LG Optimus G Pro Features Snapdragon Processor

The company’s latest entry into the ultra-competitive smartphone market comes a week before the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Hot on the heels of the popular Optimus G smartphone, consumer electronics giant LG introduced the newest addition to the G family, the 4G LTE-equipped Optimus G Pro with a 5.5-inch full HD IPS display, which sports a 1.7GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and runs Google’s Android operating system.

Other features include a rear-facing 13-megapixel camera with LED Flash and a front-facing 2.1-mexapixel camera, 32GB of memory and the largest battery capacity in its class at 3,140mAh. The screen was developed in partnership with LG Display and delivers 1920 x 1080 pixels at 400 pixels per inch (ppi).

"The Optimus G Pro was developed specifically to deliver vivid and superb picture quality in a large display smartphone form factor," president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, Dr. Jong-seok Park, said in a statement. "We will continue to expand our position in the premium LTE smartphone segment with our superior display technology and unique user experience."

The Optimus G Pro also comes with features developed specifically for the device, such as dual recording and virtual reality (VR) panorama. Dual recording allows users to capture video with both the front and rear cameras simultaneously for a picture-in-picture experience. The VR panorama feature allows shots of entire horizontal and vertical environments for a full 360-degree view. Other features popular with Optimus G users have been added to the Optimus G Pro, such as an upgraded QSlide, Live Zooming and QuickMemo.

The company’s latest entry into the ultra-competitive smartphone market comes a week before the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the handset will be on display and compete for attention with a bevy of other models, including those from rival Samsung, whose sales continued to accelerate in the fourth quarter of 2012, totaling 64.5 million units, up 85.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. Samsung totaled 384.6 million mobile phones sales for the year, of which 53.5 percent were smartphone sales--up from 28 percent in 2011.

Smartphones continue to drive overall mobile phone sales, and the fourth quarter of 2012 saw record smartphone sales of 207.7 million units, according to a recent report from IT research firm Gartner. Worldwide smartphone sales will be close to 1 billion units in 2013.

Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 36.3 percent share, while Google Android led as the top smartphone platform with 53.4 percent share, according to the latest report from IT research firm ComScore's MobiLens service, which tracked key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry during the three-month average period ending December 2012.