LG to revamp its smartphone lineup with upcoming ‘Velvet’ flagship

This is, seemingly, the first in a “new product roadmap.”

What you need to know

• LG has revealed the name of its upcoming flagship.
• The phone will be called ‘Velvet,’ as the company ditches its numbered naming scheme.
• It’ll also feature a unique, ‘raindrop’ camera design.

After years of mostly being content with spitting out one midrange phone after another — even if they are consistently ranked as the best of the bunch — LG is finally turning its eyes back to the flagship segment. And it hopes to do so with a bang, a new design language and revamped specs included.

Having already shown some of the design of the phone, the company this week revealed the name of the phone it’s pinning its hopes on: Velvet. The name, it says, “is intended to evoke images of lustrous smoothness and premium softness, two key characteristics of the new phone.”

This will also mark a departure for the company’s overall naming scheme for its phones, “moving away from alphanumerical designations in favor of familiar and expressive names.”

Alongside a new name, the phone will also be the poster boy for a new design language that the company hopes to implement for all of its future phones, inspired by the natural world. The camera on the back, for example, will feature what LG calls a “raindrop” design.

LG hopes this unique design will set the phone apart from the deluge of phones with massive camera bumps on their back. The company is also flaunting what it calls a “symmetrical, flowing form factor that is both pleasing to the eye and pleasing to touch.” Basically, the phone’s back will have a curve similar to that of the ‘waterfall display’ on the front.

Not much else is known about the phone, however. There’s no release date or pricing, and it may turn out that the phone may also not be a ‘true’ flagship, after all. Some reports suggest the phone will ship with only a Snapdragon 765, and not a Snapdragon 865, leaving us wondering if — and when — we’ll see this new design language paired with Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line SoC.

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