LG has finally announced its first curved display smartphone, G Flex, in Korea. The new smartphone sports amazing new features and an impressive makeover to compete against Samsung Galaxy Round.
LG, one of the leading smartphone makers in the world, has finally embraced the trending innovation. Several leaks and rumors over the past few months have tracked the company's progress in the curved display technology. But LG caught everyone off-guard by announcing the launch of its G Flex, when earlier reports suggested a November launch. At least the tech blogs got most of the specs right.
The curved display gives us a different take on the latest technology. LG's design of G Flex is unlike the Samsung Galaxy Round, which features a horizontal curved display. The G Flex sports a vertical one, and by the looks of it we can believe LG's words on the device's capability in delivering improved voice and sound quality. Think of this more like your old fixed land line devices that featured a vertical arc, optimized for an average face.
"The LG G Flex is the best representation yet of how a smartphone should be curved," Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, said in a press release, (via Engadget). "The LG G Flex with its distinctive design, innovative hardware and consumer-centric UX represents the most significant development in the smartphone space since smartphone became part of our regular vocabulary."
The LG G Flex has several new features besides its vertical curved deign. In addition to the company's Rear Key, first introduced in the LG G2, the buttons on the side have been taken to the back of the phone below the camera for convenient handling.
LG seems to have taken a hint from a character in the popular American science fiction series, Heroes. G Flex might have been inspired by Claire Bennet from Tim Kring's American drama series, where Hayden Panettiere, who plays the role, is a high-school cheerleader who can spontaneously regenerate. The South Korean tech company has developed its own technology that helps the G Flex to heal itself. It may sound something out of the world but it is the elastic coating that has the ability to recover from "daily wear-and-tear scratches and nicks that un-cased smartphones are likely to receive, keeping the G Flex looking newer longer."
Some may call the G Flex smarter than the smartphone for its built-in applications. The smart features include Urgent Call Alert that flashes the Rear Key LED in case several calls from the same person go unanswered; Camera Timer that uses the same LED to let you know the device is ready to take a snap; Face Detection Indicator, flashes the LED to confirm that the camera has detected the face and is focused; Swing Lockscreen, that adjusts image on lockscreen depending on how the G Flex is held; Dual Window, helps in multi-tasking by dividing the screen into two halves, and QTheater grants quick access to pictures, videos and YouTube.
While these features make the G Flex stand-out in the crowd, impressive under-the-hood specs can tempt you enough to fall in love with the device.
The G Flex sports the latest 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB RAM and runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2. The device has an impressive 6-inch HD Curved P-OLED display with 1280 x 720 screen resolution, 13-megapixel rear-facing and 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera. The smartphone is equipped with an embedded 3,500 mAh battery and 32 GB internal memory. The device is currently available in only one color, the Titan Silver, and will be on offer in Korea from November through all major carriers. LG is yet to confirm the global availability of the device.
