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  • [Helicopter landing]

  • LG brought me to New York City to tear down their brand new LG V30, the camera hardware

  • in this thing could quit possibly be the best in the world at the moment.

  • Before I take a look at the inside, let's see what the footage looks like from the outside.

  • [Music]

  • [Intro]

  • The coolest thing about this phone, in my opinion, is the camera.

  • The hardware underneath the little glass lens is pretty amazing, and I'll explain why.

  • But first we have to get to it.

  • This pre-production version of the LG V30 is a super sleek looking phone.

  • It has the metal body, bezel-less OLED display, and the full curved Gorilla Glass 5 on the

  • front and the back.

  • One cool thing with the curve, though, is that the glass is curved – but not so much

  • the display.

  • I find that when using my curved Galaxy S8 without a case, the palm of my hand causes

  • phantom touches to the screen since it wraps around the edge of the phone.

  • But the LG V30 screen is all in the front, not wrapping around the edge, so hopefully

  • it won't have that same phantom touch issue.

  • Getting inside the phone is pretty straight forward.

  • The LG V30 is ip68 water-resistant.

  • One step above the ip67 water-resistant rating of the iPhone 7.

  • I always enjoy pointing that out.

  • Heat is our best friend during the glass removal.

  • Warming up the phone until it's just barely too hot to touch.

  • And then using a large suction cup to lift up and decrease the tension on the surface

  • of the glass so I can slip my thin metal pry tool between the edge and the metal frame

  • of the phone, slicing through the adhesive all the way around the underside of that glass

  • layer.

  • This adhesive is the type that hardens again when it's cooled down.

  • So about every 30 or 40 seconds I'll warm it back up with my heat gun and keep on cutting.

  • It is glass so I'm being careful not to flex it too much or cut too deep inside.

  • Once the glass gets pulled off, there are fragile ribbon cables underneath - mainly

  • the wireless charging and the cable that goes to the fingerprint scanner/power button - which

  • is conveniently located in the center of the back panel instead of up right next to the

  • camera lens.

  • These little golden circles right next to the power button just rest up against the

  • motherboard to do all the communicating.

  • From here we can see all the inside of the exterior camera lens.

  • This is actually made from Gorilla Glass 4, which lowers it's potential for being scratched

  • or damaged compared to just regular glass, so that's good.

  • Our goal here though is to see the guts of the camera unit, so let's go deeper inside

  • the phone.

  • There are 7 non-proprietary Philips head screws on the top half of the phone.

  • Glad LG doesn't try to complicate things.

  • Then there are three more screws that hold down the loudspeaker to the bottom of the

  • phone near the charging port.

  • I'll lift off the wireless charging.

  • It's got those same golden contact pads for the power transfer that we saw with the power

  • button.

  • With a lot of restaurants and vehicles adding more wireless charging stations lately, I'm

  • glad that LG has included it in their design.

  • Phones with useful features are the best kinds of phones.

  • I'll disconnect the battery and then reach down and pull up the loudspeaker.

  • This little guy has the same water-resistant screen that we saw with the recent iPhones

  • and the water-resistant Samsung phones.

  • There are a few more ribbon cables keeping us from accessing that camera.

  • I'll just start unsnapping those like little Legos.

  • The front facing selfie camera is up there at the top, and the regular camera wraps around

  • through the back side of the motherboard.

  • Then down here at the bottom we have the screen ribbon cable and the charging port ribbon.

  • The motherboard will come away from the phone body at this point if you remember to remove

  • the SIM card tray.

  • I left mine in place as an example for what not to do, of course.

  • The SIM and the expandable memory tray are out of the phone.

  • I can finally lift away the motherboard from the aluminum mid-frame and look at all these

  • golden contact pads.

  • This is a repair guy's dream.

  • A totally modular phone.

  • Less plugs and connections mean a more simple and modular design to work with.

  • I'm definitely a fan of that.

  • We have a headphone jack up in the top left hand corner.

  • That deserves a thumbs up all by itself.

  • Then the circular vibration motor is right below that, with it's golden contact pads.

  • And then we have the earpiece and one small microphone up here at the top.

  • One super cool things about this phone is that the earpiece turns into a receiver or

  • a microphone during loud events, like at a concert.

  • I'll explain more about this after we find the third microphone in just a second.

  • And then here's the front facing camera that's also at the top of the phone.

  • Right below that we have the golden contact pads for the volume buttons.

  • Also embedded in this solid slab of milled aluminum is the copper heat pipe.

  • We took a thermal imaging camera to the heat pipe inside the LG G6, and it actually does

  • a pretty good job of wicking away heat from the processor.

