As well as their headline smartphone announcements this morning, Verizon have also officially confirmed a couple of featurephones that have each been rattling around the rumor mill for a while. The LG Chocolate Touch and Samsung Convoy – a touchscreen candybar and rugged flip, respectively – don’t have the Android magic or hardware QWERTY of the Verizon DROID Eris by HTC or the BlackBerry Curve 8530.
Remember the LG GW620, the QWERTY slider Android smartphone that rocked up with its own mini-site last week? The handset has now made its way to Canada for a debut as the Rogers Wireless LG Eve, promising a Social Network Services (SNS) Manager that pulls together Twitter, Facebook and Bebo updates, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and – stealing a jump on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 – automatic face recognition tying images into contacts entries.
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Remember the LG GD510 POP? The 3-inch touchscreen cellphone is, according to LG, the smallest of its type with a display of that size; unfortunately that's because they've thrown out any such niceties as WiFi or 3G. Still, it's at least cheap: UK buyers can pick up the GD510 POP from today on a non-contract pre-pay plan, priced at £99.95 ($165).
Could we soon be looking at large(ish) scale, reasonably priced OLED and AMOLED displays? Probably not, at least when it comes to the pricing part, but both LG Display and AUO have announced mass production plans for their OLED and AMOLED panels, LG expecting to kick-start production in 2011 while AUO claims to be ready to start now.
It’s an Android week alright, with LG’s first Android smartphone, the LG GW620, getting its own mini-site. The page appears to be a work in progress, with form text rather than any actual press copy, but there are two video demos – which you can see after the cut – plenty of stock photos, and both the user manual and specification sheet for download.
Video demos after the cut
The actual benefits of transparent displays are yet to be explained – beyond the sheer cool factor, of course – but that isn’t stopping manufacturers from announcing them. Both LG Display and Samsung Mobile Display have been flaunting their respective transparent OLEDs, the former having a full 15-inch OLED panel ideal for notebooks, while the latter has a 2-inch OLED panel intended for cellphones.
LG have announced a new home cinema system, and if you’re a fan of globular satellite speakers and have an iPod then this might be worth a look. The LG HB954SP Blu-ray HCS packs a Full HD 1080p video and 5.1 surround sound audio system into a compact, blue-tinged box, with 1,000W of audio tuned by ear-wizard Mr Mark Levinson.
Virgin Mobile USA has announced that it is getting the new Rumor 2 mobile phone from LG. The device is a feature phone that has what most users want in a mobile phone at a decent price. The handset is available now for $129.99 without an annual contract.
There are lots of milestones that go along with rolling out a completely new type of mobile service like LTE. One of the milestones is to test the conformance of LTE handsets with older networks and with new LTE test networks. LG and a wireless testing firm called Anite have announced that they have completed the first LTE conformance test case.
LG’s first Android smartphone, the LG GW620, has made an appearance in France, and CNET were there to catch the sliding touchscreen handset on video. The GW620 has a 3-inch 320 x 480 resistive touchscreen, a full QWERTY keyboard, HSDPA 7.2Mbps and WiFi, and runs Android 1.5 Cupcake.
Video demo after the cut
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