The LG V60 and VELVET Review: A Classic & A Design Restart
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 15, 2020 9:00 AM ESTBattery Life - Outstanding
Battery life has been an aspect where LG has had tons of issue in past generation devices. The root cause here was the company’s usage of LG Display manufactured displays, which all shared the same common issue of having extraordinarily bad base power consumption. This had always handicapped phones from achieving better results, more accurately tracking the SoC’s efficiency and the battery capacity.
The V60’s downgrade from 1440p to 1080p screen might help in that regard, and the manufacturer also opted to include a large 5000mAh battery. The Velvet’s 4300mAh battery should also fare adequately – here’s more of a question on whether the Snapdragon 765 is as efficient as its bigger brother.
In our web-browsing test, we see the LG V60 do outstandingly good, coming in at 14.75H runtime. This vastly exceeds the results of any LG phone we’ve come to test in the past, and competes amongst the longest lasting devices in the market right now. LG still seems to have not quite as an efficient display panel as Samsung, as the S20 Ultra’s 1440p unit is only margins behind the V60, but the gap has considerably narrowed.
The LG Velvet surprised us with equally impressive results. At 12.73 hours runtime, it’s also a great result given the phone’s battery capacity, and nearly scales in line with the 700mAh difference to the V60. This bodes well for the Snapdragon 765 overall, although we’ve seen that the CPU cores themselves aren’t as efficient as on the Snapdragon 865.
In PCMark, the V60 even manages to get the top spot in our charts by a few minutes against the 6000mAh ROG Phone II, and the Velvet also fares extremely well against the competition.
Overall, battery life of both the V60 and Velvet is outstandingly good. In a year where most other competitors have opted for higher refresh-rate displays, LG’s decision to keep things simple is rewarded by being able to take advantage of the new silicon’s power efficiency in order to notably increase battery life.
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flyingpants265 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Yeah, I've owned about 15 phones over the years. Never once have I experienced severe battery degradation. I think it exists mostly inside people's heads. It's much more likely that your usage patterns or software have changed, or just that you haven't noticed your battery running down constantly. You're not likely to notice a 20% drop, that's like 4 hours instead of 5... The way people talk it's like their "phone doesn't hold a charge anymore" ... Never really happened to me.RaduR - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Not true.There are some problems here. In 2 years I see clear battery degradation . Try an app and you will see. All my phones after 1.5-2 years are at 25% battery degradation . That leaves 75% usable.
Also in 2 years apps get bigger and bigger eating core ram and battery . So you will see SOT and standby degradation .
It is not huge but it is.
From 12 -15 hous to 10 house usage time it's a difference that MAY create discomfort .
The above are correct only if you are a heavy user. ....
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I am a heavy user, constantly streaming audio and often video on my phone, and after 4 years its gone from 12 hours of SoT to 9.5. Losing 25% over 4 years isnt too bad.Bigger batteries are always welcome.
People also need to wean themselves off of fast charging. The heat generated from rapid charging wears down batteries faster. There's a reason most iphone batteries last as long as they do: they are still using their 5 watt chargers and the batteries dont even get warm.
With the ever growing battery capacities charging only overnight is truly viable. And the reduced number of charge cycles also extends battery life by several years.
nico_mach - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Apps DO NOT 'get bigger and bigger'. Games, if you're playing any cutting edge games (whatever that means on mobile) maybe. But NO.The most common cause on my phones over time is that Android resets Google preferences that run in the background. You shouldn't have much of anything else running in the background so it doesn't matter how 'big' your apps get for battery life, except when you're using them.
And of course batteries age. But my s8 started out pretty big (compare to iphone 6, wow!) and is still going strong in year 3 or whatever this is now. Which is a shame, I'd like to switch back to apple actually, but I'm too frugal to give up on this phone.
nutxoo - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I got myself and the wife the dual screen version of the v60. They were 899 BOGO. 450 seemed reasonable to me. We replaced our v30s that we never had issues with. We had gotten the v30s BOGO and each one had a rebate for a projector. The v30s replaced the g4s we got BOGO and we had those for 25 months until one did the boot loop but after 25 months we needed phones anyways'As long as I can get em BOGO and dont have issues I will keep getting LG.
PeachNCream - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I'm sorry, but I'm lost here. What does BOGO mean?nicolaim - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Buy one, get one free, a.k.a. two-for-one.flyingpants265 - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I'm so sick and tired of the battery thing. Just stop. It's very easy to replace the battery on most phones, just buy the tools required or take it to a reputable shop.0x1874DE4C - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
USB 2? 2000 called and wants its interface back.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
USB 3 needs an extra controller and 99% of people only use it to charge. Not worth the cost to LG