Hell yes!

    Votes: 5 62.5%
  • DERRRRRR.....BOOTLOOP LUL

    Votes: 3 37.5%

  • Total voters
    8
  • Poll closed .
I used the LG Package Disabler and disabled dozens of stock crap and what I'd call bloatware. But the T-Mobile V30 doesn't come with too much bloat, compared to Verizon and ATT which are horrible with a million bloat apps.. And then I installed the Pixel 2 launcher, and also a ton of stock Google apps, which I made default. And am I not using any of the LG core apps, like Phone, text, and calendar, I am using all Google's stuff.

Phone runs smooth, and battery life is super good so far. I am liking the size of the phone, it feels small, and lightweight and overall comfortable to use. The screen gets plenty bright, way brighter than my 6P ever would. And the sound is loud and clear, way louder than the 6P's dual speakers, actually my 6P had crap sound to be honest, very low even when cranked up. But the single bottom speaker only on the V30 is the bad part of the speaker, that does kind of suck, but at least it's loud. Wish they'd copy Apple and do the bottom speaker + part of the ear piece speaker.

The vibration motor on the V30 is on par with the iPhone, as in really good, like nothing I've felt on other Android phones before. But I turned it down, as it was almost too strong ( thank god for settings ).

I like that there's no branding on the face of the phone, it's just a black monolith slab, very minimalist in design. I have a slim black Incipio case, and the phone just looks cool. Not flashy or anything, very understated.

Surprising thing is how it's all screen, this thing does look very futuristic, with it having very minimal bezels, and being mostly all screen. In a way it sort of looks like a larger iPhone X. If both phones had the same Incipio case, they'd look near identical, just one having the bigger screen.

To wrap up this quick first impressions post, I am happy and comfortable with the phone. It gets very good battery life. Is a fast feeling phone, with little lag. Screen is very bright. And it looks very cool. Would I rather have the Pixel 2 XL now ? Not really. I still have my 6P for my stock Android urge if need be. And the size of the V30 is truly the sweet spot, I don't want a larger heavier phone. Actually I wish the V30 was the Pixel 2.
 
On all past phones I've done basically the same as above with little exception.. the v30 though I'm using digits which is native is the stock dialer and no 3rd party dialers support it. I also went with Nova launcher due to its tweakability and am digging it so far.

I love my v30 so much that since I was just presented with the opportunity to get the v30+ I jumped on it.. it'll be here Wednesday..
 
Having my V30 over a week now. One major surprise is the battery life.

OUTSTANDING !!!

More than double my Nexus 6P's battery. I'm getting like 8.5h Screen On time, sometimes 9h.

Way better than the awesome iPhone 7 Plus running 10.3 which gave me great battery life. The V30 destroys that too
 
Having my V30 over a week now. One major surprise is the battery life.

OUTSTANDING !!!

More than double my Nexus 6P's battery. I'm getting like 8.5h Screen On time, sometimes 9h.

Way better than the awesome iPhone 7 Plus running 10.3 which gave me great battery life. The V30 destroys that too.
 
I think LG has come a long way. My wife got the G6 back in spring. And you know what ? It just works. Seriously it's just a solid phone with no issues. It's not fancy or the cool phone. But gets good battery life, really no lag, and is a solid performer.

Based on that I picked up the V30 last week. I Pixelized it; Pixel 2 launcher, made all Google apps default, and debloated the LG stuff and T-Mobile stuff. And this phone is very fast and super smooth. It looks super modern being all screen and very minimal bezels, and the back in silver color looks breathtaking good. And it gets outstanding battery life.
 
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My only minor gripe is the poor theme engine. The themes kind of suck compared to what a Galaxy S8+ / Note 8 has available, plus the Galaxy line now has Substratum available no root needed. Which used to only work on Nexus / Pixel phones, but they updated and worked on it for the Galaxy line. And you can mix and match a Samsung store theme for your core TouchWiz apps on the phone with a Subtratum theme for Google apps and notification shade.

I'm a big theme guy, love dark themes. Andsadly the V30 just can't be themed like above.
 
