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LG unveils G4 smartphone

Martin Czernowalow
By Martin Czernowalow, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 28 Apr 2015
The LG G4 comes with a 16MP camera designed to capture high-quality images, even under less than ideal lighting conditions.
The LG G4 comes with a 16MP camera designed to capture high-quality images, even under less than ideal lighting conditions.

LG on Tuesday unveiled its latest flagship handset, the G4, positioned to take on smartphone rivals Samsung and Apple.

The device follows last year's popular G3 smartphone, and has again been designed with the needs of the consumer in mind, said LG Mobile Communications president and CEO Juno Cho.

Cho noted the South Korean is living up to its promise of "innovation for a better life" with a premium smartphone focused on providing a balanced user experience.

"We wanted to give consumers a truly human-centric device that combined the analogue sensibilities with technologies that delivered real world performance," he said.

"From the design to the camera to the display to the UX [user experience], this is the most ambitious phone we've ever created."

According to Cho, the G4 is the first smartphone to use LG Display's new 5.5-inch IPS Quantum Display, offering 20% greater colour reproduction, 25% improvement in brightness and 50% greater contrast. The handset also boasts the first Quad HD display to employ Advanced In-Cell Touch (AIT) technology, which combines the LCD and touch sensor into a single layer to provide better colour reproduction and touch sensitivity.

The LG G4 comes with a 16MP camera designed to capture high-quality images, even under less than ideal lighting conditions. The camera module features a wide F1.8 aperture lens, allowing for 80% more light to reach the sensor.

The camera is further boosted by the colour spectrum sensor (CSS), which improves colour accuracy by precisely reading the RGB values of the ambient light in a scene, as well as the infrared light reflected from objects.

LG says CSS uses this information to adjust the camera's white balance and flash colour to create images as close to what one would see with the naked eye.

The handset features a high-capacity 3 000mAh removable battery, which is a departure from most modern high-end smartphones. According to LG, combined with the benefits offered by the QualcommSnapdragon 808 processor, the LG G4 has no trouble getting through a full day of normal use.

"LG and Qualcomm Technologies collaborated from the initial stage of the Snapdragon 808 introduction to expertly tune the technologies and make several of the LG G4's unique features possible," said Qualcomm executive chairman Dr Paul Jacobs.

"The resulting G4 smartphone is an ideal example of how the best optimized technologies come together to meet consumers' needs."

LG says the G4 is the first phone to utilise the new human-centric UX 4.0 that promises to be simpler and more intuitive to better understand and respond to the needs of each user. "The improved UX eliminates unnecessary steps while providing more configuration options for advanced users," the company said.

Google Office comes pre-installed on the LG G4, and users will receive an additional 100GB of Google Drive storage free for two years.

"With MirrorLink and LG G4, owners of Volkswagen vehicles will be able to view a car-friendly version of the G4 interface on the in-dash display for full integration with contacts, navigation and music on the smartphone," LG said.

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