advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Galaxy S5 beware, the LG G3 is announced

While it was heavily leaked to the point of almost shedding all of its secrets yesterday morning, LG’s new flagship smartphone isnow an official product and we have all of the details for the LG faithful looking to upgrade their handsets in the near future.

It’s called – surprise, surprise – the LG G3. No radical new nomenclature here.

As we reported yesterday, the G3 features all of the hardware specifications you’d expect from a flagship smartphone in 2014. A quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor running at 2.5GHz is paired to either 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage or 3GB of RAM with 32GB of storage depending on which model you choose (or which one we get in South Africa when it launches later this year). Supplying the power is a 3 000mAh removable battery which LG’s engineers are claiming has a new graphite cathode that will see it lasting all through the day along with wireless charging capabilities.

Standing out from the usual details on the spec sheet however is the incredible 5.5 inch 1440×2560 resolution display which, according to LG, takes up 76.4% of the entire surface area of the front of the new G3 because of the insanely small bezels surrounding it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDIzu2yWWLw

It has a new 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation that should help low-light camera performance along with a new laser auto focus which LG is saying will drastically increase the speed with which the phone takes images after you tap the screen. The camera software has also been drastically overhauled leaving you with only a back button to exit the app and another to view recently captured images. Photos are taken simply by tapping on the display to focus and capture the image. Of course all of the familiar manual controls can be brought back onto the screen for those who prefer them.

On the outside, LG has opted for a brushed-metallic finish for the polycarbonate exterior with a scratch resistant coating that stops just short of the self-healing rear end we saw on the LG G Flex. As with its predecessor, the G2, and the G Flex, the LG G3 will have its power and volume buttons beneath the camera module at the rear of the phone, something which we loved from the moment we first used them last year.

The LG G3 runs the latest iteration of Google’s Android operating system, version 4.4.2, with a new version of LG’s customisation over the top of it with rounded icons making their presence felt. The most intriguing to us however are the additions to the security software that the LG G3 comes with. Among the software ‘enhancements’ is Smart Notice, a personal assistant style app in the mould of Google Now. LG says that Smart Notice will remind you to call back missed calls from contacts, prompt you to add unknown callers as contacts, ask if you want to delete unused files or apps and even uses Siri-like natural language prompts like reminding you to take an umbrella because it may rain instead of just displaying the temperature.

The G Pro 2’s Knock Code is back along with a new content lock that promises to lock down files both on the device and on microSD cards whether they are being viewed on the LG G3 itself or on a PC with a file explorer. The other new addition is that of the Kill Switch which promises Android Device Manager like remote locking and remote wiping of the a stolen LG G3 among other non-specified features.

All in all we cannot wait to get our paws on the latest from the South Korean electronics powerhouse when it finds its way to South Africa later this year.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement