LG just announced a pretty rad phone. It’s got two screens, two selfie cameras and a name that suggests aggressive performance. Meet the V10.
So first of all – that two screens thing. One is a normal screen, a 5.7-inch displaying running at a crisp 1440p resolution. The other screen is the oddity, a tiny 2.1-inch ticker above the main display that stays on constantly. You can use it to see the time, your battery life and other bite-sized bits of information when the main display is off; otherwise it’s a place for app shortcuts to hang out even when you’re in the midst of an another app. It’s a cunning idea, and it has some advantages over other glanceable information sources like smartwatches or ambient displays.
Having two front-facing cameras sounds weird as well, but it also makes sense. The two cameras’ viewpoints can be stitched together to offer a wide-angle field of view, without the distortion that can appear from a traditional single wide-angle lens. You can also record simultaneously from both front 5-megapixel cameras (and the rear-facing 16-megapixel camera) in what LG is calling multi-view recording, although it’s not clear what potential use that has.
The V in V10 actually stands for video, and it’s not just because you have one more extra video camera than normal to play with. It’s more about the manual video recording mode, which allows you to fine-tune settings like shutter speed, frame rate, ISO, white balance and focus. That degree of control – and the ability to shoot in cinema-native 21:9 – could make it a great phone for aspiring smartphone-toting film-makers, of which there are a surprising number.
Power users should also appreciate the now-retro removable battery and micro SD card expansion, which will definitely come in useful for extended 4K video shoots. Inside, there’s plenty of performance to spare too, with a Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Android 5.1.1 is the OS of choice, and hopefully the phone will receive Android 6.0 once that’s released later this year.
The LG V10 is being released in South Korea later this month (October), and should arrive in the UK, Europe, the US and other parts of the world later this year. It’ll be available in five different colours – black, white, beige and two blues.
Are you interested in the LG V10? Let us know in the comments below!