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Welcome to LG’s new smartphone strategy. A new flagship every year, followed by an incremental upgrade six months later. It’s a strange approach that’s sure to annoy early adopters, but LG’s certainly not the first to adopt the strategy — it’s in-line with the sort of thing OnePlus, among others, have been doing for a while now.

The first such handset from LG bears similarly confusing branding — the LG V30S ThinQ. As the name implies, there’s very little difference here from a hardware perspective — “RAM and color” as the LG rep put it. Which is to say, the memory’s been bumped up to 6GB from 4- and the phone’s available in Platinum Gray and Moroccan Blue, the latter of which was chosen with help from the fine folks at Pantone.

So, why the long name? ThinQ is LG’s new umbrella name for its AI-centric offerings. In this case, specifically, it has to do with what the company is working on from the camera software perspective. LG’s doing a good job innovating on imaging hardware for a while now, and this addition aims to add to key AI and ML learnings to help improve the pictures it takes.

The Korean smartphone maker is leveraging software built by Berlin-based photography software startup EyeEm, with all of the processing happening locally on the hardware (versus sending it to a cloud-based server), speeding up the process a good deal. When you enter into the AI Cam setting, the phone starts cycling through potential objects.

Words flash on the display like a scene out of A Beautiful Mind. We trained the camera on a candle and “mannequin,” “food,” “wine” and “ham” all popped up on the screen as the system started thinking aloud. At the moment, the camera is trained to recognize eight specific categories:

• Person (portrait)
• Animal
• City/building
• Flower
• Sunrise
• Sunset (These are two separate)
• Food
• Landscape

The phone then adjusts the settings based on what it’s shooting — kind of an Artificial Intelligent Auto, if you will.

The results are largely pretty impressive, but still a little hit or miss in our limited testing. For instance, we put sushi, a pastry and grapes on a plate, and the camera had no problems recognizing it as “food.” It was similarly astute when we took photos of people. On the other hand, a large white dog that happened to be passing by as we were shooting also came up as “person.” To the best of our knowledge, it was not, in fact, a person in a dog suit, but who’s to say for sure, really?

The system seems to be flashy as much as it is actually impressive, but it points to the growing push toward mobile AI could be used to improve things like photography. And unlike other solutions, LG’s is happy to show its work to some degree. The update also has implications for other functionality, including the ability to do things like reading QR codes and to better serve as a smart home hub with LG’s own devices.

Of course, given the fact that this update is largely software, it’s also backward compatible, meaning the standard V30 will be getting the functionality “soon,” according to an LG rep. When, precisely that is, remains to be seen, but it shouldn’t be too long after the phone launches in its native Korea next month. So that should curb some of the FOMO among those who picked up the phone a few months back.

As for wider availability (including U.S.), we’ll probably be getting more info on that front soon. Ditto for pricing. Interestingly, the V30S will be replacing the V30 in some, but not all markets. A lot of that decision making is ultimately in the hands of the carriers in the given country.

Only LG can say it didn’t push to include the latest Qualcomm chip. After all, MWC is expected to be a bit of a soft launch for the Snapdragon 845, and this one’s only got the 835 — same as you’ll find in the standard V30. A rep hinted that the new chip is likely to arrive on a new phone from the company (no surprise there, really) and suggested that it’s a bit trivial to be the first to market with a new — which is both kind of true, but mainly just the kind of thing companies say when they’re not the first with a chip.

All in all, it’s a weird diversion from the standard smartphone upgrade cycle — but then, that’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from LG.

source:TechCrunch

LG's next flagship won't be unveiled next week in Barcelona. Here are a few guesses as to why (one rhymes with "Gamsung Salaxy").

MWC 2018, otherwise known as the world's biggest mobile trade show, kicks off Feb. 26. Though a bunch of phones, laptops and smartwatches are expected to launch during the event, including the highly-anticipated Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, there will be one phone that definitely won't be there: the LG G7.

Despite unveiling its flagship phone at the show in years past, like last year's G6, LG is opting to freshen up its V30 from 2017 with a new variant and roll out two other mid-tier phones at the show instead.

This leaves some, like me, wondering where oh where the G7 could be? Why is LG holding it back? Will it even be released at all? Here are a few theories.

Watch this:The LG G6 gives the people what they (mostly) want

Schedule, schmedule: LG doesn't want to be tied down

And by "tied down" I mean being tied to the predictable ebb and flow of major phone launches. If you're not Apple in September or Google in October, you most likely have to launch at least one of your big phones in February at MWC. (Even Samsung does this most years, which I'll get to later).

But earlier this year at CES 2018, LG said it was planning to shake up its timingwith new products. What better time to start than at MWC?

"We decided that it was time to try something different rather than letting one event drive so much of our strategy," wrote Ken Hong, senior director of LG's global corporate communications, in an email to CNET.

We get it Samsung. You're at MWC. Sarah Tew/CNET

Samsung's going to eclipses everything at MWC anyway

LG knows what's up. Competing for the limelight at MWC is like plants competing for sunlight at the bottom of the rainforest. With all these companies going at it, someone's going to get choked out. And try as everyone might, Samsung is like some giant Galaxy-phone-bearing Kapok tree gobbling up every bit of light available. This sucks for everyone aside from Samsung, but that's the reality.

So what can you do? Hold your own event and pray to the phone gods that you're a big and sexy enough company to attract all the tech reporters, bloggers and trendy YouTubers together for one glorious day? Google did this in 2016 when it launched its very first Pixel and LG should be able pull that of too. Plus, I did hear June is a nice time of year.

LG wants you to really like the V30 instead

There's a reason why revamping the V30 isn't such a terrible idea. The V30 is a pretty great phone in its own right -- we actually like it slightly more than the G6. Introducing improvements can only make the V-series better.

The new V30 will add image recognition software called Vision AI, which will enable the camera to recognize objects like flowers and landscapes, and adjust camera settings accordingly to take the best photo. This is similar to what the Huawei Mate 10 and 10 Pro can do. The new V30 will also have additional speech recognition smarts for advanced voice commands.

Of course, we'll need to check out the phone for ourselves at MWC to see if these new AI-centric additions are actually good and useful. But we're a fan of the V30, and it makes sense to build upon what already works instead of starting from scratch.

It doesn't want to rush anything

The modular LG G5 from 2016. Josh Miller/CNET

What is time anyway but a social construct designed to restrict our lives and destinies? Exactly -- LG gets it. It also knows what it means to launch a product and have it flail, like the modular G5 from 2016.

After the G5's hot-swappable design received a lukewarm reception, LG switched gears and dropped the modular concept with the G6. Reflecting back on the G5 after it hit the market, its chief technology officer Skitt Ahn said in Jan. 2017 that the phone "was a meaningful test," and that the company "paid a lot" in the end.

From that learning experience, I wouldn't be surprised if LG wants to take its time with the G7 (if it will even be called that) to make sure it can do things just right.

LG's waiting for a new "Like a G7" song for optimal cross promotion

This is a longshot, but if LG could pay the hip hop band Far East Movement millions of dollars just to write a new song about the G7 (plane? Phone? Both?), it should. If only so us phone reviewers can catch a break and indulge in some not-very-original-nor-clever-but-who-will-stop-me punny headline writing.

The submission video itself is something to see.

source:CNet