Just consider what's going on inside the phone. Like nearly every other premium smartphone released this year, the V35 ThinQ packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, this time with 6GB of RAM. That's just like the G7, and the V35 felt just as fast as rival devices. Beyond that, the V35 mostly sticks to the existing V30 formula: There's a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, 64GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, a 3,300mAh battery inside and a 32-bit Quad DAC that ensures the phone is still one of the best mobile music players on the market.

The V35 is far from the most innovative smartphone LG has ever made, but some of the changes here really are worth digging into. Take that 6-inch, Quad HD+ screen up front, for instance: It's a big step forward from the P-OLED panels we got in the V30 (and, to some extent, the V30S ThinQ). Let's say you were reading in bed and wanted to dial your V30's screen brightness down -- the display would often look a little gritty or grainy when you dimmed it.

This time, LG went with a more traditional OLED screen that avoids that pesky, dirty look and seems to produce punchier, more vivid colors at the same time. (It also doesn't have a notch, if that's a thing that matters to you.) The phone lacks the Super Bright Display mode that made the G7 so readable in broad daylight, but it was still plenty easy to read on a sun-drenched rooftop. All told, LG is on the right track here.