LG have changed up their plans this year with a new naming scheme moving away from the G series and the V series to a Velvet. The Velvet is a change for LG offering a device that focuses on usability rather than specs — oh and it’s a good looking phone too.
The LG Velvet was made official in South Korea overnight and there was not a surprise in sight — with many of the leaks and rumours easily attributed to LG themselves.
As expected the LG Velvet is a great looking device with both sides curved and availability in some vibrant colours. The new design and colours are unfortunately offset by the now out-dated waterdrop notch.
Inside the Velvet has a 6.8-inch OLED display with a 1080P resolution powered by the expected Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 5G chipset. Accompanying this is 8GB of RAM and 128GB of a disappointing UFS 2.1 storage — there is microSD support too with up to 2TB possible.
The rear camera module is striking with a the rain drop design housing a 48MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens and a 5MP depth sensor. The front facing camera is the expected 16MP lens. The camera software comes with support for time-lapse with automatic and manual speed changes, voice out-of-focus to help remove background noise from videos and 3D AR stickers.
The LG Velvet also arrived with IP68 waterproofing and a rugged MIL-STD 810G specification. The finger print sensor is an in-display sensor and there is still an audio jack, NFC and Bluetooth 5.0.
Another non-surprise is the stylus support, this time for a Wacom Stylus with 4096 pressure levels for not just note-taking but also drawing and sketching — the Wacom Stylus is sold separately but it does also work with the Dual Screen accessory which must also be purchased separately.
The 4,300mAh battery supports Qi wireless charging and fast charging but there is no official word on the official speed of either. As you would hope it ships with Android 10 out of the box with LG’s Sense UI skin on top of it — hopefully that has been improved.
The official names for the colours are Aurora White, Aurora Gray, Illusion Sunset, and Aurora Green and it starts at KRW 899,800 (AU$1075). The pricing is possibly pushing into the premium level price-range, out of the mid-range but it is possible that is the correct price for it. It has more features than most mid rangers but does not have the extreme specs of an ultra-premium device.
At this stage we have no news if or when it will be released in Australia. We do expect it to arrive here at some stage but we suspect it won’t be for a couple of months.
It feels like LG are slapping a flogship premium price, on an overall mid tier device, simply because this device has AES2.0 active pen technology. LG are trying to follow in the footsteps of the Samsung Galaxy Note with pricing, but the price tag on this device is a misstep, especially noting the price of the new released Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite tablets. Like the 2016 Galaxy Tab A series, the S6 Lite has S pen tech at well under $1000.
LG really need to rethink their pricing strategy for the Velvet.
Wow just over of 1000.00, for mid range specs, don’t know about that
LG are dreaming again unfortunately. They just don’t get it. In 6 months time it will be almost half price cause no one is buying it.
And that’s their problem. Imagine if they significantly undercut the market, how many units they would sell successfully.