Not to beat a dead horse here, but HOLY COW, the battery life on this phone, is like nothing I've seen before. I have owned 24 different flagship smartphones since 2008 or so. None of them have had battery life like this V30.

I am getting 9h Screen On time. This is the first smartphone ever, to give me true 2 day use. No other phone could ever reliably be counted on to last two solid days with no charging. Yesterday I unplugged the phone off the charger at 6:30am with 100% battery, went to bed at 11:00pm, checked battery status, it was only down to 55% with like 4h 34m Screen On time. Checked the phone this morning, was down to 52%, and still going strong.
 
Not to beat a dead horse here, but HOLY COW, the battery life on this phone, is like nothing I've seen before. I have owned 24 different flagship smartphones since 2008 or so. None of them have had battery life like this V30.

I am getting 9h Screen On time. This is the first smartphone ever, to give me true 2 day use. No other phone could ever reliably be counted on to last two solid days with no charging. Yesterday I unplugged the phone off the charger at 6:30am with 100% battery, went to bed at 11:00pm, checked battery status, it was only down to 55% with like 4h 34m Screen On time. Checked the phone this morning, was down to 52%, and still going strong.
so you beat a dead horse and brought in a cow too. Don't make me call PETA on you.
 

OK, OK, we get it, great battery life in your experience with the V30, now STFU about it in your experience or you're gonna jinx it not only for you but others too. :D

<just for the record: when I owned a Samsung Galaxy S7 Active in late 2016 I was regularly getting 14+ hours of SOT in the time I owned it, pure stock Samsung ROM on it too...>
 
I won't.. he ain't getting about the battery life..

Overall happier with this phone then any other I've had.. perfect.. no, but as close as I've seen.
 
The V30+ is coming to Amazon. I'll be buying it as soon as it's there.
 
If only the V30+ was unlocked like the US998. I hate LG and their bootloader policy although I suppose it's better than no unlocked bootloaders at all.
 
If only the V30+ was unlocked like the US998. I hate LG and their bootloader policy although I suppose it's better than no unlocked bootloaders at all.

The locked bootloaders are a request of the carriers that sell the devices, not the companies that make them like LG and Samsung and whoeever - you can understand this when you buy devices directly from the manufacturers as opposed to the branded carrier devices almost always. T-Mobile was the one carrier that sold devices that could be bootloader unlocked for a long long time, now it appears they've started selling them like the other carriers and not offering the end user the option to do it at all. In fact on some devices that were sold originally being capable of bootloader unlocking - one example is the LG V10 I owned recently, the T-Mobile model - later lost that capability because of an upgrade of the firmware, most notably when T-Mobile pushed out the Android 7 Nougat update for the V10.

Luckily someone discovered this (the new Nougat boot.img file was the culprit) and patched things up so you could install the Nougat update.zip file manually from internal storage and it would not upgrade the bootloader. Technically I suppose it shouldn't have worked at all since Nougat was thought to need a new bootloader but, it did, so it became a bootloader unlocked (or unlockable) V10 running Nougat with a Marshmallow bootloader.

Regardless, it did work and still does for all I know (I sold the V10 a few months back) but carriers dictate whether or not the bootloader is unlockable and at this point pretty much all of them do it as a regular thing now, sadly.
 
The locked bootloaders are a request of the carriers that sell the devices, not the companies that make them like LG and Samsung and whoeever - you can understand this when you buy devices directly from the manufacturers as opposed to the branded carrier devices almost always. T-Mobile was the one carrier that sold devices that could be bootloader unlocked for a long long time, now it appears they've started selling them like the other carriers and not offering the end user the option to do it at all. In fact on some devices that were sold originally being capable of bootloader unlocking - one example is the LG V10 I owned recently, the T-Mobile model - later lost that capability because of an upgrade of the firmware, most notably when T-Mobile pushed out the Android 7 Nougat update for the V10.
That's only partially true because the the Dual-Sim and the Plus models are also available as non-carrier versions and do not have unlockable bootloaders. LG is not dev-friendly in this regard in any way and it's not entirely the carrier's fault either.
 
