MANILA - South Korea's LG on Thursday launched its flagship G7 ThinQ smartphone in the Philippines, betting on a slew of new features to give it an edge over an increasingly crowded market.
The G7 ThinQ's screen can get twice as bright as its rivals at a maximum 1,000 nits, making it visible even in direct sunlight, LG said.
But while LG blazed the trail in the tall screen trend with 2017's G6, the G7 ThinQ's screen has a notch on the top. It's a design cue from Apple's iPhone X that has since been adopted by Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi.
The dual cameras on the rear, which shoots in LG's signature wide angle, are now AI-equipped, allowing the phone to automatically choose the best settings depending on the subject.
Like most high-end phones released in 2018, the G7 ThinQ (pronounced thin-que) has a metal and glass body. Inside, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, up to 6GB of RAM and up to 128 GB of storage
The G7 ThinQ has a 3,000 mAh battery powering the 6.1-inch QHD screen. It's at par with the Samsung Galaxy S9, which has a 5.8-inch screen, but smaller than the 4,000 mAh on the 6.1-inch Huawei P20 Pro and the 3,500 mAh on the 6.2-inch Galaxy S9+.
What sets apart the ThinQ from other dual camera systems, LG said, is that is uses a fast and bright f1.6 lens on its main shooter. The wide angle camera is no slouch either with an f1.9 lens.
"It’s a very bright camera, and what’s great about it is that if the scene is dark, it automatically brightens it up," said Faith Mijares, marketing manager for LG smartphones.
The AI will recognize a dark scene and adjust the camera’s settings to compensate, Mijares said. The G7 ThinQ also has 19 shooting modes that range from landscapes, flowers, food to selfies, she said.
When shooting in landscape, the phone will suggest the wide angle lens, said tech blogger Abe Olandres of Yugatech.com, who previewed the unit.
Unlike a lot of other phone manufacturers today, LG opted to put just one camera up front on the G7 ThinQ. If selfies are your main concern, you might find the the phone's 8MP f.18 front camera a bit lacking.
But while a lot of phone manufacturers have made the camera the center of their innovation, LG is one of a few brands that have also put a premium on audio.
The G7 ThinQ has a boombox feature that allows it to pump higher decibels than competing flagships. During the launch, tech journalists got to test this and despite the ambient noise of the venue, the sound from the phone was still audible.
It also retained the headphone jack and kept the 32-bit Quad DAC for crisp audio that it started with 2016's V20.
The LG G7 ThinQ is available for pre-order until June 17.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
