LG’s V30 will be the first phone with an f/1.6 lens

In the game of smartphone hype, LG’s approach has been to concede defeat in trying to suppress leaks and just pre-announce everything. The company’s next premier handset, the LG V30, will be made official on August 31st at IFA in Berlin, but LG’s making sure we know its biggest selling point today: the camera. The V30 will be the first cameraphone with an f/1.6 lens aperture, which lets in 25 percent more light than the f/1.8 of phones likes the iPhone 7. Beside the wider aperture, the internal construction of LG’s new camera will include a glass lens, which is said to deliver sharper, more faithful images.
 
It’s not abundantly clear whether both cameras in LG’s dual-camera setup will benefit from these improvements, but it is obvious where LG is putting the emphasis with the V30. The company is doubling down on the multimedia performance that’s made the V series popular since its inception. Two years ago, the LG V10 was one of the most impressive cameraphones on the market, last year the V20 delivered the best sound among smartphones, and this year the V30 will presumably attempt to elevate both categories even further. That being said, the V30 will also have to go some way in improving on the design, which I felt took a step back last year with the big and chunky V20. To that end, LG has also revealed that the V30 will be physically smaller than its predecessor, but still have a 6-inch OLED display. It will have a 2:1 aspect ratio, like the LG G6, and a 2,880 x 1,440 resolution.
 
One of the additional improvements LG has made to its V30 imaging is a reduction in edge distortion with its wide-angle camera. The fisheye effect created by the extra wide field of view with that camera made it feel like a bit of a gimmick, but LG claims there’s now a third less distortion, “making it ideal for group wefies”.

---