LG has taken a strange approach to launching the LG G4. It announced the display, the camera, the vegetable-tanned leather back and the new user interface prior to launch. It teased this new handset so hard, that come launch day, what was there left to say?
Yes, there's the holistic experience message and the wholesome life-through-technology marketing line, but what did we actually learn that we didn't already know?
We learned that the LG G4 will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset. LG didn't reveal the internal hardware prior to the event, probably to stave off knee-jerk criticism.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset is hexa-core (six cores), a slight departure from the octa-core (eight core) hardware you'll find in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9, its main rivals.
Qualcomm's Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO, even appeared at the New York event to explain how good the performance would be, and how the Adreno 418 GPU was designed specifically for the display of the LG G4. We suspect it will be perfectly suited to the task and we'll know as soon as we review it.
Then we have the Colour Spectrum Sensor. The claim here is that the G4 camera sees the difference between RGB and IR light, thanks to an additional sensor. Geeky as that might sound, the idea is that the G4 will be better at detecting the right colour spectrum for different conditions and result in better photos.
You can also save your photos in raw (DNG format) using the manual mode, using one button touch. This is something that HTC has promised and some Lumia models have flirted with. Capturing raw will allow post-processing on your computer - assuming you're not wanting to instantly share them - to adjust exposure, colour and other aspects after the shot is taken. So if you see something that you want to make more of later, then you can make adjustments.
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Aside from that, LG confirmed the slim arc design - the G4 is slightly curved - and that there are lots of leather colours, ceramic and polycarbonate backs. Although, for the UK at least, the leather options will come in black, burgundy and tan only.
We're still waiting on the pricing and availability, however, two critical parts of the equation.