LG announced its brand new premium smartphone, the V30, back in August, and is currently in the process of rolling it out to various regions. (LG Short on New TVs, but Plenty to Show!) For example, UK pre-orders are now open ahead of a November 1st launch.
However, the new device hit the shops in South Korea on September 21st, and early adopters of the final product are reporting some pretty significant issues with its P-OLED display. The smartphone’s screen is apparently struggling to distribute colours and brightness evenly and creates an undesirable light bleeding effect similar to a backlit LCD display. Technology publication ArsTechnica also expressed similar concerns around the screen in a hands-on preview report released in early September. It has a good image on its website that shows non-uniformity on a pre-production unit that it reviewed.
The V30 is a premium smartphone designed to rival the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the iPhone X, with its super-slim bezel and OLED screen. LG has apparently responded to the complaints, stating that the issue isn’t considered to be a defect, but a natural side effect of how OLEDs function.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus have suffered from a similar issue, but to a much lesser extent. At the time, Samsung explained the problems with a similar statement to the one LG is making now.
Analyst Comment
Mura, or defects that mean visible non-uniformity, are hard to define accurately and viewers have very different ideas of what is acceptable. The V30 has a good specification and, on the face of it, is very competitive, but as I have said recently, the phone business is a ‘hits’ business. In that kind of business, truth and technical performance are less important than fashion and buyers’ perceptions. (BR)
