The LG G Flex is one of the first curved display phones on the market, along with Samsung’s Galaxy Round. The G Flex has so far only been available in South Korea but should start arriving in other countries as soon as next month.
Orange in France will begin selling it in December, and a new report from 3G.cn says that LG will be holding on event in Hong Kong on Tuesday, December 3 to announce other international launch plans. In the United States, the G Flex is expected to land on AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile sometime in early 2014.
If these launch rumors prove true, it will make the G Flex the first widely available smartphone with a flexible, curved display. The phone itself isn’t completely flexible, of course, due to the other rigid components inside. However, flexible displays promise much higher durability, sometimes even being called indestructible. The G Flex display curves top to bottom, which should prove easier to use when held against the face for phone calls.
The G Flex also features a self-healing back, another smartphone first. The back plastic promises to recover almost immediately from tiny scratches, and from even moderate scratches within half an hour or so. Several videos of the self-healing process in action have been posted and it certainly looks impressive. With a self-healing back and a flexible, “unbreakable” display, perhaps the G Flex will encourage users to go without the protective cases that are almost universally used these days.
It remains to be seen if smartphone buyers will be interested in phones with curved displays. It seems that most phones today have simply grown more and more alike and are all pretty much just large black rectangles. LG and Samsung have high hopes for their curved display technology to enable new and unique designs.
When the Galaxy Note first launched, it was almost universally criticized for being too big and unappealing to average buyers. Since then it has sold extremely well and continues to be one of Samsung’s best-selling devices. So, clearly consumers are can be interested in new designs, but does the G Flex bring enough to the table to entice buyers away from more traditional designs? LG certainly thinks so and it seems to be aggressively pushing forward with international launch plans.
Does the G Flex interest you at all? When it arrives in your country and on your favorite carrier in the coming months, will you buy one?