LG V50 ThinQ
GAMING ALSO GETS A SHOT IN THE ARM THANKS TO LG’S VIRTUAL GAMEPAD. THIS TURNS THE V50 INTO A NINTENDO DS OF SORTS, AND WORKS WITH ANY GAME THAT SUPPORTS AN EXTERNAL CONTROLLER.
Imagine your current smartphone, only with a near-identical screen attached to it like a book. This is the LG V50 ThinQ. A fairly standardlooking 6.4-inch smartphone on its own, it turns into something far more futuristic courtesy of a bundled case, which adds a second 6.2-inch screen.
For chronic multi-taskers, the dual-screen setup is a revelation. You can have two full-sized apps open simultaneously, such as YouTube or Netflix on one screen and a web browser, social media, or messaging app on the other.
Gaming also gets a shot in the arm thanks to LG’s virtual gamepad. This turns the V50 into a Nintendo DS of sorts, and works with any game that supports an external controller. Its gaming prowess is helped along by the latest
Snapdragon 855 processor and 6GB of RAM, which returned 3DMark Slingshot Extreme – OpenGL benchmark results better than 99% of other devices.
Alas, the V50 suffers from quite a few first-generation blues. There’s currently no way to have one app work across both screens, and when the phone switches to standby mode, the second screen never seems to go back to the app you were running on it previously. Annoying.
Text entry is also clumsy. With two screens joined at the hip, we couldn’t grip each side of the screen and type with two thumbs like we normally would. You can switch to holding the V50 in landscape orientation to get a full-screen software keyboard, but only if you use LG’s sub-par software keyboard (not recommended – it does a terrible job of correcting typos and punctuation).
LG has packed the V50 with a triple camera array on the rear and dual lenses on the front. These can shoot decent images in optimal lighting, and there are lots of fun modes to play with, but bright sunlight makes photos noticeably hazy, while dimmer shots indoors mostly came out blurry. Plus, shooting photos with the rear camera is awkward. You can’t fold the second screen behind the phone as it blocks the camera, so you have to either shoot with the second screen open or take the case off – neither of these are deal.
One of the unexpected benefits of 5G on the LG V50 is that you can stream video on both screens without any perceptible slow-downs. Why you’d want to do that is another question, but the option is there if you want it. That’s assuming you’re in a 5G area, which is more unlikely than not. Parked outside Telstra HQ in Sydney, we were able to get 191Mbps downstream and 34.9Mbps upstream – about 40Mbps faster than the two Samsungs, but slightly slower than the Oppo.
Our preferred mode was to keep the second screen attached permanently (this feature, after all, is why’d you’d choose this phone over others), but the total package tips the scales at a whopping 323g. And then there’s the toll the second screen takes on the V50’s battery. With only 2.5 hours of screen-on time, it kicked the bucket after 23 hours.
Are two screens better than one? Not necessarily. While having two screens made us feel more productive, LG could definitely do more to increase the value proposition of the two screens and improve the dual-screen ergonomics and battery life. For now, the twin screen setup is more like a couple sleeping in separate bedrooms than a real marriage.
DOUBLE TROUBLE.