Remember just about a week ago, when LG unveiled and officially announced the LG G3 flagship in London? I think we all do, because it’s been everywhere and people are learning more about this phone and some details surrounding it, and two of the still yet-to-be-clarified detail are price and availability/carrier support. No carrier’s, in either the United States or internationally, have announced that they will have the G3 for sale on a contract of any sort, but Sprint and T-Mobile are doing giveaways, so it’s essentially confirmed there. But what about price?
Well, LG has yet to actually give that to the consumers. No price has been set for this latest, greatest, and highly-desired smartphone, but a preorder page on their website in the UK places, for preorder, a £499 price tag on it. Besides that, we know nothing of the price. Well, that and something that LG’s vice president of mobile design, Chun Bae Lee, told Trusted Reviews when asked about the choice to use polycarbonate instead of metal for the housing of the G3.
“If you could charge $300 more for the phone, maybe we could make it metal,” is Lee told Trusted Reviews. The £499 is aimed to take on the likes of the Galaxy S5 and the One M8 with a £100 cheaper tag attached, and making it metal, supposedly costing an extra $300 which equates to about £179, would blow the price point that LG was going for with their superphone. The selling points of this phone are many, like the QHD (or 2K, if you prefer it based on 1080p, instead of 720p) screen, the removable back and battery, the SD card slot, the OIS+ inside the 13 mp camera, the redesigned curves and rounding of the device and its signature backside buttons, and the lower price compared to the S5 and One.
Lee continued to tell Trusted Reviews that the phone shouldn’t have been made out of metal, because it wasn’t the ‘optimum material’, and would have made it slippery. But he does admit that the device would probably have benefitted from using metal for trim, bezels, or specific parts of the phone, instead of the entire thing. Another reason Lee gave for not using metal as the body material was that it would have made the devices super slim bezels larger, on all four sides of the screen. Size and consumer price are the most reasonable reasons for LG’s choice of utilizing polycarbonate plastic instead of many users’ favorite ‘premium’ material. Regardless of material, this device will succeed when it finally does become available to the masses internationally.