LG Velvet review: Beautifully flawed By Android Central

The long-running LG G Series retires this year and in its place, comes a new mid-level flagship built around design and aesthetic beauty. The LG velvet has 5g onboard and the latest version of LG's dual street attachments, giving it features matched by fewer the phones at this level, but even though this might be OTIS best-looking a most useful device. Yet it's let down by one or two weird weaknesses, including a slightly baffling camera I'm, Alex Montrose central- and this is our review for LG valve. Let's take a second to subscribe, so you don't miss off future videos, and we'll jump right in, so the velvet is easily the best looking phone LG has ever produced. The new device is pleasing on the eyes comfortable to hold and significantly less slippery in the hand compared to the company's older models. Lg emphasizes symmetry in the Velvets' chassis design, with the gentle taper of the back panel mirroring the curve of the display.

Even the water droplet effect created by the new rear camera placement is an improvement on the larger visor style. Camera modules of the LG v series we're reviewing the LG velvet in it's fairly subdued Aurora green hue. However, you'll find more ostentatious offerings here in the form of Aurora white and illusion sunsets. While the metal contact points around the edges, the phone are extremely thin. I found it easy enough to hold onto their glossy, not matte like some older LG phones, which does help a bit with the grip button, wise there's power volume and the dedicated Google Assistant key.

Meanwhile, the bottom bezel houses that rarest of things a 3.5, millimeter headphone jack, though this one isn't the fancy one from the v60. So no quad DAC this time around the Velvets' audio is pretty middle-of-the-road with little to praise or really complain about the bottom firing speaker and, if he's tweet, to provide ample volume for casual YouTube sessions, but they do sound a little thin at those higher volume levels. The thing pumping all that content into your eyeballs is a six point. Eight inches po8 panel at full HD resolution with a tiny dimpled notch up top. It's pleasing and vibrant, with plenty of options to adjust the vibrancy or white balance in the settings if you're, picky, otherwise daylight visibility, even under bright, sunlight was passable and the manual brightness slider can get it dark enough for comfortable nighttime viewing as well.

This is a sixty Hertz panel, though that's not a surprise. After all, LG's flagship, the 60, also uses this sort of display, but 90 and 120 Hertz screens are becoming more common, even at the velvet's price point taken, one plus eight here, for instance, I've also noticed some digitizer weirdness with scrolling acceleration in some situations like quickly swiping between apps using gesture controls it's hard to describe, but the physics of certain kinds of scrolling seems a little wonky even compared to other 60 Hertz handsets that's a bit weird, because there is plenty of CPU power inside thanks to Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 G platform, which is aimed at less expensive flagship phones with 5g connective in terms of raw horsepower you're. Getting the CPU grunt of a flagship phone from around 18 months ago with the better efficiency and, of course, that 5g connectivity, bus spec sheet also gets you eight gigabytes of RAM 128, gigs of storage and a forty-three hundred million power battery. Aside from the aforementioned scrolling weirdness, in some situations, the LT velvet has been a quick and reliable performer I didn't run into any noticeable memory, management issues or slowdowns, either in everyday apps like Twitter or Chrome, or games like Mario, Kart or asphalt 9. What's less than ideal, however, is the Velvets relatively sluggish in screen fingerprint scanner, which is noticeably slower than Android flagships in the past couple years? It's fine reliability wise, but takes noticeably longer to unlock, and that's all the more problematic, considering there's no face unlock option this time around I've got no complaints around longevity, though the built-in fully three hundred billion power cell easily lasted me a full day, even with heavier use.

On LTE. With my usage patterns, I was looking at around 18 hours off charger with between 5 or 6 hours of screen on time, protectable battery intensive users included photography. Gaming and pretty much anything involving use of the LG G all screen attachment, since the dual screen itself is powered by the phone's main battery. As for refills you're, looking at Qualcomm quick charge for plus support over a cable as well as QI wireless charging, though be aware, the latter option is fairly slow. Considering this is plain old QI and not fast wireless charging, the LG fellow, it runs Android 10 out of the box plastered with LG, UX and 9.1 for any newcomers. Lg's Android software has taken on a Samsung look-alike aesthetic over the past year or so, which is plain to see throughout the UI.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though its feature-rich as you'd expect, and the design language is consistent throughout the phone's software. If you've seen a recent LG review, you'll know what to expect here. Bright, colors and a lot of squirrel shaped icons. There are a few useful additions to the software, though, like a swipe and hold gesture from the outer edge to activate a helpful one-handed, reachability mode and LG is spun out its own pop-up game mode for most apps, letting you shrink them down into a floating window, the easier multitasking. It's also a very Google centric smartphone experience.

