The LG V60 and VELVET Review: A Classic & A Design Restart
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 15, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
System performance of the two LG devices are interesting as they’re one of the first times we’re able to contrast Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765 versus the Snapdragon 865 from the same vendor, using the same software optimisations and design. We’re expecting the S765 to naturally fare worse, but the question is, how much worse is it?
Starting off with the web browsing test in PCMark which is very sensible to performance responsiveness of the DVFS system, we see that the V60 and Velvet both fare quite averagely. The V60 is in line with the OnePlus 8 devices at 60Hz in this test which is pretty much what we’d expect, but that also means it’s also slower than last year’s G8, which seemingly didn’t have an as quite conservative software configuration.
The Velvet isn’t doing well at all and besides of the weirdly behaving S20 Ultra with the Exynos 990 at 60Hz, is the worst performing devices here.
The writing sub-test which is generally more indicative of every-day performance of a device is again also quite contrasting between the two phones. The V60 fares well as is amongst the better performing Snapdragon 865 devices. The Velvet, which certainly not a slouch, compares more alike a 2018 flagship device in the scores.
In the Photo Editing test which makes use of the GPU power, there’s a huge difference in performance between the two phones. Again the V60 is in line with other S865 devices, whilst the Velvet tends to really lag behind the pack with its weaker GPU.
Overall, in PCMark, we see the V60 ending up on par with other 2020 flagship devices, although not quite able to best Samsung’s software optimisations. The Velvet is as expected a lower performing device, but it’s still quite a notable difference in the scores.
In the web-browsing and Javascipt browser tests, things are largely bottlenecked by the single-threaded performance of the CPUs of the SoC. With the Snapdragon 765 using a Cortex-A76 at 2.3GHz peak, the end performance is naturally quite a bit less than the more expensive flagship silicon. Generally, it seems the SoC falls in somewhere between a Snapdragon 845 and 855 in terms of performance, which is right where you’d expect it to be.
Overall Performance
Overall, the LG V60 was a very good performer and offers amongst the best experiences in 2020 – although LG’s lack of a higher refresh rate screen does mean it doesn’t quite give the smoothness that other devices are able to provide – although that’s just a compromise between performance and battery life.
The LG Velvet was actually a bit disappointing for me, and it really reminded me that the processing power of today’s SoCs are actually being fully utilised for daily usage of the phones. It’s not that the Velvet was unusable or a slouch, but I immediately noticed that it wasn’t quite as well of a performer compared to say the V60. In general terms, I would say the phone feels more like a 2018 flagship device in terms of responsiveness.
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philehidiot - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Myself, it's a matter of price. For £400 more than my current SIM only package (over 24 months) I can get an S10. That's a VERY hard deal to beat. I'm currently paying £2.50 a month more than if I got on a decent 24 month contract as I've been awaiting the 5G rollout to upgrade, so I'm on a monthly contract with unlimited data. So any phone has to be available at £400 or less before even consideration as the S10 is the benchmark.flyingpants265 - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
Not a fan of S10's curved screen edges. Still annoying.What I needed was OP7, Samsung, or LG G4/G8, or Realme X.. with blackshark style front speakers, and no other missing features.
flyingpants265 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Well... True, honestly.I'm no fan of LG, their phones are defective. And I want a phone with front speakers.
But this looks like a OP8 with headphone jack. Or S10 with no stupid curved screen.
The second Samsung, LG or OnePlus make a flagship phone with front stereo speakers, I'll be all over it.
peevee - Friday, July 24, 2020 - link
Agree on the useless pixels. Either the people are near-sighted and don't use glasses when looking at the screens, or just go by "bigger is better" attitude of self-delusion (claiming the see the difference without a double blind test).PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
That's a lot of money to pay for a phone with a battery that isn't easily replaced. Kind of a pity since it doesn't really help make phones better in some meaningful way by stopping the user from yanking out and installing a fresh battery after it starts to get tired less than a year later.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Agreed, although with a capacity and runtime like that "tired in less then a year" doesnt apply. It isnt 2005 anymore.after 4 years my moto z play still has great battery life and is only just now starting to falter. Even so I agree on the price, no way I'd pay $900 for a phone.
PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
It's probably more of a symptom of the phones that I end up using, but I do find myself on an annual-ish replacement cycle for batteries regardless of the design and that means keeping a small set of specialized tools plus rolling the dice with replacement batteries. That is present day experience though rather than one from fifteen years ago when, in fact, my cell phone battery retained its endurance for quite a bit longer due mainly to the fact that it was necessary to charge the battery once a week or so rather than daily.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
My work gives us iPhones. While 3-4 hours runtime is the norm for them, I never had one lose appreciable battery life after less then 3 years outside of the 6s’ faulty one.My personal phones have been a moto z play and before that a note 4 with a 10,000 mah zero lemon battery. The moto is showing signs of wear after nearly 4 years, the note never showed signs of wear. Before that was a dumb phone that went many years on the original battery.
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
I should note all my personal phones went at least 3 days on a charge when new, with the dumb phone pasting 2 weeks and the note lasting 7-8 days. The moto z play goes 3-4, but I was forced to upgrade, Id’ve stuck with the note 4 if I could.PeachNCream - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
If I leave my phone alone, it will generally sit idle for close to four days without requiring a recharge. That is a rare thing though since I tend to put my phone to use doing just about everything I used to do on my computer. Mine tends to be busy most of the day with web activity, e-mail, lengthy writing (always working on the next novel), watching videos, streaming radio or running local music, playing a few games - mainly emulators of 8- and 16-bit consoles but sometimes a few native Android games as well so I rarely end the day without charging. Since lockdown and staying at home became a thing, I've just let my phone connected to a charger almost constantly and that's been nice.Brings me back to the point though. I usually see well over a 30% drop in battery life over the course of a year and that's annoying enough to warrant an annual replacement which is never fun thanks to spudgers, tiny hex screws and so on. It isn't the most tedious thing I get to do, but it would be a LOT better to simply make the battery removable.