The South Korean electronics company has announced its new premium smartphone, the LG V50ThinQ 5G, which comes with an optional screen cover that essentially doubles its screen size.
This was announced at the annual Mobile World Congress, which is currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain.
On Sunday and last week, LG rivals Huawei and Samsung both revealed smartphones with flexible screens that look like normal-sized smartphones, but then fold out to become mini tablets.
LG's answer to the trend is not a foldable display, but a smartphone cover that houses another full-size screen and attaches to the phone and acts like a tiny clam shell laptop.
The company says the second screen was developed as an optional accessory for the LG V50ThinQ 5G. "Designed to resemble a cover case, Dual Screen opens up to give LG V50ThinQ 5G owners a second 6.2-inch OLED display for double the viewing, gaming and multitasking experience," LG said in a statement.
The Dual Screen display can be used independently, so, for example, the user can be watching a movie on the top screen and look up information on the actress who plays the lead on the other.
The Dual Screen does not have its own battery and is powered by the LG V50ThinQ 5G. Together, the smartphone and space screen weigh 314 grams.
Other than the in-cover screen optional extra, the LG V50ThinQ 5G is the first 5G handset smartphone from the manufacturer. LG says this will allow users to experience high-quality content at 5G speeds, expected to deliver up to 20 times the speed of 4G.
LG is partnering with 10 major carriers in markets where 5G service will be launched this year, including the US, South Korea, Australia as well as several European countries.
The LG V50ThinQ 5G is powered by the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform, with the Snapdragon X50 5G modem and LG's optimised software to deliver the advanced processing power required for 5G. It runs on Android 9.0 Pie.
It has a 6.4-inch QHD+ OLED FullVision display, 4 000 mAh battery, 6GB of RAM, and 128GM internal memory with a microSD slot. The camera set-up on the smartphone includes three lenses on the back, a 16MP super-wide, 12MP standard, and 12MP telephoto. The front lenses are an 8MP standard and 5MP wide.
LG also unveiled the LG G8ThinQ at the event in Spain. Instead of having facial recognition or a fingerprint sensor to unlock the device, the LG G8ThinQ is the world's first smartphone with advanced palm vein authentication, which uses infrared sensors to recognise the pattern, shape, thickness and other individual characteristics of the veins in the palm of a user's hand.
No local pricing or launch dates were given for either smartphones. Sadly, 5G is not yet available in South Africa as yet, so smartphones that are optimised for the network may not make it to the Southern tip of the continent.
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