This year’s worst-kept tech secret finally debuted Tuesday when LG Electronics unveiled its next-generation G3 smartphone.
The 5.5-inch follow-up to 2013’s G2 more closely resembles a phablet than its predecessor, boasting what LG’s head of smartphone planning, Ramchan Woo, called “the sweet spot.”
Specifically, the LG sports a Quad HD IPS 2,560-by-1,440 display with 538 pixels per inch, compared to the 5.2-inch Full HD display with 1080-by-1920-pixel resolution on the G2.
“When I first took a glance at the spec sheet, I was pretty surprised to see the screen size to be 5.5 inches,” Chul Bae Lee, vice president of LG’s mobile design lab, told a group of reporters before Tuesday’s unveiling. “One of the first challenges was to make users feel like the phone is smaller than it is.”
To achieve that, the electronics maker left no space between your palm and the new metallic backing, which promises a less plasticy aesthetic and fewer fingerprints. The power and volume buttons are still on the back of the device, which PCMag’s Sascha Segan found awkward on the G2.
The device will run Android 4.4.2 KitKat at launch, and a 2.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor. It will come in 16 and 32GB flavors with 2GB or 3GB of RAM and microSD slot that can expand storage up to 128GB.
LG talked up the phone’s simplified flat graphics, similar to Apple’s iOS 7, which eschews shadows and depth for a smoother display. Woo hopes this will help users concentrate on content, like the new Smart Bulletin and Smart Notice widgets.
The Google Now-esque Smart Notice acts like a personal assistant. If you’re in a meeting, for example, and you get a call, you might reply with a text and say you’ll call back later. As you go about the rest of the day, the G3 will remind you if you haven’t returned the call. Meanwhile, if you forget to add a friend to your address book, G3 will ask if you want to add.
The LG G3 will be available later this summer from T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon and will be sold in Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores. It comes in Metallic Black, Silk White, Shine Gold, Moon Violet and Burgundy Red.
Read the full story at pcmag.com
