The LG V60 and VELVET Review: A Classic & A Design Restart
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 15, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
System performance of the two LG devices are interesting as they’re one of the first times we’re able to contrast Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765 versus the Snapdragon 865 from the same vendor, using the same software optimisations and design. We’re expecting the S765 to naturally fare worse, but the question is, how much worse is it?
Starting off with the web browsing test in PCMark which is very sensible to performance responsiveness of the DVFS system, we see that the V60 and Velvet both fare quite averagely. The V60 is in line with the OnePlus 8 devices at 60Hz in this test which is pretty much what we’d expect, but that also means it’s also slower than last year’s G8, which seemingly didn’t have an as quite conservative software configuration.
The Velvet isn’t doing well at all and besides of the weirdly behaving S20 Ultra with the Exynos 990 at 60Hz, is the worst performing devices here.
The writing sub-test which is generally more indicative of every-day performance of a device is again also quite contrasting between the two phones. The V60 fares well as is amongst the better performing Snapdragon 865 devices. The Velvet, which certainly not a slouch, compares more alike a 2018 flagship device in the scores.
In the Photo Editing test which makes use of the GPU power, there’s a huge difference in performance between the two phones. Again the V60 is in line with other S865 devices, whilst the Velvet tends to really lag behind the pack with its weaker GPU.
Overall, in PCMark, we see the V60 ending up on par with other 2020 flagship devices, although not quite able to best Samsung’s software optimisations. The Velvet is as expected a lower performing device, but it’s still quite a notable difference in the scores.
In the web-browsing and Javascipt browser tests, things are largely bottlenecked by the single-threaded performance of the CPUs of the SoC. With the Snapdragon 765 using a Cortex-A76 at 2.3GHz peak, the end performance is naturally quite a bit less than the more expensive flagship silicon. Generally, it seems the SoC falls in somewhere between a Snapdragon 845 and 855 in terms of performance, which is right where you’d expect it to be.
Overall Performance
Overall, the LG V60 was a very good performer and offers amongst the best experiences in 2020 – although LG’s lack of a higher refresh rate screen does mean it doesn’t quite give the smoothness that other devices are able to provide – although that’s just a compromise between performance and battery life.
The LG Velvet was actually a bit disappointing for me, and it really reminded me that the processing power of today’s SoCs are actually being fully utilised for daily usage of the phones. It’s not that the Velvet was unusable or a slouch, but I immediately noticed that it wasn’t quite as well of a performer compared to say the V60. In general terms, I would say the phone feels more like a 2018 flagship device in terms of responsiveness.
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kpb321 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Why does it matter? Does anyone really regularly do anything with the USB port other than charge the device? Android doesn't have a local back up to a computer like iPhone/iTunes and even on that side it seems like most things happen automatically over wireless/wifi connection anyway. I doubt my wife could name the last time she hooker her android phone up to her computer. With her current phone I'm not even sure if she ever has hooked it up to a computer. For my iPhone I don't think I've ever hooked my current one up to my computer. Last time I upgraded I just used the wizard and it copied over what it needed to for the profile and then automatically reinstalled all the apps.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
"Enthusiasts" will hate me, but the headphone jack should be kept, and the USB-C port should be completely eliminated. You can charge with any port.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
USB-C is like an incremental upgrade to USB micro.if I'm actually designing something for scratch that would be perfect for phones, I'd have some kind of waterproof magnetic connector that doesn't have a million pins and giant connectors.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Magnetic would be an interesting addition, but USB also serves as the manner to bootstrap the device once its built and load the OS. So your magnetic connector would also need to do data.s.yu - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Yes magnetics do data, the majority do.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
LOLWAT. How is that any better? The big issue with removing the headphone jack is that there is only 1 port, and you cant charge and listen to audio at the same time. Going to just a headphone jack wouldnt make it any better, and no you cannot just charge with "any port", the headphone jack was not designed to charge a phone, let alone charge while also streaming audio.flyingpants265 - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
So, you didn't actually read my comments?psychobriggsy - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
What would be useful in a mobile phone review is additionally comparing to an older phone of a similar price (at the time) that someone would be upgrading from, hence their interest in looking at a review of a phone. How much faster is the device - is it even worth upgrading if the phone is otherwise okay?s.yu - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Sounds good except you'd need to compare multiple phones from multiple years, there's no telling if one upgrades annually, biennially, triennially, or...it goes on and on. With Anandtech's interface it's not realistic, but with Notebookcheck's at least you can manually add devices to a comparison list, though that would be once every section, e.g. if you added a device in the CPU section you'd need to add it again for a GPU or battery life comparison. Also older devices may not have been tested by the exact same testing methods, e.g. GB4 is obviously not comparable with GB5, crucially, battery tests are also updated.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
What on earth are you even saying?