LG announced a pair of new phones this week, just days before they’re expected to announced their G5 flagship in Barcelona. The new phones are called the X cam and X screen, and are a part of a new range from LG, where each mid-range model has one flagship-grade feature; ‘premium features without the premium price.’ Perhaps more exciting is that they also give us a great idea of what the G5 will look like.
As you can probably guess, the X cam has a flagship-grade camera system… specifically, a dual-camera setup that is expected to arrive on the LG G5. The X screen, on the other hand, comes with the same ‘news ticker’ second screen that debuted on last year’s V10 and should reappear on the G5. Let’s look at each in a little more detail.
X cam
The X cam is probably the most exciting addition, so let’s look at that first. The phone has two camera lenses on the back; one for a 13-megapixel sensor and the other for a 5-megapixel sensor. The smaller is likely to be used to record depth information, allowing some unique shooting modes not possible with a single lens setup. We’ll learn more about how exactly this will work once the G5 is unveiled, but for now colour us intrigued.
X screen
The X screen is the second phone after the V10 to come with a secondary ticker display, a tiny sliver of screen just above the main display. This can be used for showing notifications, the time and other data while the main display is off, as well as housing controls and additional info while the main screen is on. The feature is a kind of halfway house between Samsung’s Edge displays and Motorola’s Ambient Display. It’ll be interesting to see whether the G5 gets the ticker, the always-on screen (as recently rumoured) or both.
X specs
Both phones share most of their specifications, so let’s cover them briefly here. Both feature 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, with Micro SD card support. Both have 13-megapixel rear cameras, and 8-megapixel cameras with wide-angle lenses up front. The X phones also come with LTE support, Android 6.0 Marshmallow on board and are ~7mm thick.
There are a few points of differentiation too. One is the screen setup; there’s a 4.93-inch 720p for the X screen and 5.2-inch 1080p for the X cam. The two phones also come with different processors; 1.14GHz octa-core for the X screen and 1.2GHz quad-core for the X cam. The exact brand isn’t specified, but Qualcomm’s latest processors are a good guess. The two phones also have different-sized batteries to match their different sizes, with the X cam getting a larger 2520mAh battery compared to the 2300mAh of the X display.
Conclusion
So there we have it — it’s a cool idea from LG, and it’s exciting to see how good the G5 is shaping to be. That should make the fight between the G5 and the Galaxy S7 quite an interesting one — which way are you leaning? Let us know in the comments below.