Pretty much any phone gotten through a carrier today is locked down. Samsung locks thiers. LG yep. Sony yeah.

Heck, even the nerd and developer friendly phone the Pixel 2 is locked down if bought from the carrier ( Verizon ). That's just all sorts of wrong that Google allowed a carrier control over their stock Android phone to be locked.

Point being, if you're an Android nerd and want root + ROM's you need to pay full price for your phone, and not buy through any U.S. carrier. It needs to be an "International" version, or buy direct from the manufacturer that they list as officially unlocked.

U.S. carriers only finance and sell locked down phones. Just like Apple and the iPhone ( the JB scene is dead and ancient history )
 
Unless you get an HTC. Of course, the market has decided they don't actually care. I'm still on my great HTC 10.
 
Point really is: if you really care about customization to that degree and custom ROMs/etc, you don't buy any smartphones other than OnePlus, really, because they still support bootloader unlocking and even warranty it as well - if you fuck up a device aka "brick it" because of some mucked up flashing operation they'll replace the device. One can only wish other companies would do that for end users, especially given the size of OnePlus. Yes they do some other funky stuff now and again but what company hasn't fucked up in one way or another at this point. :D
 
The problem is that sometimes, even the unlocked models can be locked down across a whole region. Ditching the carrier alone may not save you.

That's when the problem started with Samsung last year, back with the S7: they created a unified North American variant running on the usual Snapdragon as opposed to Exynos, instead of a billion little variants for each major carrier that had locked-out LTE bands and other crap even if the bootloader was unlockable. Traditionally, Sprint and T-Mobile would have unlocked bootloaders, Verizon would have a locked bootloader unless you got one of the obscure developer editions, and AT&T users were just plain screwed.

But with one unified North American variant that supported all the bands and could even be flashed to a different carrier variant, even the unlocked and unbranded variant, with a little work, this also meant that Sprint and T-Mobile users got equally screwed on the bootloader. This measure also marked the first time "Unlocked by Samsung" devices appeared here in the US, but that doesn't mean you're getting an unlocked bootloader by any stretch, only an unlocked SIM slot and CDMA capability for Sprint and Verizon.

As for LG, I'm not as certain on what their situation is, but the G3's numerous variants make my head spin, just as bad as Samsung. I just don't know how different on a hardware level they are, given that the unlocking process on a Sprint LS990 variant is downright trivial if you're willing to use stock firmware with a build.prop edit. What I do know is that the bootloader was always technically locked, but the Bump! fakesigning exploit made it practically unlocked from a developer standpoint so long as the phone was still running the original ZV4 bootloader (which is also a requirement if you want to Stump root it in the first place so you can get SuperSU and TWRP going, as the "technically locked" bit means you can't just flash a TOT in download mode).

I can only hope the V10 and V20 are a lot less of a pain in that respect.
 
In the phone dialer go I to settings -> calls -> more and turn on voice clarity. You're welcome
 
I've had my V30 a few weeks now. And you know what ? It's a great phone. Unbelievable battery life. Snappy and fast. Easy to hold, overall size is very compact for having a 6" screen. Speakers are super loud, even though it's bottom firing which I rather have dual.

I keep thinking about maybe trading in for an iPhone X or Pixel 2 XL. But afraid I won't be super satisfied with either after getting rid of this V30.

Do I love this phone ? No. I always think the grass is greener and there's a better phone out there. But, I am extremely comfortable with this phone, and with things like AdGuard + Samsung Internet, it's just like having AdAway on a rooted phone. And YouTube OG is great too, which is a rootless apk and I love it, no ads on YouTube and you can download anything. Plus Package Disabler got rid of the bloat. And a nice black theme running.

I will say the V30 is very unrated, and should be in the top 3 of best smartphones of 2017.
 
Another favorite feature on this phone, is the screen to body ratio. This display takes up the whole phone almost, it has very minimal bezels, and when you hide the nav keys it feels almost like a bezeless phone. Love the look
 
So I see Zorachus has a damned near terminal case of "Upgraditis" that will never find a cure. :D

I sit in about the same boat. I do get nearly every phone out for at least a little while. My v30 will probably stick around until at least spring.. with the improvements lg has made since the spring of 2016 (g5) to now makes me excited to see how the g7 will be.
 
