Recently there’s been a bit of a change in the balance between two of the biggest phone manufacturers to come out of South Korea – Samsung and LG. Whilst we all know and love Samsung, the Galaxy S III is a massive seller and they’ve even done two Nexus phones. LG on the other hand have not only struggled to break into the US Market but struggled to make a name for themselves anywhere outside of Korea. This used to be because LG couldn’t match any of Samsung’s devices but in the past year or so LG have really been pushing the envelope. Maybe not so much when it comes to design but the internals of their newest phones are right up there.
The Korean company has been on a bit of a tear this past year, they’ve bought phones out that are more than a little different with the LG Optimus Vu – the Intuition on Verizon – and phones that go toe-to-toe with the Galaxy SIII in the form of the Optimus 4x HD. Now, with the very recently announced Optimus G they’ve put together a device that puts everything else out there to shame. With 2GB of RAM and a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro the G looks down on the S III when it comes to specs. It’s certainly not a bad looking phone either. It’s also on its way to US in Q4 of this year.
With phones of such calibre you must have heard of LG then? Well, this is the root of LG’s problems, the average consumer doesn’t know they do good phones and even seasoned Android veterans wouldn’t like to go for an LG over an HTC or a Samsung device. I’m certain this is down to poor marketing and public image. For instance, there was an event today where they announced the Optimus G formally but, even some of the biggest tech blogs skimmed over it. This isn’t good for LG, especially when they’ve got some big launches looming. It’s a shame that LG aren’t more prevelant in the States, they have the capacity to ship huge amounts of quality devices. They’ve done a lot recently to take care of their software issues as well but still, they’re not the manufacturer on our minds when our upgrade comes around and they’re certainly not the phone maker we wait on. I certainly hope that LG bring themselves together and get some good marketing put together for this new phone and I always hope that they can provide good support going forward as well.