Google feed has been plugged into the LG home screen and, of course, the dedicated Google Assistant button lets you summon the assistant at any time. The software has also been kitted out with Google's live transcription service, which we first saw on the pixel for last year. As for the LG velvet, though, the biggest potential issue for its software is not what it does or doesn't do right now, but how well it'll be supported in the future. Lg has a dreadful track record for Android platform updates, so I wouldn't hold my breath for any quick update to Android 11 the most exciting feature of the LG velvet, and perhaps its greatest selling point is its dual screen attachments. Like previous versions, the LG dual screen encloses the velvet in a plastic shell and gives it a second display of the same dimensions as its regular screen and when it's closed, a small OLED panel on the outside can show you the time and any notification icons.

The dual screen has grown quite a few new features slightly more apps, including Google photos, YouTube, Gmail, Chrome and others are now supported in the wide view which spans the app over the entire combined width of the two displays game. Support has been expanded to with more titles, now able to use LG's game pad mini app juggling. What is effectively two full-size smartphones might sound a little cumbersome, but it's surprisingly intuitive once you get the hang of it. Both screens have their own launcher layouts and most of the dual screens. Controls live behind a floating menu bar on the primary display.

It's also very easy to juggle apps between the screens for the three finger swipe gesture. Now the LG dual screen isn't as futuristic or impressive as real foldable, but it does deliver most of the multitasking benefits of those devices at a much lower price. Point and in a much more durable form factor you might think it's goofy, but I'm definitely a fan. For me, the Velvets the biggest letdown is definitely its camera curiously, it's LG's software post-processing. That seems most at fault here.

On paper, the velvet has decent camera specs, a 48 megapixel shooter binding, a 4.8 lens and an F 2.2 ultra-wide at 8 megapixels, there's also a third camera used for death detection in terms of colors, low-light performance and responsiveness. There's not much to complain about. With this camera. There is even the obligatory AI scene, detection mode that everyone seems to have these days, but LG's camera insists on an obnoxious level of sharpening at its photos, especially with photos taken from the main camera. This leads to leaves branches or any area with a lot of grain or fine detail, sometimes being given an ugly mosaic effect.

Even clouds and blue skies don't come away unscathed here. The same aberrations are visible in video taken from the Velvets main camera. That's a shame, because, aside from the other sharpening issue, I was impressed with the camera stabilization at 1080p, shooting, with the ultra-wide and front fascia. This issue was still kind of there, but didn't present itself quite as much what's also weird, as the Velvets main camera does perform, competently in darker conditions using its night mode feature, so the other sharpening that we see here in some situations likely is something that LG can address in the future. Software updates.

What you can't add in software, though, is a true telephoto camera, there's just about enough resolution in the main sensor to get you to 2x before you start to lose detail at 3x and beyond, though photos quickly become blotchy with an unpleasant oil painting like affect the Velvets camera, just seems kind of half-finished right now and in need of a software update or two. Currently, there are plenty of other handsets around this price point. That'll get you a better photographic experience, so, overall, the LG velvet is a mixed bag. It's a phone with striking good, looks a modern chipset and 5g connectivity at a decent price, at least in Korea. Some of its compromises are understandable.

You don't necessarily expect the fastest screen or super quick charging around the $700 mark. Plus the velvet is a great, affordable way to get them LG's most promising feature in years. The dual screen attachment is fun, useful and something the company should definitely keep pursuing, but other flaws. Like the camera processing issues, we encountered a tough to justifying any modern smartphone that leaves a much more narrow audience for The Velvet than LG was probably hoping for it's a decent mid-range, offering with only one real standout feature and the handful of unfortunate compromises. Maybe the velvet could be the one for you, but you should take a long hard look at the competition before committing that's it for now stay tuned to subscribe.

So you don't miss all of our future reviews and let us know what you think of the lg velvet down in the comments. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time you.

Source : Android Central