LG have lost their way in recent times and this year they are attempting to get their mojo back with a new design and a new naming system for their smartphones. Not only that the new smartphone looks set to offer a whole new take on the smartphone for LG.

The Velvet is a very stylish phone from LG, much different to the very industrial designs of the past and is set to be announced on May 7 in South Korea. It seems though that LG are all too happy to share details of the device well before release showing it off today in a post to their Korean Social Newsroom — which may not be a bad idea these days given the sheer number of leaks we see of all devices, why not get out ahead of it and create your own narrative?

The text accompanying the imagery of the LG Velvet on the LG website talks about the new “Waterdrop Camera” and “3D Arc Design”. The rear camera is called this as it is designed to mimic the visualisation “as if water droplets are falling”.

The phone is just 6.8mm thick (we assume they mean thick) and 74.1mm wide with the curved display called “3D arc design”. The rear of the device has the same curvature as the front with the curvature designed to sit naturally into the hand — I suspect it will not on a desktop though.

The build has a metal “material” to the edges of the phone with the corners of it designed to give a “sense of stability”. The curved front display is a 6.8-inch 20.5:9 aspect ratio display accompanying stereo speakers to allow for maximum immersion in media consumption.

The waterdrop camera setup on the rear includes a 48MP main camera with “quad binning” technology, an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 5MP depth camera which they promise will give amazing imaging results. There is support for time lapse video and images, along with the ability to separate background noise from video sound when recording.

Inside the device is a Snapdragon 765 5G chipset, as expected and already revealed by LG, and is powered by a 4,300mAh battery. Once again there will be supported accessories including the second display and a stylus (both sold separately).

Overall the LG Velvet looks to be at least a good looking design and given LG’s history of extremely poor, resource-hogging software it will be interesting to see just how well it performs. We are hoping for the best from LG and this refocussing of their efforts looks to be set to pay dividends, at least in the design stakes.

With launch on the 7th May it is still unclear whether the Velvet will make it to our shores but we hazard a guess that it will at some stage given LG’s history of bringing their devices here in the past. It’s certainly a good looking device but is it enough from LG to make you trust them again?

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Jack Bauer

Would love this phone if it wasn’t too tall.

Oldmike

Nice looking phone Scott , even pretty , apart from the slightly more squared off corners and dot rear cameras , it does remind me of my S8+ , my S8+ was/is still like a beautiful slippery pebble to hold in the hand , almost a work of case art imo . I kinda wish phone makers would maybe focus on being less slippery to hold in the hand , all these modern phones , even bigger ones are like hanging onto a fish , my note 9 is even with a bit more of an industrial design (not in… Read more »