We got a chance to check out LG's first-ever curved smartphone, the G Flex, last month at an event in South Korea, but LG has now brought the phone to the US for us to see it. It's the same Korean model we saw earlier, with its massive 6-inch, 720p display, but LG also showed off some of the individual components broken down so we could see what goes into the phone's construction. We got to see the bendable display, which can flex quite a bit more on its own than it can once encased inside the phone. We were also able to see the non-removable battery, which is both curved and can flex just like the display. LG's Dr. Ramchan Woo also told us that the glass on the front is made quite thin to allow it to bend along with the rest of the phone. LG said that the phone was tested and could stand 88 pounds of pressure repeated 100 times without deforming.
1/11
Dr. Woo also gave a few details on how the G Flex came to be — while he joked that LG only built it because the company "got bored of flat," he also said that the company's been working on the device for about three years. One of the design goals was to replicate the experience of sitting and watching a curved 55-inch HDTV from 10 feet away on a phone — that's what led to the 6-inch screen size. Woo repeatedly referred to the phone as an immersive media playback device, and it's hard to disagree with him. Much of that has to do with the huge screen, of course, which looks great despite not hitting the coveted 1080p resolution.
Although LG announced today that Singapore and Hong Kong would be the first regions outside South Korea to get the G Flex, there's no word on when customers in the US might be able to purchase one. "We certainly hope it comes [to the US] very soon, but there's nothing to announce at this time," LG senior PR manager Chaz Abbott told us. However, given how passionate LG appears to be about its new curved device, we don't think it'll be long before the G Flex — or a device like it — is released for the US market.