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LG’s V20 flagship smartphone, its replacement for its 10-month-old V10 handset (pictured), will be the first smartphone that will be preloaded and ship with the upcoming Android 7.0 Nougat operating system when the handset is unveiled in the third quarter of 2016, according to LG.
The phone’s operating system selection was announced by LG on Aug. 1.
“We are excited to offer the first phone in the world to feature Nougat out of the box,” Juno Cho, the president of LG Electronics, said in a statement. “The LG V20 upgrades and extends its predecessor’s cutting-edge multimedia features a step further, providing distinctive mobile experience and sets a new standard for premium phones for consumers.”
The new handset “will be tuned to take advantage of many of the best features of Nougat, including Vulkan-supported graphics for more immersive gaming while also delivering better battery performance with Doze,” the company said in the statement. “Consumers will also enjoy new productivity features such as Direct Reply, which lets users respond quickly to text messages or update tasks using the notification interface.”
No additional details or specifications of the upcoming LG V20 smartphone were released at this time.
LG’s first Android phone in 2009 ran Android 1.5 Cupcake, according to LG, and LG and Google have been collaborating since then on their mobile innovations. Both companies collaborated on a series of Nexus smartphones starting with the Nexus 4 in 2012, which was shipped with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the Nexus 5 that was released in 2013 with Android 4.4 KitKat and the Nexus 5X that was unveiled in 2015 featuring Android 6.0 Marshmallow, according to LG. The companies have also offered smart wearables together such as LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition, which is an Android Wear smartwatch that includes cellular-based connectivity.
The company’s existing flagship LG V10 smartphone was unveiled in October 2015 with a host of innovations, including a main display screen that also included a smaller second display for frequently accessed information, dual front-facing selfie cameras that give different viewing angles in photos and new manual video controls to give users lots of flexibility when capturing video. The V10 is also ruggedized and built with high-grade stainless steel and a silicone skin that meets military MIL-STD-810G standards for drops on concrete, according to an earlier eWEEK story.
The V10 smartphone features a main 5.7-inch quarter-high-definition (QHD) In-Plane Switching (IPS) Quantum display and a second 2.1-inch screen above it that can be set up as an “always-on” display to provide updates without shortening battery life. The smaller screen can be used to display the weather, time, date and battery icon when the main display is off, and it can be used as a launching area for shortcuts or favorite apps when the main screen is being used.
The handset has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 64GB of built-in eMMC ROM storage and a 16MP rear-facing camera. The device runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
The 5-megapixel dual front cameras include two separate lenses that can capture standard 80-degree or 120-degree wide-angle selfies and can be easily selected by the user. Also included is a multiview recording feature that can capture different angles using all three cameras at once.
LG’s G5 all-metal modular smartphone was unveiled in April. The LG G5 premium smartphone debuted at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February and features an all-metal body, a 5.3-inch quad HD IPS display, a modular design, and line of attachments and accessories that bring virtual reality capabilities and more to users. The all-metal design of the LG G5 comes from input from customers who told the company that they wanted to see a device covered with metal rather than the leather-covered back of the previous LG G4 smartphone, according to an earlier eWEEK story.
The G5 features a Qualcomm 820 octa-core processor, 4GB of memory, 32GB of on-board storage, a microSD slot for expanded storage up to 200GB and the Android Marshmallow 6.0 operating system. The G5 continues the G4’s tradition of having a removable and replaceable battery. The G5 also has one SIM card slot, dual rear cameras—a 16-megapixel camera with a 78-degree field of view and an 8MP wide-angle camera with a 135-degree field of view—and an 8MP front-facing camera.
The phone’s attachable modular accessories include an LG 360 camera module that features two 180-degree cameras that can create 360-degree images, an audio Hi-Fi Plus attachment for improved sound capabilities for music and video audio, and an LG Cam Plus grip, which includes shutter and video camera buttons, a jog dial for video zoom and an embedded battery with another 1,100mAh of power for extended use. Also available is a 360-degree, full HD 1080p virtual reality headset that connects to the smartphone with a USB-C cord.