LG V30 Review

Last update : 2/12/2024 (One Last Shot.)

Introduction

LG V30 - a device I regretted buying right after I got it. When I got it, the display had already developed a severe burn-in, the battery barely lasts a day, and the back glass is cracked. All of them were eventually replaced, although at the cost of the fingerprint scanner not having enough clearance to connect to its pins & work (it was eventually fixed by sticking a stack of electrical tapes; but I eventually got another fingerprint scanner complete with its sticky bracket, which I still had to boost by 1 stack of electrical tape).

Summary : Mostly breaks the mold of bootloader vs. hardware, but pays for it by not having any form of storage encryption on custom ROMs. Oh yeah - spare parts for the V30 seems to be quite scarce (especially the decent one) nowadays.

Physical features

Thin & light will be the first thing that comes in mind when holding the V30.

• On the top section, there's the secondary mic & the headphone jack is on the right corner, which IMO is the 2nd best place.
• USB-C charging port, speaker, & primary mic on the bottom corner.
• Left section contains only the volume buttons.
• Right section is home to the hybrid dual SIM tray, or a SIM / microSD tray if it's the single-SIM variant.
• Front side is reserved for the thin bezeled 6.0' 18:9 pOLED, front camera, & earpiece. The bezels are thin by 2017 standards, so take that as you will. But still, I'll take this layout (preferably with dual front-facing speakers) over nowadays' ultra-thin bezels with hole-punch camera(s) and/or notches.
• The back holds the rear cameras & power button / fingerprint scanner.
• For materials, Gorilla Glass 5 on front & back, with aluminium frame.
• For the buttons, the volume buttons are clicky without much wobble, and the power button is decently clicky. The fingerprint scanner embedded on the power button is fast & accurate.
• Vibration haptics in the V30 is strong, and 15ms in Simple Keyboard is my sweet spot.
• JerryRigEverything durability test video

Audio Quality

The V30 has a bottom loudspeaker & a headphone jack. The earpiece can also double as a second speaker by modifying mixer_paths_tavil, though the earpiece itself is too weak to matter.

The speaker quality is lousy - it lacks volume & sounds somewhat tinny. As previously mentioned, the earpiece is helpless for second speaker purposes.

The headphone jack quality is better than most, with audio quality being louder than most others. The Quad DAC also helps, but enabling this in AOSP ROMs enable an annoying screen off swipe controls that can't be turned off. The screen-off swipe controls aren't enabled on ≥A10 ROMs.

Additional notes for the Quad DAC : Enabling it makes music sound better & louder, but will introduce some background noise, which gets more noticeable at louder volumes and/or weaker headphones.

Display

The 6.0' 18:9 pOLED is a decent & workable display, as far as I'm concerned. Though, turned-off blacks are the thing that I truly like from OLED panels; which this panel won't offer if it's not a perfect black (sometimes there's black crush, particularly on lower brightness levels).

What I dislike about the panel though, is the fact that it's an OLED. Over time, it will develop burn-in. That, when combined with Fate/GO's blue bars (or any static element such as the top & bottom bars), is a burn-in incident waiting to eventually happen. This issue can be somewhat mitigated with Smart Pixels, if the ROMs provide it.

Bootloader unlocking

The bootloader unlocking process is quite involved, depending on the variant you got. On the H932, it is going to be harder.

For non-H932 (everything else), use the WTF method (archive.org). H932 (T-Mobile) can use fastboot oem unlock, but lacks fastboot flash/boot commands, complicating TWRP installations without using the lafsploit (archive.org) method which is significantly harder & riskier.

If you opt for the official method (which is no longer applicable), it's only available for EU variants. US998 is also available, though it requires hacking the drop-down menu. Hence, the official method is not the ideal method (although you're not required to downgrade & do a master reset).

Repairability

In terms of repairability, it's in line with most glass-backed phones, except with one rather annoying twist - the contact pads, particularly for the fingerprint scanner. OK - there's one good twist - those antenna cables can be considered absent since they attach to the undersides of the motherboard, under the board.