  • And finally we get our first look at the two rear cameras on the back of the phone.

  • The standard camera is 16 megapixels, and the wide angle camera is 13 megapixels.

  • Both held in place by separate ribbon cables.

  • The wide angle camera is pretty cool all by itself,but the standard camera could very

  • well have the best cell phone camera hardware on the market right now.

  • I'll show you why as we tear it down.

  • First of all, it does have OIS, that optical image stabilization that not every camera

  • has.

  • It also has electronic image stabilization to keep photos and videos extra crisp.

  • There is to optical stabilization on the wide angle camera lens, but that's a different

  • ball game anyway.

  • Popping off the metal housing for the camera reveals my favorite part – the 10-bit image

  • sensor.

  • This means that the LG V30 can capture over 1 billion colors.

  • And the special cine video mode can output videos with up to two hundred and eleven percent

  • more colors than you can with the average smartphone.

  • These colors help improve contrast and definition of the image.

  • I'm a camera guy.

  • I use my cellphone camera quite a bit, so I'm pretty excited about this big step up

  • in extra camera power.

  • Most computer screens these days can't even display 10-bits of color yet, so this camera

  • is really leading the futuristic curve.

  • But even if your computer monitor only displays 8-bits of color, all the different shading

  • that 10-bits can pick up will still enhance the dynamic range on your 8-bit monitor, so

  • it's still a good thing either way.

  • In order to fully utilize this 10-bit sensor though, we need light.

  • And the more light we have, the better the sensor can capture an image.

  • To help facilitate the light entering onto this sensor, there is an F/1.6 aperture camera

  • lens inside this plastic housing – also a world's first on a cell phone.

  • Due to the shape of the lens, there's more light hitting the sensor on the LG V30 than

  • any other cellphone on the market.

  • The hardware is pretty intriguing, and judging by my initial helicopter ride, the software

  • looks like it's keeping up so far.

  • It was around this point that I realized I was not going to be able to put this back

  • together in one piece.

  • Since I am at LG though, I hope they have the backup replacement around here somewhere.

  • Now that I'm finally through the plastic, look at all these different lenses inside

  • the housing.

  • It's pretty incredible how much development goes into such a small component.

  • LG has used glass instead of plastic for the main lens inside this module.

  • Using glass instead of plastic improves image clarity and starts bridging the gap between

  • DSLR and smartphone cameras.

  • Before coming out to New York to see this phone, I chopped open a real Canon DSLR camera

  • lens so I can see if the lenses were even remotely similar when placed side-by-side.

  • And while the Canon lens is significantly larger, both camera lenses have the same basic

  • construction with all the different layers inside stacked on top of each other – pretty

  • impressive.

  • After looking around I did find a replacement camera lens that fits inside the LG V30.

  • Hopefully nobody notices what I did to the first one.

  • Down at the bottom of the phone we have pretty much the cutest little charging port that

  • I've ever seen.

  • There are 2 screws holding down the USB-C port, which is also connected to the third

  • microphone inside this phone.

  • Let's talk about that earpiece mic again real quick.

  • So let's say you're one of those people at a concert with your phone up in the air.

  • Instead of your tiny little microphones recording the loud audio, the LG V30 earpiece turns

  • into a microphone with anything above 120 decibels, like a rock concert, which means

  • you actually get decent audio recording because the diaphragm of the earpiece is so much larger

  • than those tiny little microphones.

  • It's a pretty sweet little trick, plus the integrated quad deck allows quality playback

  • of the audio you just recorded.

  • That's pretty cool all by itself.

  • The charging port has a huge thick orange rubber ring around the tip to help keep liquid

  • out.

  • The non-removable 3300 milliamp hour battery is next on my removal list.

  • There are no magic pull tabs below this battery, but the adhesive is not destructive like we

  • saw on the BlackBerry Key One.

  • With a little bit of force the battery pops up and out on it's own.

  • Still no dogs allowed though.

  • You might have noticed the extremely small bezels on the 6 inch OLED screen of the LG

  • V30.

  • This was mastered in part by having the display driver IC flip around under the display and

  • wrap up inside the phone.

  • You can kind of see it from this angle here.

  • Removing the display from the metal mid frame would destroy it and I can only assume that

  • LG wants their phone back in one piece.

  • I only attempt screen replacements if the display is already totaled.

  • Speaking of getting the phone back in one piece, cross your fingers that it turns back

  • on after I reassemble it.

  • The cute little charging port and bottom microphone go back into the frame making sure that the

  • rubber ring is still surrounding the port to help keep the water out.

  • Every bit of water-resistance helps.