I think we could've all diagnosed that case of upgraditis from past posts, haha. Some enthusiasts will never be satisfied.

Me, though? Honestly, I was still content with my Galaxy Note 4, other than the whole "no LTE on T-Mobile, or even 3G" in the months leading up to the Note 8's release. That was the only reason I replaced it; Sprint made damn sure it wasn't going to work on any other network effectively, even when unlocked. Never mind that it was already going on three years old and had official software support dropped after the second year, it did what I wanted to and had a fairly active dev scene on XDA-developers still, such that finding LineageOS 14.1 builds isn't too difficult.

That's right, I fully expect a modern flagship smartphone to still be viable two or even three years after release. Makes the upgrade at the end of that cycle actually feel all the more worthwhile.

How many of you plan to keep your V30s for two or three years? Heck, I could see the V10 and V20 already going past that just because their headphone DAC/amp implementation makes them valid alternatives to dedicated PMPs, no need for phone service. The removable batteries also help get around that bit of potential planned obsolescence as long as someone keeps making compatible battery packs, too.
 
Anyone with the V30 has issues with the battery charging very slowly? I plugged it in for over 24 hours from the time I took it off it's new packaging. It went from 20 to 35% in that time span. Using cable and charger that came with the phone. Looks like I will be returning this phone.
 
Mine has always charged fast. The only time it didn't the phone gave me a slow charge notification and I pushed the cable further into the charger and it went back to fast charging. I must have pulled the cable out of the USB port a little.
 
Sent my V30 to LG for repair. Got the phone back yesterday and issue still persist. Have to send it back to them again. How does one request a replacement rather than a repair. I asked LG and they insisted they will only replace if tech deems the phone as unfixable. At this point I have zero confidence in having a successful repair based on their first attemp.
 
Sent my V30 to LG for repair. Got the phone back yesterday and issue still persist. Have to send it back to them again. How does one request a replacement rather than a repair. I asked LG and they insisted they will only replace if tech deems the phone as unfixable. At this point I have zero confidence in having a successful repair based on their first attemp.
Uh.. I haven't had an issue, but silly question.. have you tried a different charger/cable.. also a wireless charger.. even with my slowest wireless charger connected to a regular usb 2 port at work it charges from about 20% to full inside of my 8 hour work shift. So what your seeing is definitely not right.. and if you have to work the same issue again file a BBB complaint. That should get you a replacement fairly quickly.
 
Uh.. I haven't had an issue, but silly question.. have you tried a different charger/cable.. also a wireless charger.. even with my slowest wireless charger connected to a regular usb 2 port at work it charges from about 20% to full inside of my 8 hour work shift. So what your seeing is definitely not right.. and if you have to work the same issue again file a BBB complaint. That should get you a replacement fairly quickly.
Don't have a wireless charger, but I have another fast charger that I know for certain works (it works with my V10). that's how I know it's not a charger issue. Yeah I'm going the BBB route. Just got an email from them saying they are shipping the phone back to me unrepaired because there is some privacy software on it that they are not authorized to bypass. There is no such thing on the phone. I made sure to do a factory reset before I sent to them just like I did the first attempt. So now this will be by 3rd attempt at sending the phone back to them.
 
The V30 really is a great phone. I still have my T-Mobile version, but since I got the Pixel 2 XL last month, I've been using that as my daily driver.

But typing this on my V30 now which i haven't touched in weeks, this phone is amazing, the size is damn near perfect, and lightweight. Just a super cool phone.

But I'm such a stock Android fan, I just can't use a LG UI, or Samsung TouchWiz, or HTC Sense. I only like stock pure Android. I've tried all new phones, but there's something extra special about pure stock that I prefer.

Now if the V30 had a GPE version, it'd be the best phone of 2017. But right now, the Pixel 2 XL is the best to me.
 
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