• Back panel demands heat & suction cup to remove and glue to re-attach, with fingerprint sensor / power button combo (by default) & camera bump (including flash diffuser) adhered to it. The back panel is glass, so it shouldn't distort from excessive heat but additional care on prying needs to be taken if you don't want it to break (and I recommend keeping some spare back panels at the ready in the likely case you broke it when prying it out).
• More on the fingerprint / power combo : It connects to the motherboard with contact pins (so no worries on ripping it) - power button connects easily to its pins, while the fingerprint scanner requires some extra clearance to reach its contact pins, especially if the sticky bracket meant for it is missing. I'd rather link the fingerprint / power combo to the motherboard cover than the back panel - and I managed to do so with some B7000 glue.
• Motherboard cover / wireless charging coil (which also holds the motherboard in place, along with microSD/SIM tray) is held by 7 Philips screws, whereas the speaker module is held by 3 Philips screws. All of the cover screws are equal in size & length, so you can kinda get away with not sorting them out, for now.
• microSD / SIM reader's soldered on the motherboard, though that's common for every phone nowadays except for ASUS ZS630KL / Zenfone 6 2019 / 6z (which had their own module board for the trays adhered to the midframe). It's mounted on the back side of the motherboard, but you can consider its tray the only other thing keeping the motherboard stuck to midframe, other than those board covers with their screws.
• The battery is held down with come adhesives & lacks any pull tabs. Prying isn't too difficult due to the adhesive, though caution needs to be taken as you might pry right into the display cable. Under the battery there's a hole that leads into the display's copper layer.
• For Lego-like BTBs, it's used for the battery, cameras, charging port, screen, and touch sensor. Everything else relies on contact pins. Those BTBs are not designed with repairability in mind, as some of them features various capacitors around it, making removals requiring some precision.
• Headphone jack (which is its own module) are held down by adhesive & 1 Philips screw.
• Charging port is on its flex cable & coupled with the bottom microphone, held down by 2 Philips screws & the entire motherboard. The top microphone (which is beside the earpiece) is its own detachable module if you un-adhered it.
• Display is very much glued in place, so say goodbye to it if you ever wanted to try replacing the entire thing for the 1st time (if sticking to same midframe). Then again, your display's probably beyond any helping in that scenario, so good luck.

Teardown references :

• JerryRigEverything's teardown video
• Wit Rigs' teardown video
• iFixit#39;s repair guides (mostly Wit Rigs' YouTube posts)

Custom ROM & Kernel Availability (as of 29/11/2024)

Custom ROMs for the V30 is not good.

• Before 2020, we have various ROMs, ranging from A9/Oreo blobs to maybe some A10/Pie blobs (with a Telegram-only flashable perma-fix for WI-Fi issues). All of them lacked encryption support.
• As of October 2020, all developers for A10/Pie ROMs adopted Permissive SELinux to make their ROMs run on all V30s. And this issue extended to most A11 builds as well.
• In 21 July 2022, lifehackerhansol made a LineageOS build with Enforcing SELinux. However, it suffered from the dreaded time reset on boot, which remain unfixed until unofficial A13, build 20230117.
• Nowadays, we only have official LineageOS (and some unofficial ROMs?) spearheaded by lifehackerhansol, who is continuously attempting to port the latest Android crap up the V30, even if issues pop up everywhere.

For custom recovery, there's only unofficial TWRP, maintained by the same person who maintains official LineageOS for the V30. Sure, there's some old builds of TWRP & OrangeFox around, but previously mentioned unofficial worked with older ROMs as well, so I might as well not mention those.

As for custom kernels... don't bother, the V30's kernel development is over at this point. There was a KSU-capable kernel, but only for A14.

Other issues

Let's start out with the bad ones :

• AOSP ROMs can't run encrypted, whether it's full-disk or file-based (with the former depreciated after A11).



Then move on to the questionably good one :

• The device can boot without its front camera and/or fingerprint scanner (but not the power button obviously, which needs to be adhered to either back glass or motherboard cover) in place



And, finally, the actually good ones that I don't really give a fuck :



• MIL-STD-810G compliant, which should make the V30 more resistant to abuse, before counting other stuff like repairs & age.
• Wireless charging (input-only)
Input-only wireless charging sounds meh nowadays, but at least it's there. Though it is usually hotter & slower than regular wired charging, but it's either battery getting cooked faster or the charging port conking out at this point.

Conclusion

All things considered, the only thing I can recommend the V30 for is as some offline music player. And that's only if you kept your own V30 around in the first place, because I can not recommend getting it in any way.

• All AOSP ROMs for the V30 lack encryption support of any kind, ensuring no barriers between your files & anyone who has physical access to your V30. Not to mention you either face security issues or stability issues, depending on which ROM you've chose (old gold or new-fangled trash).
• As if this issue wasn't enough, device comparisons (compared with what I've got) completely destroys the V30 off my sights, even if the V30 had a better DAC than everybody else.

Index - cellphone

Main Page