I'm liking the V40 better than the V20 and the V30. The one thing I did like better was the on/off button and the fingerprint sensor combination. I'm not a big fan of the separate button. That being said I am getting use to it.
The battery life on the V40 isn't as good as the V30. I could get a good 12 hours of medium to heavy use out of the V30 and still have around 15-20% left. With the V40 I'm getting around 10 hours. Compared to my brother's Note9, he's still has 50% left but he's not quite as heavy a user as I am. But I figure with the same use he would be no lower than 30% after 12 hours.
The camera is a pretty good improvement over the V30 and a huge improvement over the V20. Compared to the Note9, we took the same pic from the same distance with similar settings. Both of us that the pic were hard to tell the difference. A Pixel owner was there as well and actually thought the V40 had better colors. I thought the V40 had a better blue to the sky, but other than that not really any difference.
There's not question the sound was better on the V40 when using a pair of Sennheiser HD650. When playing the same music and listening to the external speakers, again the sound was really good on both. The Pixel owner thought the V40 has a little richer sound.
That's awesome. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but battery life is really irrelevant for me as long as the phone has wireless charging and quick charge. Make no mistake, if given two exact same phones, just one was thicker with more battery, sure I'll take the battery. But I'll never pick a phone because of battery life.
At the end of the day, I will interact with the things about a phone way longer than i will with charging. I'd rather have 10 hours of experience with the perfect phone for me and 1 hour of quick charge (or constant topping off on my wireless charger at my desk) than not to have to charge but have to deal with something about a phone that i don't like.
Not that their is anything really wrong about the Note 9, but the simple difference of LG opting to use a button for Google now vs Samsung using their own thing is worth the loss of battery life. Also, the wide angle lens is something that I will use so much, an extra 5 hours of battery life every give me that experience with a note.
Basically wireless charging and portable quick charge battery packs have totally cured my battery anxiety.