LG has today announced the launch of its latest budget-centric series with W-series. The company has introduced LG W30, which is priced at Rs 9,999 and it will be available for purchase from Amazon starting from July 3.
With this, LG is all set to once again challenge the competition in the budget segment and the new W-series is launched to replace the Q-series, which again didn’t create a good impact. Talking about the smartphone, it surely comes loaded with some interesting design and the stock Android experience is the much-needed change from LG. We spent some time with the device and here are our first impressions.
Design and Display
Starting right off with the design, LG W30 does give you a premium look and feel. The back panel comes loaded with a pattern that gives a distinct look when light falls on it. We got the Platinum Gray colour option for review and it surely gives a good look.
The front sports a waterdrop notch at the top and the side bezels are slim, but the same cannot be said for the bottom bezel. The right side of the device features volume controls and power on/off button, while the left features a hybrid Dual-SIM slot.
At the base, there is a Micro USB port along with speaker grille, while the top features 3.5mm Audio Jack and microphone. The back panel is equipped with a vertically-aligned triple-camera setup and there is a noticeable camera hump along with an LED flash. There is a fingerprint sensor at the top-centre position. That said, the LG W30 surely looks premium, but the design language is pretty much standard we have seen in this price range.
Coming to the display, the LG W30 is backed by a 6.26-inch HD+ FullVision display with a screen Resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels. The smartphone comes with a waterdrop notch, which is now a standard in this price range. Good thing here is that the company is giving you an option to hide the notch right from the Settings, which is a welcome move. The screen seems to be pretty decent and viewing angles are good as well. We will discuss the display in our upcoming review.
Hardware and Software
Talking about hardware, the LG W30 is powered by a MediaTek Helio P22 Processor along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The memory can be further expanded via microSD card slot. That said, it would be interesting to see whether it can withstand the competition as smartphones like Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2, Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro and Realme 3 Pro offers better specifications and features.
Coming to the software, the LG W30 runs on Android 9.0 Pie. The company is offering a Stock Android experience with the latest smartphone and it comes loaded with minimal bloatware. The user interface is lightweight and quite smooth to use in our initial testing. LG has added some smart action like double tap to wake the screen, double tap to lock screen, flip to mute and more. Then there are smart gestures by which you can draw different gesture to open applications. For example, you can draw O to open the camera, C for phone, M for Google Play Music and more. We will discuss more on this in our upcoming review.
Camera
On the camera front, the smartphone features a triple-camera setup with a combination of the 12-megapixel low light sensor, 13-megapixel Wide-Angle lens and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. For the front, the company has added a 16-megapixel shooter for selfies and video calling. Starting with the camera user interface first, you get a clean user interface. The company has added icons instead of texts for different modes and there is a button right above the Beauty mode through which you can between wide-angle and normal lens.
The camera offers different modes like Panorama, Video, Photo, Bokeh, Beauty, Night, Time Lapse and Slow Motion. That said, the camera performance seems to be a bit murky in nature. We noticed that the phone was able to capture good shots, though the colours were a bit washed out in nature. Furthermore, the bokeh effect didn’t look natural as we have seen in other smartphones at this price band. However, the selfie performance seems to be pretty decent of this smartphone.
Battery and Connectivity
The LG W30 features a 4000mAh battery, which should ideally last one full day of usage. The company has also added face unlock and fingerprint sensor, which is fast in unlocking the smartphone. Connectivity options include 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth, WiFi, dual-SIM, 3.5mm audio jack, GPS, GLONASS and micro USB port.