Seoul LG just formally announced their latest and fastest smartphone, the LG Optimus G, which is officially the first handset to pack Qualcomm’s Fusion 3 chipset in the form of their Snapdragon S4 Pro.
For the unitiated, the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset (APQ8064) blows other quad-core chips (NVIDIA Tegra 3, Exynos 4412) out of the water thanks to its 1.5GHz quad-core CPU and Adreno 320 GPU. That’s a significant improvement if you’re after speed and power on your smartphone.
Going back to the Optimus G, it looks like the LG Optimus 4X HD and its 4.7-inch (1280 x 768) True HD IPS Plus display but with a slightly thinner 8.45mm frame. What’s different now is that the 2100mAh battery is now sealed and not replaceable, and there’s no microSD slot anymore so you have to make do with the 32GB internal storage. LG also doubled the RAM on the Optimus G from their previous quad-core phone to 2GB.
Android Jelly Bean didn’t make the cut here so it’s still Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the Optimus G.
LG upped the megapixel count on its rear-camera which has a backside-illuminated sensor on an f/2.4 lens. Should perform better than the poor showing of the Optimus 4X HD. At the front there’s still the same 1.3 megapixel camera.
The Qualcomm APQ8064 also supports LTE but we still have to wait if units outside Korea will have that feature.
According to Engadget, the unsubsidized pricing is around USD895 so that’s around the Php37,000 price range which is already in the I’ll-get-a-laptop-instead range. We’ll just have to wait for official local pricing when or if it gets here.