LG’s V50 ThinQ 5G and G8 ThinQ are a strange mix of bland design and innovation

As manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei attempt to live up smartphone design with foldable handsets such as the Galaxy Fold and Mate X, LG held an event at MWC2019 to announce its V50 ThinQ 5G and G8 ThinQ handsets, both of which seem to be firmly rooted in 2018 in terms of design. Both handsets feature high-end specifications such as the latest Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB of RAM, and notched OLED displays with QHD+ resolution. Besides the weird, attachable secondary display, the V50 boasts 5G connectivity, as its name suggests.

Besides featuring 5G connectivity, courtesy of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X50 5G modem, the V50 ThinQ 5G also sports a vapor chamber to aid heat dissipation, a 6.4-inch OLED display, as well as a big 4,000mAh battery. LG has implemented Video Depth Control on both the front and rear cameras to ensure that subjects remain in focus which will assist the production of high-quality videos.

Another unique selling point of the V50 is the Dual Screen accessory that adds a secondary display in the mix. Built into a folio style case, the Dual Screen's 6.2-inch OLED panel can be used independently of the main display and supports split-view with the ability to run four apps simultaneously. For the moment at least, LG hasn't given any details on pricing of availability of the Dual Screen attachment.

With its notched 6.1-inch OLED panel, the G8 is smaller than the V50, but bother displays share the same QHD+ resolution (3,120 x 1440). The G8 ThinQ's main claim to fame is that its OLED display pulls double duty as a speaker diaphragm which vibrates to produce clean audio when making calls in a similar fashion to bone conduction. The Crystal Sound OLED panel also produces stereo music when required.

Unlike the V50, the regular G8 makes do with dual rear cameras consisting of a wide-angle sensor with 16MP with 107-degree field-of-view and a 12MP sensor with F/1.5 aperture. As you might expect with flagships, the camera can recognize and adjust to a variety of scenes and object in order to produce better imagery. The G8 can shoot Portrait Video, a mode that brings the blurry background effect known as bokeh to video in real-time. The front camera setup includes an 8MP Time-of-Flight sensor (TOF) that also aids brings the bokeh effect to self-portraits.

The battery gets a noticeable bump to 3,500mAh from the 3,000mAh unit found on the G7 ThinQ, and audiophiles will be happy to find out that LG managed to retain the 3.5mm audio jack and 32-bit Quad DAC.

It's unfortunate that LG has chosen to give the V50 and G8 such bland, tired designs that would have looked dated even a year ago. But, at least in the G8's case, it's a case of beauty lies within thanks to the innovative features such as the Crystal Sound OLED display that uses vibrations to produce sound. The secondary display that can be attached to the V50 is just bizarre, but it could offer increased levels of functionality in certain scenarios.

The V50 will launch later this year in the US with Sprint being the first to sell it, while the G8 should become available in the next few weeks for around $800. You can check out the full specifications of the V50 ThinQ 5G and the G8 ThinQ in the table below

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