LG has unveiled the first new smartphone, the V20, to come with Google’s latest version of Android 7 Nougat.
The South Korean firm, which was responsible for manufacturing last year’s Nexus 5X for Google and the recent modular G5, hopes that shipping with Nougat onboard will be enough to tempt buyers away from Samsung’s high-profile Galaxy Note 7. The Samsung phablet runs last year’s Android 6 Marshmallow and recalls have been prompted by exploding batteries.
The new top-end Android smartphone comes with a standard 5.7in quad HD LCD screen on the front, but also has a smaller always-on “ticker” display just above it alongside the front-facing camera.
Always-on displays have become popular, with most high-end smartphones, including those from Samsung, Motorola and Google, offering features that constantly show or slowly flash notifications and the time on the main screen. LG introduced the second-screen on last year’s V10.
“The V20 was built with storytellers in mind; the visual generation,” LG mobile communications director Frank Lee said at the unveiling in San Francisco. “It was designed to celebrate the idea of unmissable moments.”
The phone comes with two cameras on the back, one standard 16 megapixel camera and one wide-angle 8 megapixel camera, which are similar to that fitted to the company’s G5 smartphone. The V20 has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, similar to competitors.
But it is the removable battery and a microSD card slot that put the V20 among the handful of top-end smartphones with swappable batteries – a highly desirable feature for power users.
Whether the two-screen, two-camera, removable battery and “utilitarian appearance” are enough to sway buyers and revitalise LG’s falling mobile sales remains to be seen.
“I don’t think this will set the world on fire,” said the Current Analysis research director Avi Greengart. “That said, if you are looking for a large phone right now, and a name brand, this could be an option.”
The V20’s release comes on the eve of Apple’s unveiling of its next iPhone, which is widely speculated to come with two cameras on the back, similar to LG and Huawei’s recent smartphones.
