LG has been hard at work developing a smartphone with a curved display, that much we already knew, and on Monday the company officially announced the G Flex. LG is billing it as the “world’s first ‘real’ curved smartphone,” though Samsung recently introduced a similar device called the Galaxy Round.
The G Flex takes some design cues from LG’s G2, including the back “rear key,” that provides the power button and volume controls and eliminates any need for buttons on the sides of the device. It offers a 6-inch plastic OLED screen with a curved OLED panel, which LG says will help it offer more durability than panels that aren’t flexible. The phone also employs a curved 3,500mAh battery and a “self healing” coating on the backside that is capable of recovering from “the daily wear-and-tear scratches and nicks that un-cased smartphones are likely to receive.”
Under the hood you’ll find a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera and support for LTE-A, LTE, HSPA+ and GSM networks. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean out of the box.
The G Flex will launch in Korea on each of the three major wireless operators and will be available next month. LG has plans to launch the phone in additional markets, though didn’t name them.
