LG officially announced its new flagship smartphone, the Optimus G, at an event in South Korea last night, and the company is swinging for the fences with its specifications. The phone includes a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (and no microSD card slot), LTE, Android 4.0, and a 1280x768 4.7" IPS display. It also includes NFC, 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0, weighs just over five ounces, and is 0.33 inches thick. According to AnandTech, there will be two versions: one with an 8 megapixel camera that sits flush with the back of the device, and one with a 13MP camera that protrudes slightly from the rear of the device.
As we saw when we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy SIII, the dual-core version of the Snapdragon S4 can go toe to toe with quad-core processors based on older Cortex A9 cores, and the quad-core version (model number APQ8064) is theoretically capable of twice the performance given software optimized to take advantage of the processing power. The Adreno 320 GPU in the chip is also very capable: benchmarks from AnandTech show its performance falling somewhere in between the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 in the iPad 2 and the SGX 543MP4 in the most recent iPad—well ahead of other SoCs commonly used in Android devices, and more than capable of driving the Optimus G's display.
To conserve battery power, LG has also seen fit to include an "Eco Mode," which disables two of the Optimus G's cores. This will make the phone perform more like a device using the dual-core Snapdragon S4, but reportedly bumps battery life by about 10 percent.
All of this power does come with a price, however—Engadget reports that the unlocked version of the phone is selling for ￦999,000, or about $893 at the current exchange rate (they don't say, however, whether that is for the 8MP or 13MP version). For reference, the unsubsidized version of the Galaxy SIII is $599 for the 16GB device and $649 for 32GB, and the unlocked iPhone 5 starts at $649 for 16GB, $749 for 32GB, and $849 for 64GB—it remains to be seen whether LG will change the price for the phone's US launch. The device is launching now in South Korea, with US availability reportedly coming in October.
