10 things the LG V60 does well, and 5 things it doesn’t - Android

The V60 is LG's latest and perhaps best ever phone. Here are some things it does well and some things that need improving.

I finally picked up an LG V60 from T-Mobile after months of waiting and I already love this thing. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the best phones LG has ever made, if not the best. It’s fairly clear to me that LG put a lot of effort into this one, even after only a few days of use.

We have a full review of the LG V60 here and it covers the broader topics of the phone. I  also wanted to also share my experience with the phone after about a week of use. Here are ten things I think the V60 does extremely well and five more things I think it could improve.

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Yes, the battery life is really that good

I was a bit skeptical when I saw some of the battery stats for the LG V60. There are people getting nearly ten hours of screen-on time on a two day charge. There’s no way that’s possible right? Think again, because I was able to recreate that exact experience without much effort. Everything you’ve heard about this battery is true. It’s a monster.

The Snapdragon 865 is the most powerful and most battery-efficient chip Qualcomm has made to date. Android is always trying to improve its battery life with stuff like Doze Mode and Adaptive Battery. Finally, LG took the kid gloves off and included a comedy-sized 5,000mAh battery while also sidestepping the 120hz screen fad and keeping the display resolution at 1080p.

All of these things combined create an experience where it’s actually difficult to kill the battery in just one day. Well done, LG.

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Good: Samsung Pay finally has a real competitor

I’ve long been in the camp that Samsung Pay is the champion of contactless payments. The MST technology helps bridge the gap between physical cards and NFC payments. The LG V60 comes equipped with LG Pay, along with the same MST technology. It worked perfectly fine in my testing. Additionally, the setup process, app UI, and method of initialization (pulling a tab up from the home screen and using your fingerprint) is very similar to Samsung Pay. NFC is obviously the future, but the future isn’t here yet. Until then, LG Pay and Samsung Pay are the best contactless payment options on mobile.

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Good: The quad DAC is still the best headphone jack

It’s true that the quad DAC isn’t a new feature and many tech pundits prefer the Bluetooth approach. However, no OEM has stepped up to the plate to consistently compete with the quad DAC. It’s still the best headphone jack in the smartphone industry for just about everybody, especially those with headphones with above 32 ohms of impedance and those with lossless music files. I really don’t feel the need to justify this further. The quad DAC is without peer.

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Good: A surprisingly decent screen

I was originally a bit nervous about downgrading from a 1440p display to a 1080p display. I won’t lie to you and say that I didn’t notice a difference upon close inspection, but I was pleasantly shocked at how good LG’s 1080p panel was. Everything is nice and crisp, with good, punchy colors and you only see discoloration if you look at the phone at extreme angles.

Yes, LG bucks the 120Hz trend that people ignored two years ago, but now love for some reason. I’m cool with it because it helps contribute to the absurd battery life. Additionally, the screen in the dual screen case accessory is the exact same one on the phone itself so the two look identical and you can control things like the brightness and color settings on both simultaneously or independently.

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Good: Flagship-level performance

This one is fairly obvious. The LG V60 comes with a Snapdragon 865 and an Adreno 650 GPU. That’s as good as it gets in an Android phone in 2020 at this time. The performance is stellar with no hiccups or slowdowns. We’re basically beyond the era of OEMs making software too heavy for the chipset it carries, so it’s not like this is really a problem anymore, but LG still deserves credit for not messing anything up here. The V60 runs like a champion.

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Good: LG’s under-appreciated software overhaul

LG’s UI was up there in age last year. It used an ancient and ugly paginated settings page, with a bunch of weird and not-useful software features. In short, it looked old, felt old, and had many artifacts from years of trial and error. LG revamped the UI for 2020 and the change is a world of difference.

For starters, the whole thing is a bit closer to stock Android than before. The quick settings and settings menus, in particular, look basically stock. In addition, a lot of the old software features were either removed or revamped with a more modern approach. In short, it’s lighter and more streamlined than it was before. It’s not perfect, but LG definitely took some major steps in the right direction.

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Good: It touches all the basics

This one is a bit obvious, but we’ll cover it anyway. The LG V60 covers all of the basics, including an IP68 water and dust resistance, the aforementioned headphone jack, a microSD card slot, HDMI-out support, and stereo speakers. We’re entering an era where some of these basics become less and less available, and, much like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the V60 still hits all of them.

It doesn’t have an IR blaster, but it’s hard to blame LG for that because most OEMs don’t anymore. Otherwise, it comes with everything you would expect so there is very little compromises with the V60. For those interested, we tested the HDMI-out with this adapter with great results.

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Good: Not all that difficult to hold

I won’t lie to you, this is chunky phone. It weighs over 200 grams and is nearly 9mm thick. However, it’s surprisingly easy to hold. This is due to a few things. For starters, the 20.5:9 aspect ratio keeps the phone a little taller than most and that helps with usability of the phone’s gargantuan 6.9-inch display.

To be honest, I’m listing this one because I heard a lot of stories of how big and unwieldy the phone is. It’s definitely thick to be sure, but it’s also less wide than my Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus and it actually feels better in the hand. Of course, all of that goes out the window if you put the dual-screen case on it, but you can always take the phone out if you’re having that much trouble. You have options.

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Good: Not the worst camera, believe it or not

It’s difficult buying a phone when you also buy into the mindset that the camera quality is the most important thing. Samsung, Huawei, and Google all buy into this mindset and do all sorts of crazy stuff with their cameras for which they are almost universally praised. LG doesn’t have a lot of those crazy things. You won’t find an optical periscope zoom camera or a software night mode that lights up dark rooms like the middle of the day.

However, what you will find is a camera setup that is actually not half bad. It flat out beat my Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus in a standard indoor shot. The low-light photos are fairly decent, if unimpressive and LG’s Night View actually aims for realism instead of Google Night Sight’s wow factor. I am not going to sit here and try to run some false narrative that this a top-two or three camera. It isn’t. However, the photos it takes are definitely better than average, even without the newer, flashier camera tech.

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