World's thinnest by a whopping 1 mm
LG just announced the Optimus Black, its new flagship Android smartphone, at its CES press conference, and it looks great-a 4-inch, ultra-thin device that not only rivals but actually bests the iPhone in dramatic thinness.
The Optimus Black is part of a new crop of LG phones that do away with the confusing, mid-tier chromed-out phones of the company's recent past (like the Ally and Dare). Instead, LG is pushing a sleek design sense and a few boundary-pushing specs that are genuinely exciting. The Optimus Black may not be as huge as the Optimus 2X (the world's first dual-core smartphone, which has yet to see much specifics in terms of release date or country), but it's really coming, and it looks like a great introduction to what LG can do.
The Optimus Black's 4-inch screen (the ideal size for an Android phone) uses LG's new “NOVA” display, which LG claims is both brighter and more energy-efficient than competing LCD and AMOLED screens used by Samsung and HTC. No word on processor, but it's a safe assumption that it'll use a 1GHz processor. The phone itself is dramatically thin, at only 9.2mm-a full mm thinner than the already-thin iPhone 4. One design touch I really like is the use of an invisible mic grille, so the front of the phone is unmarred by unseemly holes or panels.
The phone will pack a 2MP front-facing camera for video chat, and will run Android 2.2 when it's released worldwide sometime in the first half of 2011. LG says it'll be upgraded to Android 2.3, the newest version of Android (which currently exists only on one phone, the Nexus S), but given that it's running a customized version of Android, that upgrade may be slower than if it was using stock Android. No word on which network it'll run on here in the States, but it looks like a really promising phone and we'll keep you updated if we hear anything new.
