LG V60 Impressions: We heard you liked bloatware, so here’s another screen for all this bloatware

It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to use an LG smartphone. When it was first announced, there was a lot about the LG V60 ThinQ that was sort of exciting, especially looking at its spec sheet. Now, I’ve spent a little over a day with the LG V60 ThinQ in my pocket, and I’ve got some early thoughts to share.

As usual with first impressions, I’m only sharing a few things that have really caught my interest in my first few hours with the device. I’ll have a full review of the LG V60 ThinQ in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, here are a few first impressions.

Battery life: Well done, LG

The biggest thing that’s got me excited to keep using the LG V60 ThinQ is the battery life. Why? I still haven’t had to charge it. Sunday, March 22, was my first full day with the V60, and this afternoon, over a day and a half later, this phone is still running with around 17% in the tank.

Under the hood, the LG V60 ThinQ offers up a 5,000mAh battery and combined with a 1080p, 60Hz display, the results are just as great as you’d expect.

During my first day of use, I used the LG V60 ThinQ from 8 a.m. to just shy of midnight, and, by that time, the device had only drained to 48%. That included some casual games, a bunch of social media, and well over an hour of using the Dual Screen accessory, and a fair amount of use on mobile data (AT&T) versus just Wi-Fi.  I racked up 4.5 hours of screen time in over the day, too.

Day 1 (left) and Day 2 (right) on the same charge!

Now, as I’m writing this article, the V60 literally just threw my the 15% warning. At this point, my usage has been the same as the day prior, and I’ve just crossed the seven-hour screen-time mark.

This is very impressive! For a lot of people, this will truly be a two-day smartphone, and LG deserves some serious credit for this.

Dual Screen: Genuinely useful, if a little chunky

Perhaps the biggest “wow” factor of the LG V60 ThinQ is that, unless you buy it from T-Mobile without the bundle, it comes with Dual Screen access. This adds a flip cover to the device that outputs a second screen identical to the normal one.

I have little complaints about this accessory — it blocks wireless charging on some pads, it’s very thick, it can extend most apps — but the verdict I have so far is this: Having a second screen is genuinely useful a whole lot of the time. I’ve used the accessory to play a game while surfing Reddit, read a text message while keeping notes from another app open, and, of course, there’s always the handy option of playing videos on one screen while reading on the other.

I don’t think most people will want to use the Dual Screen all the time, but it comes in handy way more often than I expected. More importantly, it doesn’t get in the way too often when you are using it.

Bloatware: WHY

Alright, we’ve talked about a lot of good. Let’s talk about the bad.

LG’s software is, in my opinion, still a bit of a trainwreck. The design is all over the place, and there are still head-scratching notifications like one that tells you not to remove the battery. To reiterate, it tells you not to remove the battery which is sealed into the phone and not removable by the user without some serious work. Plus, the app drawer still constantly resorts your apps. Want everything in alphabetical order? Cool, it’ll do that, until you download or remove literally anything.

That aside, my biggest complaint is bloatware.

The LG V60 ThinQ I’m using is an AT&T model and it ships with 37 bloatware apps. A lot of this is on AT&T, the carrier has after all been way too happy to include a ton of bloatware on its Android devices, but LG isn’t really free from fault either. Other Android devices just don’t ship with this much crap pre-installed — the crap, by the way, includes two Candy Crush games — and this is all just a bad look in 2020.

5 pages of bloatware on a 2020 smartphone. Why?

Worse yet, not all of this is uninstallable. Over 15 of the apps pre-installed on this device can only be disabled, not removed. For some reason, too, that includes Games of Thrones: Conquest. There’s even an extra app that re-enables the bloatware if you disable it!

This is just awful, and it’s really soured what has otherwise been a pretty great experience.

As mentioned, I’ll have more to say about the LG V60 ThinQ in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! If what I’ve said here is enough to convince you, LG V60 ThinQ is available from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.