We've seen it leaked quite a few times leading up to this official announcement, but today LG did something a bit out of the ordinary by flying us out to Seoul South Korea to launch their first smartphone with Qualcomm's quad core Krait APQ8064 SoC and a host of other features. It's the LG Optimus G, and is based around a 4.7-inch 1280x768 IPS display with in-cell touch from LG Display, and includes either an 8 MP camera with no back bulge or 13 MP camera with a slight bulge. I've put together a table with the LG Optimus G specifications, which are about as beefy as they come these days. The only thing that's missing is a microSD card slot and user replaceable battery. I'm told that LG's emphasis for this design was getting the G as thin as possible, at 8.45mm. 

LG Optimus G Specifications
Device LG Optimus G
SoC 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro
(APQ8064: 4 x Krait + Adreno 320)
RAM/NAND/Expansion 2 GB LPDDR2, 32 GB NAND, no microSD
Display 4.7" WXGA TrueHD IPS Plus (1280x768) with In-Cell Touch
Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9615 UE Category 3 LTE)
Dimensions 131.9mm x 68.9mm x 8.45mm, 145 grams
Camera 13.0 MP or 8.0 MP Rear Facing, 1.3 MP Front Facing
Battery 2100 mAh 3.8V (7.98 Whr)
OS Android 4.0.x
Connectivity 802.11b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC

I've been talking for a while now about a host of smartphones coming up based on Qualcomm's Fusion 3 platform, which is to say specifically the combination of APQ8064 AP and MDM9615 baseband. LG's Optimus G looks to be one of the first which will appear sporting that combo, and will be available in Korea this week, followed by the US in October on an aggressive release schedule. There are a couple others, but it's starting to look like the Optimus G might end up being the first in appreciable volume.

LG has talked a lot about how the Optimus G includes some firsts from its own teams, including LG Innotek and LG Display into the 4.7-inch IPS display with in-cell touch, and LG Chem with their new Li-Ion polymer cells that support more cycles and sport the 3.8V nominal chemistry. This is also LG's thinnest smartphone to date, apparently.

We're going to go hands on with the LG Optimus G shortly, but initial suspicions are a design which closely mirrors the LG Optimus LTE2 and previous Prada phones, but in an even thinner form factor and with speedier SoC.

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  • ferro - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Any idea as to what DAC it uses? I went from a Galaxy S to an LTE S3 and the audio quality is horrible compared to the Wolfson DAC on the S. Even my 4G Nano blows the S3 away. I like this LG phone's aspect ratio and screen size for my hands and am hoping that it might be a good upgrade path if it has a DAC that is not crap. Otherwise I will either have to lose some money and exchange for the international S3 or wait for the S4 and hope it is better.
  • gelb - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    A solution could be the purchase of a lower end amp to compensate. Unless you want some serious audiophile level listening experience, and Fiio E6 or E11 should be good enough. That's just my opinion though seeing as I'm more of an enthusiast rather than an audiophile.
  • MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    An amplifier won't cure a poor DAC implementation, if that's the real source of the lower sound quality.
  • Araemo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    No, but a USB dac/amp would. And they're supported (at least if you have cyanogenmod on your LTE S3, but I think some are even supported by stock software)

    Personally, I use the car dock for audio so an external dac isn't as useful for me.. but when I'm actually playing audio I don't notice the difference as much. (I can hear it when I'm parked and the car is quiet, but with road noise, not so much)
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Am I right in assuming that this phone will not play well with T-Mobile 4G in the US?
  • dagamer34 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    This thing is a BEAST.
  • Baroobob - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    No kidding, who's got the giant mitts to hold these things? It's all I can do to operate my HTC One S with one hand. Maybe HTC should have called it the Two S for two hands only, might actually have to think about buying an iPhone.
  • 1008anan - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The phone looks very exciting at first glance. Is this the fastest cell phone in the world (since OMAP 5 only has 2 A-15 and 2 M-4 cortex cores and since i-phone 5 only has 2 A-6 Apple customized cores)? Adreno 320 plus 4 28 nm Krait cores must be amazingly fast.

    This phone seems much larger, higher resolution and faster than the i-phone 5.

    What is the battery life on this phone? Front and back camera? Please tell us more ASAP.

    PS. Your podcast on South Korea is awesome!!! Seoul is nice. Still listening to the rest of your and Anand's podcast.
  • solipsism - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Out of curiosity, why do you spell it "i-phone"? I've seen plenty of other people do it that are very familiar with its specs so I can't imagine you don't know how to spell the name of the device with the most mindshare. That tells me that you are spelling un-correctly as a passive-aggressive move. Is that correct.
  • sciwizam - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Yes, that is correct. Thanks for the psych analysis.

    If you haven't noticed, the poster seems prone to hyphenate.

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