LG unveils the G5

After what seemed like months of rumors, leaks, and speculations on LG’s latest flagship Android smartphone, the Korean company has finally announced the LG G5.

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In keeping with the premium, flagship quality of smartphones, LG has replaced the plastic exterior from the its previous flagship, the G4 is using a full-metal unibody. However, unlike most phones using full-metal design, the LG5 still has a removable battery as well as an expandable microSD slot which can take up to 2TB. Speaking of expandable, the LG G5 is also designed to modular, the bottom slides out which also reveals the removable battery. The bottom can be replaces with other modules such as the LG CAM Plus which adds camera controls to the LG G5 making it a potent digital camera as well as an additional battery to take more photos. LG also announced the LG Hi-Fi Plus with B&O Play module which is a DAC and AMP module that boasts high quality audio.

The LG G5 has an 8MP front camera for high quality selfies. The rear has two cameras which include a 16MP sensor as well as an 8MP sensor that assists the main camera to give 135 degree wide-angle photos. It also has fingerprint scanner located at the rear. Charging the LG G5 uses the new USB type-C connector and Qualcomm’s Quickcharge 3.0 technology as well.

The display of the LG G5 is 5.3” with a resolution of 2560×1440 IPS LCD (554 PPI). LG is also boasting that the display of the LG G5 is always-on which shows the time as well as notifications. For those fearing that the always-on feature is a battery drain, LG promises that the feature only consumes 0.8% per hour of battery and that only 1/3 of the screen is always on similar to the way the second display of the company’s on V10 smartphone.

Under the metal skin, the LG G5 sports Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 820 SoC which includes X12 LTE modem which supports even higher throughput thus faster data speeds. It also boasts a whopping 4GB of ram and 32GB of storage as standard.

The LG G5 will come in four colors (silver, gold, pink, titan (grey)) and will come with Android 6.0 Marshmallow with LG UX. Price and availability were not given at the launch.

LG Friends

Along with the LG G5, LG also announced a number of accessories that is fully compatible with the new flagship. The LG 360 CAM is a portable camera that takes 360 degree photos and videos. The LG 360 VR is a VR headset that boasts 1/3 of the average weight and 20% sharper than a typical VR headset. The LG Rolling Bot is a Sphero-like toy with built-in camera that can be used for home monitoring with WiFi. It also has a pet care mode with built-in laser pointer to play with your pets remotely. Partnering with Parrot, LG has developed the LG Smart Controller which is used to control Parrot drones. All these accessories are managed using LG Friends Manager.

Just as the presentation was about to end, LG teased the press with a video with three black boxes with Question Marks given to three athletes and then action scenes played with what looks like real-time streaming to the LG G5 smartphone. We could only speculate that hidden in the boxes are action cameras with streaming capability.