LG V10 Review

The LG V10 Is the beginning of a somewhat new direction for LG smartphones stepping out from the popular G series. The V10 and G4 came out around the same time and had many similarities but also striking differences. The latter being most notably the size and the camera. The V10 falls into Phablet territory with it's pocket bursting dimensions while the G4 is a more standard size.

LG continues with the laser auto focus which made the G3 and G4 such great cameras while adding a much higher resolution and the ability to shoot in manual mode. Manual shooting allows for the user to set White balance, ISO and shutter speed independently. Other settings can be tweaked as well to add creative control. The camera really stands out as the star of the V10 package(see sample pictures below), but there is a lot more to it than that. To simplify things I'll give you a quick run down of the good and bad.

The battery: This is kind of good/bad. The battery can drain pretty quickly, but on the upside, it can charge in an hour or less when connected to a quick charger. Also you can quick charge with certain chargers available cheap on Amazon. This is great if you are like me and have a cat that ate four %&#@$$@ phone charging cables and looked at you like it was nothing...wait, where was I? oh, sorry.

Storage: Let's put it like this. I download a ton of apps for no reason, have well over a thousand photos in my phone and a ridiculous amount of texts and emails. I still have not had to utilize the removable storage.

Call quality: The LG V10 has great call quality about 90 percent of the time. Sometimes however, the person I'm talking to won't be able to hear me unless I put the phone on speaker. conversely, there was a period of time where speakerphone stopped working. If I turned speakerphone on, it would mute the call. This problem persisted until I remembered the first rule of crazy random tech issues "turn it off and back on."

Sound: There are better speakers on other phones, but there are a lot worse ones. It is really annoying that there is only one speaker and it is awkwardly placed on the bottom of the phone. The audio quality with ear buds is exceptional. The V10 does sometimes suffer from the same really annoying glitch that plagues other LG devices. If you connect to an FM transmitter or similar device to listen to music in your car, it will sometimes launch voice command and start "listening" instead of doing what you want it to do. They need to fix this ASAP.

Interactivity:The google features all run well on this device, maps, Google now, etc. Voice text works very well and even spells my curse words correctly which I found rather impressive. I did, however, download a different messaging app after having issues with the stock messenger. Games play well without lag. Web connectivity works excellently.

Durability: This is a big one for me. I usually try to find something with Gorilla Glass that won't break if dropped. I hate to carry an expensive piece of equipment around that will shatter the first time it falls out of my pocket. The LG V10 is not one of these phones you can hit with a hammer and run over, but it is very sturdy. In fact it is very impressive. I opted to not get a case and dropped it from hip level a couple of times without incident. Then through poor judgement I found that my V10 can survive a fall from my roof onto concrete. (Remember kids, don't carry your phone in loose shorts while cleaning the gutters.) After my mini-heart attack watching my phone plummet to the earth I made my way down the ladder seeing that the device was laying screen side down on the pavement with the cover and battery lying next to it. I turned it over, cleaned it off and was surprised to see the screen was not broken. Don't get me wrong, the phone is not pretty after the ordeal.. .mostly just small areas of chipped plastic, but the screen survived and the phone powered on and worked perfectly. I tested it out by opening Chrome to search for a phone case.

Overall: The V10 is not perfect, but it has a large screen, great resolution, won't break into a million pieces if you drop it and has the best camera around. Speaking of, I'll leave you with some samples taken with my LG V10...the one thing I completely love about this device.

Thanks for reading.