LG re-launches LG V30 as V30S, with additional storage and AI capabilities

LG has a decent history of launching its new innovative smartphones at MWC every year. The company introduced modular designed LG G5 with a dual camera setup at the rear at the previous MWC 2016 event. It also introduced first 18:9 thinner bezel display last year at MWC, even before Samsung and Apple’s flagships launched later that year.

Unfortunately, we can’t witness this innovation this year at MWC as the company had launched the rehashed version of last year’s LG V30 smartphone at MWC this year, instead of its new flagship device. This upgrade includes minor bumps from the previous iteration like improvements in RAM and storages and focusing on AI capabilities.

The company says that this re-introduction to the previous successor is to bring AI capabilities to an already existing LG V30 smartphone. The company introduced the new LG V30S, which seems to be an upgrade from LG V30, which sounds like the similar strategy of OnePlus’ implementation from OnePlus 3/5 to OnePlus 3T/5T.

Named LG V30S ThinQ edition, where 'ThinQ' is the company’s AI technology implemented in many of the LG products, which were introduced at CES 2018. This AI tech from the company enables the camera and voice recognition capabilities, through Vision AI and Voice AI.

Talking about the improved specifications front, LG V30S features 6-inch OLED Full Vision display, with an 18:9 aspect ration offering a resolution of 2880 X 1440 (538ppi). LG also chose to ignore the latest Snapdragon 845 SoC, sticking to the older Snapdragon 835 chipset. It is powered by 3,300mAh battery. These specs might be similar to the previous iteration of LG V30, however, the company managed to upgrade the phone’s memory capacity from 4GB of RAM to 6GB, and internal storage varying from 64GB/128GB of storage to a 128GB or 256GB selection. This phone also includes an expandable storage option up to 2TB.

The dual-camera setup at the rear also seems to be intact with the previous model, which has a combination of 16-megapixel standard angle f/1.6 aperture sensor and a 13-megapixel wide-angle f/1.9 aperture sensor with 120-degree field-of-view. Whereas, the selfie camera is mounted with a 5-megapixel wide-angle camera with f/2.2 and 90-degree field-of-view.

The major difference that makes this camera setup different from the previous iteration is the integration of Vision AI, which includes three camera features – AI Cam, QLens, and Bright Mode. Where AI Cam is used for enhancing the camera output by analysing the subject and recommending optimal shooting mode. And QLens features image recognition capabilities to scan QR codes by the users for an optimised shopping experience. Further, the Bright Mode is targeted at low-lighting shots improvements.

In addition to these AI capabilities, LG V30S ships with Android Oreo 8.0 out-of-the-box. The added new feature Voice AI is implemented to allow users to change the settings with voice commands, which works along with Google Assistant. This smartphone is rated IP68 and comes in two new colour options that include Moroccan Blue and Platinum Gray colour variant.

Other features from previous LG V30 include 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC audio support, fingerprint sensor, and wireless charging support. The company with this new LG V30S has kick-started MWC 2018 this year.