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LG has taken the wraps off a new smartphone that sports a second screen and offered a peek at a new smartwatch that can be used as a phone.
The company will show off the devices at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET Thursday in New York. CNET will have an exclusive live-stream of the event here.
The V10, the first in a new line of Android smartphones from the South Korean handset maker, features a second, independent screen inset above the handset’s main 5.7-inch screen that can be set to display weather, time, date and the device’s icon when the main display is turned off. When the main display is on, the second screen can be set up as a launching pad for the user’s shortcuts and favorite apps.
The V10 makes its debut in a bustling smartphone market, arriving just days after Google unveiled a pair of Nexus phones powered by its Android operating system and after Apple’s new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus went on sale.
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The stainless steel body features dual front-facing 5-megapixel cameras capable of taking wide-angle images without the user having to pan the handset from side to side. LG says the V10 can take 120-degree photos thanks to an algorithm that stitches together images captured from two separate lenses as if they are from one source.
The V10 also comes with video capturing, editing and sharing capabilities designed to produce more sophisticated videos. With the handset’s manual video mode, users can adjust shutter speed, frame rate, ISO, white balance and focus, all while shooting.
“The LG V10 was designed from the ground up primarily as a multimedia smartphone for the sharing ecosystem,” Juno Cho, CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications, said in statement. “We heard from many customers that until the G4, they weren’t comfortable going on vacation or outings without a separate camera. With the V10, we hope to do for video what the G4 did for photographs.”
In addition to the dual front-facing cameras, the V10 comes with a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, 4 gigabytes of RAM, 64 gigabytes of storage and a 3,000mAh battery.
The V10 will run Android 5.1.1 Lollipop when it debuts in Korea in October. Launches in the US, China and other Asian markets will follow soon after, although no pricing or carrier information was revealed.
LG Watch Urbane Second Edition
Enlarge ImageLG
LG also offered a glimpse of the LG Watch Urbane Second Edition, which the company touts as the first Android Wear device to have cellular connectivity that will let users make and receive calls from their wrists even when their smartphones aren’t handy. Resembling a classic timepiece, the handset features a 1.38-inch full circle P-OLED display with 480×480 resolution and 348 pixels per inch.
The Urbane is the latest Android Wear smartwatch among many wearables vying for consumers’ attention, as device manufacturers look to kick-start a new category of products.
The three buttons on the Urbane’s right side offer the user shortcuts to contacts, an apps list and LG Health, the electronics giant’s homegrown fitness tracker. The smarthwatch’s all-metal body also offers 16 watch faces as well as fitness-related features such as heart rate tracking, workout tips and stress level monitoring.
Powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip, the LG Watch Urbane Second Edition will launch initially in the US and Korea. Specific dates and pricing information were not available at the time of writing.
