[LG V20 Guides, News, & Discussion] Aintree Porsche:
Just wanted to post some observations from visiting various stores that had the Note 9, V30, V35 (AT&T) and my V20 with a solid pair a headphones. In my case I'm using the V-Moda Wireless 2 with and without the plug in cord.

Note 9 with cord. If you turn on their Dolby sound button in the phone's pull down.. Pretty spectacular. The highs get a little bright with the volume up at maximum but I don't really listen that loud as I dont want to be deaf before 50. On Bluetooth it's remarkably similar. Compared to my V20 with the DAC on I'd give the a slight edge to the V20 in that the bass was better depending on the track. But even in bass heavy track I could still physically feel the rumble with the Note 9, just not as tight and deep as the V20 but by the end of the song I didn't notice it anymore. Mind you that was for a deep heavy track. I used a bass compilation that was a top YouTube search result. The Dolby setting is a clear enhancement when using headphones. Whether you think it's true sound is up to you but with a $200 and higher set of headphones its hard to complain too much.

The V30 with cord. Here you have to say it's pretty even although you get an extra setting in addition to the DAC on Oreo that I don't recall being mentioned in the initial V30 reviews. You get some new EQ type presets for enhanced, bass, live, etc.

I have a few FLAC files from Beatport (phone also supports DSD, and MQA like the V20). The sound was pretty amazing for something without an external DAC. Almost to the point where I'm like why even bother spending $800 on the Note 9. You can get a refurbished V30 for about $270 now. New for $350-$400. The Note 9 has promotions typically putting it at $800. At any rate I'd say the V30 had a slightly better sound overall to the Note 9 but again not by a margin that would make you feel you were missing anything.

The V35 with cord. I think it uses the same ESS SABRE 9218P Quad-DAC as the V30. Would be crazy to go through the expense of a diffrent DAC for such a niche feature. I could not tell much of a difference between the V30 and V35 if any.

At this point I'm leaning heavy towards the Note 9 since it has a 512 GB version with 8 GB RAM over the 128 GB 6 RAM standard version. I'm thinking the resale for this might be pretty strong because there will be a high quantity of standard Note 9 in the market for such a popular phone. With all the glass on such a big phone there will be a ton of refurbished phones being sold from people who dropped their phones and had to replace under insurance. Once Samsung lower the price under $800 and some new aggressive promotions to milk the Note 9 sales to the max it will be their best selling Note for sure. The V40 will also be the same sort of story... but under a much faster discounting curve. By the time the G8 or comes out in spring the V40 should be down to $650 from the $900+ introduction price.

Considering the V30 lost more than half it's value in 12 months I'm definitely in no hurry to buy the most expensive LG phone ever. And they didn't match Samsung on the Note 9's 4,000 mAh battery. Major bummer. But the V30 battery was pretty impressive compared to the very mediocre V20 battery life. Maybe once again the V40 will do more with less and hit 5-6 hours screen on time. With an extended battery case you might match the Note 9 at a lower price all in. The issue with the Samsung is all that lag you start to get after about a 9 months. They gotta do something about that.

Also,

If you have the official V20 charging cradle, the iPosible 6700 mAh extended battery on Amazon fits in the cradle. Something you can't do with other extended batteries. This is a great discovery for me because now I can charge the extended battery at my desk while the phone is in use with the stock battery. Takes about 2 hours to get a charge that's been giving me about 7 hours screen on time and no heat issues. Excellent for using the DAC. While I love the ability to swap out the battery the stock battery can get me as little as 2 hours SOT sometimes.