Hot on the heels of the launch of the LG G4, which will become available in Australia on July 14th, LG in Korea has announced a mid-range version of the handset, the LG G4 Beat.
LG believe the handset will be a good value proposition for users who aren’t able to shell out for the full G4, describing the G4 beat as ‘delivering value without compromising performance or usability’.
The phone is a cut-down version of the current flagship in terms of hardware, while some features like the Colour Spectrum Sensor have been brought accros, it’s also been given quite a few software features to keep it almost up to spec with the G4. A number of features are included in the G4 Beat such as
- High Performance Multimedia made possible by a powerful Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 615 Processor with Octa-Core performance and speed, which can handle Full HD 1080p playback at 60fps and capture at 30fps.
- Color Spectrum Sensor to measure the exact RGB and infrared values of ambient light and objects, resulting in colors that are truer to nature.
- Manual Mode to give users fine control over every detail of a shot, including shutter speed, ISO, exposure and white balance.
- Gesture Interval Shot improves on the original Gesture Shot by increasing the chance of getting that perfect shot even under challenging
Hardware wise, there is a fair bit missing, such as only having 8GB of storage which is definitely low and there’s no mention of microSD card slot (though the battery is removable so we’re hopeful it will), but a Snapdragon 615 should keep the device running fairly nicely and LG make some of the best displays in the business so that should be a big plus.
- 5.2-inch Full HD IPS In-Cell Touch LCD (1920 x 1080, 423ppi)
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Processor
- 1.5GB RAM
- 8GB eMMC ROM
- Rear 8MP LDAF (13MP in Latin America) Camera/5MP Front Facing camera
- Color Spectrum Sensor / Gesture Interval Shot / Full HD 1080p Video
- 4G LTE / HSPA+ 42.2Mbps (3G)
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n / Bluetooth 4.1 / NFC / A-GPS / Glonass / USB 2.0
- Battery: 2,300mAh (removable)
- Android 5.1.1 Lollipop
- 142.7×72.6×9.85mm @ 139gram
When it arrives on the market the G4 Beat will be available in three colours: Metallic Silver, Ceramic White and Shiny Gold, but unlike the higher end G4 there won’t be any Leather rear cover option, obviously premium costs a lot more.
The G4 Beat will arrive in Europe and Latin America, including France, Germany and Brazil this month before rolling out globally in markets such as Canada, India, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey. The LG G3 Beat eventually made its way to Australia last year, and though LG hasn’t announced Australia as a market for the phone we may still see it. We’ll be keeping an eye out for this one.
I have the G2 and I love the volume rocker being on the back.
LG G3, circa $400
So obviously, given this is objectively much less of a phone, it will be cheaper than that?
It would have to be ~$300 to get any attention whatsoever.
i still don’t understand y the volume button is back when phones with more thinner(almost zero) bezels still putting them on side. I remember LG saying that moving the buttons backwards helps them to achieve thinner bezels…which now makes me mad