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LG V10, going again with my two-headed monster phone theme, has two eyes on front and one in the back of its head, whereas all other Android phones out there have just one on each. The horror!
Surprisingly, the rear 16MP camera took a back seat here. The main attraction is its 5-megapixel (MP) dual front camera, which let me play with two separate lenses that shoot at the normal 80 degrees and a much wider 120 degrees. All of a sudden, group selfies were incredibly easy to take.
I found myself able to capture three spread-out people and two cars while testing Apple CarPlay in the 2016 Chevy Camaro. This is the roadtrip-capping photo, expertly timed to have one member of our party jumping in the air, which took just one try. Without this wide camera, you may have gotten parts of the three people, one of the cars and no indication of the NOLA freeway in the background. To be clear, this perfect photo is a selfie photo, not one from the rear camera.
I experienced the same results when on a Disney World ride a few states over at the very beginning of this road trip in Orlando, Florida. I got myself and our videographer right after we got soaked on Splash Mountain. We're both fully in the picture, dripping Mickey Mouse ears and all. LG has yet to figure out a way to erase photobombers, like the one in the back row.
A good selfie tells a story, and there's no point in posing in front of an iconic landmark if it's mostly you, portions of your loved ones and a smidgen of the famous attraction in the frame. At just 80 degrees, that often happens. I only used LG V10's tighter camera to blow people away at how good the 120 degree wide selfie camera looked, so it mainly served a technical purpose.
The real fail here is the gesture shot, which I love - when it works. Placing my open hand in front of the selfie camera and closing it to form a fist is supposed to initiate a three-second photo countdown. But, if there's too much light coming in from my surroundings, it tends not to work. This has never happened with the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 camera. Maybe I need a better tan against the white sky.
This gesture glitch could ruin the whole experience whenever I demoed the 5MP selfie camera to people. "Oh wait, let me mess with these settings," is the awkward phrase I have to say when scrambling for the normal timer that's hidden behind two on-screen button presses.
Samsung's phones have better gesture control detection, but no one beats the way LG switches between the back and front cameras. Swiping left or right across the screen essentially makes the display a big button. There's nothing worse than popping open a camera app to capture a fleeting photo op, only to realize it's facing the wrong direction. I'm left scrambling for a tiny camera flip button on other phones; I'm either seeing myself squinting with a frustrated face when I really want the rear camera, or looking at the ground or wall when I want a selfie.
I've used and admired Samsung's wide selfie mode, too, but LG is right: panning and tilting the phone to get everyone into the picture and having Samsung's software stitch it all together often blurs people on the edges. This is a much cleaner solution.
The LG V10 employs optical image stabilization to further reduce camera shake in the same top-of-the-line 16MP camera used in the LG G4. Yes, it took me this long to dig into the main, rear camera in this review, but only because the 5MP shooter is turning into the real star. Times sure have changed.
I still find the main camera to be color-accurate and fast, but slightly less clear than the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Samsung Galaxy S6 when in auto mode. The focus here can sometimes be off or slow at times. Manual settings, however, put complex controls at my fingertips, just like Samsung's equally deep manual mode. Both make Google's Nexus and Apple's iPhone camera apps feel extremely limited.
Less practical are some of the modes that come along with the new camera. LG decided to add an odd multi-view recording mode to the LG V10, which stitches together the normal selfie, the wider selfie and the rear camera. I don't understand the purpose of capturing these three different angles at once and probably never will.
Video is a completely different story. LG V10 is the first smartphone to a add manual mode for video, sort of like how the LG G4 opened up manual settings for still photos in April 2015, and there are now modes for recording 4K videos.
I was able to change the shutter speed, frame rate, ISO, white balance and focus while recording when shooting in HD. There's also full HD (1080p) and Ultra HD (2160p) modes, with two aspects ratios: the standard 16:9 and more cinematic 21:9.
There should be less shake here too, thanks to LG's electronic image stabilization meant for steady recording. It's not quite a software-created gimble, but the LG V10 is one of the better mobile phones for steady video. That's good news because I never travel with a tripod.
Pro video recorders who want to pretend to be a cutting-edge, roaming director will appreciate the built-in audio monitor and wind noise filter settings. They can and will still shout "quiet on the set," regardless. Everyone else can rely on the software to piece together their video. Snap Video mode creates one video by combining short clips of many captures.
15 sec. Auto Edit mode outputs a highlight package by detecting motion. This eliminates accidentally blurred and static scenes, all without the help of a post-production team. Don't worry, pros, there's a quick video editor here, too, to trim and fix everything in post.
While LG got a lot right with the 16MP camera on the LG G4, it admits that it didn't go far enough with video. This more than makes up for that, and we didn't have to wait a full year.
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