New Delhi, January 6 – LG on Monday announced G Flex 2, a phone with a curved 5.5-inch screen. It is the successor to the last year’s Flex but packs in much more powerful components. The announcement was made at Consumer Electronics Show 2015 in Las Vegas.
The Flex 2 is powered by Snapdragon 810, the next-generation high-end processor from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 810 is successor to the Snapdragon 805. It has 8 cores running at up to 2.0GHz.
The processor is accompanied by 2GB DDR4 RAM, which is a first for a smartphone. The Flex 2 also has 16GB internal storage and support for up to a 2TB — yes, you read it right; that is terabyte — microSD card.
Currently, we do not know the real performance advantage that Snapdragon 810 will offer over the Snapdragon 805 because a phone powered by it is yet to hit the market. But at least in benchmarks it should be faster than the Snapdragon 805.
For now we also don’t know if DDR4 will result in better memory bandwidth in the Flex 2 considering we don’t know the speed at which this memory operates. Nowadays high-end phones have DDR3 memory running at 1600MHz.
The Flex 2 uses an AMOLED screen with fullHD resolution. It has a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilisation and laser focus, which can also be found in the LG G3. The front camera has a 2.1-megapixel image sensor. It has a 3000mAh battery.
The phone will use Android Lollipop. It will launch in South Korea at the end of this month. For now LG has not announced any price for it. The Flex 2 also features a special coating on its back cover that helps it will deal with very minor scratches in a better way. LG calls it self-healing technology.
“The Self-Healing back, which keeps the phone looking new even through the nicks and scratches from normal everyday use, has also been improved (in the Flex 2) with significantly faster healing time. LG reduced the healing time from about three minutes to just with in ten seconds at room temperature,” said a spokesperson.
“The original G Flex demonstrated LG’s pioneering spirit and with the G Flex2 we have refined the curved form factor,” said Juno Cho, president and CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications. “The G Flex2 not only has the stunning looks, it also has the powerful guts to be at the cutting edge of current smartphone technology.”
Curved screens are believed to be the next big thing in the smartphone market but for now it is not clear in what way they can add to the user experience. LG is not the only company experimenting with curved screens. Its Korean counterpart Samsung too is doing it.
However, both companies have different approaches. As the Flex 2 shows, LG is pushing ahead with a screen that is curved from the centre. Samsung, however, introduced a screen that was curved on one edge – right edge – in the Galaxy Note 4 Edge in 2014.
The company, effectively treats the display on the Galaxy Note 4 Edge as two screens – one main screen and other the curved strip on which notifications or app icons can be placed.
-INDIA TODAY
