The LG G7 ThinQ has officially been confirmed, and it will arrive in about three weeks, according to SlashGear. The G7 ThinQ appears to be a strong alternative to the Galaxy S9.
The LG G7 ThinQ will come with a notch at the top of the display, and will still have a bottom and forehead chin. When the iPhone X got the notch, the chin was replaced with the gesture inputs. The notch will have the in-call receiver and front-facing camera. For Android phones extending the display panel at the bottom for connection to the logic board might be too expensive. This could mean that even though the latest Android phones would get the notch, the chin is not going anywhere, according to Droid Life.
The LG G7 ThinQ camera 7 is expected to be better than the LG V30. Further, the handset will have vertically fitted cameras rather than horizontally. Beneath the volume rocker, there is an additional button, supposedly an AI assistant shortcut. Hopefully the key would be programmable, unlike Samsung’s non-customizable Bixby button.
Separately, a report from the Android Headlines revealed the different shades that LG G7 ThinQ would be available in. The handset would come in Aurora Black, Moroccan Blue, Platinum Grey, and Raspberry Rose. It is believed that the availability of the colors would depend on the region, but Aurora Black would be launched in all the markets.
Talking of the name, G7 represents the seventh edition of the phone. However, adding ThinQ makes it a bit uninteresting. The ThinQ denotes LG’s AI line, and it’s not very catchy. For instance, if Apple would have followed the same naming convention, it could have called its flagship iPhone X Siri.
Talking of the specs and the looks, the handset could prove a threat to the Galaxy S9 or even the iPhone X. It is believed that LG’s smartphone would sit on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, and come with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Further, LG G7 ThinQ pricing could also make it more lucrative than the Galaxy S9, which is being sold for about $800 by some carriers in the U.S. LG has still to reveal the pricing of the G7.
According to TechRadar, the preliminary AnTuTu benchmarking scores show that the LG G7 is better than the Samsung Galaxy S9. The LG G7 with a score of 252,473 is only behind Sony’s Xperia XZ2. By the time the phone would actually be launched, the OnePlus 6 would also be on the shelves and would house the same processor but even more RAM. So, it will be interesting to see which handset will attract more buyers.
LG Electronics as a whole is growing steadily and performing well, but the same can’t be said of its smartphone unit. As per the report from Statista’s info, LG sold 13.9 million smartphones in the fourth-quarter of last year, and 55.7 million smartphones in 2017 overall. In terms of market share or shipments, the Korean company is nowhere near the IDC’s top 5 smartphone vendors.
Xiaomi, which is at the fifth position, shipped 92.4 million smartphones, double what LG sold. The other top four smartphone manufacturers are Samsung, Apple, Huawei and OPPO, selling 317.3, 215.8, 153.1, and 111.8 million handsets respectively, according to IDC. So, LG has to do a lot to match the performance of others in the smartphone category.
Earlier releases such as the LG G4, G5, V10, V20 and V30 could not do much to contribute to the company’s sales. LG has been looking to set things right for its mobile unit, hoping to repeat the success that G, G2 and G3 handsets achieved. It’s not just the high-end phones, but also the mid-range phones sales have been grim for LG, thanks to the influx of mid-range high tech smartphones from the Chinese companies such as Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi and Vivo.
LG Mobile has been profitable only once since the first-quarter of 2015, and that was in the first-quarter of 2017. At the time, G6 sales helped it to turn green. However, two years before that, and since then, the unit has been giving out losses. The fate of LG’s mobile unit hinges a lot on the LG G7, due to arrive in a few weeks. The handset has already been delayed after the new CEO ordered a revamp in the design.
At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, LG also announced the V30S ThinQ handset. The phone would be similar to the LG V30, which was announced last year.
