LAS VEGAS--LG Electronics unveiled its latest Optimus Android smartphone, and said it will announce a new tablet product Thursday in a separate announcement here at the Consumer Electronics Show.
At a press conference notable as much for its lack of an expected tablet announcement than what was announced, LG took the wraps off of the Optimus Black, the latest of its high-end phones running Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android platform. The Optimus Black is just 9.2mm thick, and also features a 4-inch NOVA display, which LG claimed was its most advanced display for a mobile device ever. LG said that the NOVA display reduces power consumption by 50 percent during general indoor use compared to a conventional LCD screen. The company also said that AMOLED screens consume twice as much power as NOVA to display a full white screen.
The Optimus Black runs on Android 2.2 and will be upgraded to Android 2.3. The phone has a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and also has a WiFi Direct feature to allow data sharing between mobile devices. LG didn't release pricing or name any carrier partners for the Optimus Black, but said it will be available globally in the first half of this year.
Skott Ahn, the president and CTO of LG Electronics, said that the company will have a tablet announcement Thursday. LG is widely expected to unveil a tablet running the "Honeycomb" version of Android, with an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.
In addition to the smartphone announcement, LG said its modules and modem chip will be available on Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) LTE network. The companies said that the module and modem chip are applicable for machine-to-machine solutions. Ahn said to stay tuned for LTE announcements later in the week. "LTE is a really big deal for mobile data and we are taking it very seriously," he said.
For more:
- see this Optimus Black release
- see this Verizon-LG release
- complete CES coverage
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