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LG's new phones have strange digital characters living inside of them

LG's new phones have strange digital characters living inside of them

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Most smartphones look decidedly bland, so to set its new mid-range phones apart, LG is quite literally giving them some character. In Korea, LG is introducing the Aka line, a set of smartphones that each come in a different color and with a different digital character built into them. There are four characters in all, and each of them has a different personality that LG is hoping will appeal to buyers. You'll even see their big eyes blinking at you while the phone is idle and in its case.

Their names are Eggy, Wooky, Soul, and YoYo

These are the four personalities, according to CNET: there's a yellow phone, named Eggy, who falls in love easily; there's a white phone, named Wooky, who talks in slang; there's a blue phone, named Soul, who loves music and beer; and finally, there's the pink phone, YoYo, who is the only female character in the group and is named after her tendency to eat a lot of hamburgers and drink a lot of Coke, causing her weight to "yo-yo," which is definitely not the best character trait that LG could have given to its sole female character.

It appears that the phones each come with a matching case that covers up about three-quarters of the device, leaving just the top sliver exposed. When it's in the case, the top part of the screen will remain on and animated eyes will appear, making it look like the character is looking around. The characters live on when you're using the phone, too. CNET reports that you can take a selfie with the characters, discover a backstory about them saving the earth from aliens, and buy more cases to introduce the other characters to your phone.

As strange as it is, building a digital character into a phone is still a really interesting idea, and it's easy to understand why LG thinks this might connect with people — CNET compares it to having a Tamagotchi. That said, the phone is definitely leaning on these quirks to stand out. It's a 5-inch Android phone with a 720p display, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 16GB of storage, 1.5GB of RAM, LTE, and a 2,610mAh battery. CNET says that it's using the laser focusing found on the LG G3, too, which is a pretty solid addition. It's going to sell for 500,000 South Korean Won (about $456 USD), and it's not stated if it'll be launching internationally. We're guessing that we may not get to see as much of Eggy, Wooky, Soul, and YoYo as we'd like, so we've made some GIFs to help remember them by:

lg aka gifs

lg aka gifs

lg aka gifs