The LG G8 ThinQ is here: air gestures, palm reading, and Portrait Mode on video!

It's still a rather compact phone, easy to hold and use with one hand. Here's a quick size comparison with the LG G7, Galaxy S10, and iPhone XR:

It's all in the hands!

The LG G8 ThinQ has a new camera module up front called the Z Camera. It utilizes a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor to quickly and reliably create depth maps of whatever objects it's looking at.

For example, the LG G8 ThinQ can scan your hand down to the veins in your palm. This is used as a biometric unlocking feature — show the phone your palm and it unlocks. The G8 will also support facial recognition through the Z Camera. And no, it's not affected by lighting conditions, so it should, in theory, be as reliable as Face ID.



But that's not all — a new Air Motion feature will allow you to interact with the phone by just waving your hand in front of the selfie camera. You will be able to take or reject calls, switch apps, take screenshots, or change volume without touching your phone. That'd be useful when cooking or cleaning, for example.

Camera and hardware

We still have "only" two cameras at the back of the LG G8 ThinQ — a 12 MP standard and 16 MP super-wide-angle one. The main camera has a very wide aperture of F1.5 and the sensor has 1.4μm pixels. In the smartphone world — these are considered big and contribute towards better night shots, as they collect more light. The wide-angle camera has an F1.9 aperture and 1.0 μm pixels on the sensor.

We do have new software features to enjoy! The so-called "Video Portrait" mode will take that faux bokeh effect we've seen on photos over the past 4 years and apply it to video in real time. LG utilizes what it calls a Dual FOV technology to capture multiple fields of depth — that should make for some pretty awesome cinematic shots if it works out right!

The selfie snapper on the front has an 8 MP sensor with an F1.7 aperture and 1.22 μm pixels. It's neighbored by the Z Camera (ToF camera), which is there for depth-perception only.

The LG G8 ThinQ is powered by the latest-and-greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, has 6 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage, which you can expand with a microSD card of up to 2 TB. The lights are kept on by a rather large, 3,500 mAh battery.

Aside from the stereo sound emitted by the Crystal Sound screen, there's also a quad Hi-Fi DAC on board. Now, this has been an LG staple for a while, so no surprises here — the company still caters to the audiophiles!