LG: LG’s best, code­named G and the first quad core LTE smart­phone pow­ered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 CPU, is rumored to sport a 4.7-inch True HD IPS+ LCD. Naturally LG Electronic’s sis­ter com­pany LG Display (LGD) devel­oped the LCD, which sports a 1280×768 pixel for­mat, a 15:9 aspect ratio, and RGB sub-pixels. The 317.6-ppi LCD has a white bright­ness of 470 nits and uses 70% less power than pre­vi­ous LCDs.

The touch screen called G2 Touch Hybrid Display, devel­oped by LG Innotek, sports a lam­i­nated touch screen, elim­i­nates the gap between the touch panel and the LCD panel, and results in a 30% reduc­tion of thickness.

Wish list: stock Android 4.1, opti­cally lam­i­nated cover glass, 3D sym­met­ric design, less plas­tic more met­als, absolutely no logos on the front.

Update 2012.08.27: LG (Korean): LG’s new flag­ship smart­phone is called Optimus G and will be avail­able in South Korea next month on SK, KT, and U+. Japan’s NTT Docomo is expected to carry the Optimus G in October or November. In addi­tion to the impres­sive 4.7-inch IPS+ LCD the 8.45-mm smart­phone will sport a 13 megapixel camera.

Although LG didn’t come through with every­thing I wished for, the over­all design of the Optimus G looks quite nice. The front, with the excep­tion of the ear­phone slit on top, is com­pletely flat and devoid of any but­tons sug­gest­ing it will sport capac­i­tive touch but­tons. I’m not com­pletely fond of capac­i­tive touch but­tons, but I do like the sim­ply flat front. If only the LG logo on the front wasn’t there. The shape seems to be sym­met­ri­cally rec­tan­gu­lar, which I like much more than the curvy Samsung Galaxy S III. Let’s hope LG made copi­ous use of metal­lic mate­ri­als and left the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich bone stock. Looks like a win­ner to me.

Update 2012.08.28: Jeff Blagdon at The Verge took the Optimus G for a spin at NTT Docomo’s launch event in Tokyo, Japan. He was impressed:

[...] the 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 LCD is impres­sively bright and crisp — with­out a doubt one of the best dis­plays we’ve seen on any device.

He’s not thrilled with the boxy con­struc­tion or the large top and bot­tom bezels, but I am par­tic­u­larly happy about it. Boxy means straight sym­met­ric lines, which I pre­fer to neb­u­lous. The top and bot­tom bezels (looks like they are the same width—bravo!), prob­a­bly at around thumb width, are nec­es­sary for a com­fort­able hold in land­scape orientation.

Three things. One, LG need not have wasted time on its Optimus UI 3.0 skin. Let Google do fuss over it or work with Google to make the stock Android UI bet­ter. Two, tak­ing a close look at the photo gallery (granted it’s the Dokomo ver­sion) LG seems to have made lib­eral use of plas­tic. Yuck. Three, the off-centered cam­era (I don’t like the off cen­tered­ness of the cam­era on the iPhone either) on the back looks overblown with the chromed plas­tic bezel.

Update 2012.10.15: Dieter Bohn, The Verge:

Branding aside, the dis­play is sim­ply great. Unlike the Galaxy S III or RAZR HD, col­ors aren’t overblown and blues are given equal treat­ment to warmer tones. At nearly 318 PPI and with a stan­dard RGB sub­pixel lay­out, text is crisp and beau­ti­ful. LG also has man­aged to get its bright­ness in a good range: with auto­matic, you set a “base” with the bright­ness slider or you can adjust man­u­ally. Viewing angles are excel­lent, match­ing the iPhone 5 and com­ing within spit­ting dis­tance of the HTC One X — although even now I still have to give the One X the edge as the best dis­play on a smartphone.

I under­stand why AT&T and Sprint want cus­tomized ver­sions (soft­ware and hard­ware), but I think it’s absolutely ridicu­lous. The AT&T ver­sion has an 8MP cam­era off to the side while the Sprint ver­sion has a 13MP one in the cen­ter. There are other dif­fer­ences, but here’s the point: The LG Optimus G should be the same thing whether it’s on AT&T or Sprint. Even when it was a nobody devel­op­ing the orig­i­nal iPhone Apple had enough balls to say no. No to cus­tom hard­ware. No to pro­pri­etary car­rier soft­ware. And no to ugly car­rier logos. HTC, LG, Samsung, and every smart­phone man­u­fac­turer should grow some.

When I saw the photo at the top of this post I thought, “Wow, LG is finally get­ting design.” The photo sported a min­i­mal­ist, sym­met­ri­cal design I thought was quite beau­ti­ful. Well, the pho­tos taken by The Verge show a dif­fer­ent smart­phone, one that looks cheap.

Update 2012.11.05: Hmm. Maybe the pho­tos taken by The Verge didn’t give the LG Optimus G enough jus­tice. The pho­tos by Ars Technica tells a dif­fer­ent story. (Tip: Clean the dis­play before tak­ing a photo.)

Florence Ion:

This phone is, sim­ply put, gor­geous. It has a 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus dis­play cov­ered by a sheet of Gorilla Glass 2. The screen is framed by a barely-there black bezel, with tex­tured bot­tom and top pan­els and rounded cor­ners seal­ing it all together. The whole pack­age looks sleek, indus­trial, and business-like.