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).
Summary : Mostly breaks the mold of bootloader vs. hardware, but pays for it by not having any form of storage encryption on custom ROMs.
Thin & light will be the first thing that comes in mind when holding the V30.
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 Pie 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.
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 though.
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. The lafsploit (archive.org) method works, but 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If you opt for the official method (which is no longer applicable), it's only available for EU variants.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).
In terms of repairability, it's in line with most glass-backed phones, except with one rather annoying twist - the contact pads. OK - there's one good twist - those fucking antenna cables are absent.
Teardown references :
Custom ROM availability for the V30 is weak. You have only official LineageOS, Lineage-microG, /e/, & unofficial crDroid from Telegram (all of which are A13, requires LG Pie blobs, still lacks any encryption support, and also suffers from random lags & freezes), and that's it - nothing else.
For just the V30, the devs used Oreo blobs to build AOSP Pie ROMs, & Pie blobs to build A10 (and beyond) ROMs. In addition, directly reverting from LG Pie to LG Oreo isn't recommended as it causes permanent changes that forces the user to run permissive SELinux to regain functionality. However, as linked in this XDA thread, you should return to LG Nougat & do a Master Reset before going to LG Oreo to regain AOSP Pie full compatibility. If you run a custom ROM with Pie blobs & Wi-Fi isn't working, the fix is unfortunately Telegram-only.
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 claims to work with all V30 ROMs, so...
As for custom kernels... don't bother, the V30's kernel development (let alone any chances at KernelSU) is literally over at this point.
Let's start out with the bad ones:
Then move on to the questionably good one:
And, finally, the actually good ones that I don't really give a fuck:
This means the V30 is expected to be more resistant to abuse, whether it's on purpose / accidental. However, do keep in mind that it may not consider other factors, such as repairs & age.
Input-only wireless charging sounds meh nowadays, but at least it's there. Keep in mind that wireless charging is usually hotter & slower than regular wired charging.
Clearly, the LG V30 isn't really the best. It had some good stuff like the headphone jack with Quad DAC, but the rest don't really excite me that much. Sure, the display is mostly alright, though it left me longing for a good display (preferably LCD because it's me) with high refresh rate. However, the devices that should be better than the LG V30, namely Poco F1, X3(N/P), & Zenfone 6; do have their own issues; the F1 & X3(N/P) has locked bootloader unlocking & EDL recovery behind Xiaomi's nonsense (the X3(N/P) may also have motherboard issues, depending on where you got it from); & the Zenfone 6 has that motherboard issue.
14/6/2021 update : Basically dead development with no initiative to fix issues such as Permissive SELinux (3/12/2022 Update : Thanks to lifehackerhansol, custom ROMs on the V30 now run enforcing SELinux... at least the ones that are still updated that is) combined with the presence of arguably better devices (Poco F1 / X3(N/P)) has completely zeroed any value out of this device. Maybe the only value left for it is as an audio player running Android.
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