LG today announced the G4, its 2015 flagship smartphone.
The G4 is skinned in “vegetable-tanned” leather in a bid to set the phone apart from competing designs from Apple, HTC, and Samsung. Like its predecessors, the G4’s main controls are placed on the back of the phone, something LG contends makes for easier use. The phone features a packed spec sheet, marking LG’s intent on delivering a premium experience to G4 owners. For those not interested in leather, the G4 has other materials available for the back cover, such as “hammered metal.”
The screen has a 5.5-inch quad HD IPS Quantum display, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor with X10 LTE. Qualcomm said it specially tuned the 808 for the LG G4 to improve call quality and offer (theoretical) download speeds of 400 Mbps. Qualcomm says its work on the 808 pushes battery life beyond a single day, and its sensor-based location services are more accurate than GPS alone.
The phone’s camera features a wide aperture of f/1.8 and captures 16 megapixel images. It has laser-assisted focus, fast optical image stabilization, and a color spectrum sensor to read visible and infrared light to help improve color. The phone can shoot in raw format, and can also capture 4K video.
The 3,000Ah battery is removable, as well as support for memory cards. The user-facing camera boasts 8-megapixels and LG says it made improvements to the Gesture Shot feature to make selfies faster and easier to snap. The phone features the fourth-generation user interface from LG, which is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop.
It relies on Google’s apps for many functions and added something called Quick Help for searching the phone and the web. LG didn’t say when the phone will be available, but carriers are likely to provide those details soon.
