After taunting and teasing us with its seductive looks for several months, the fashionable LG Velvet smartphone has officially been announced for release in Australia – and at a surprisingly alluring price point that’s sure to set tongues wagging.
Priced at AU$899, the LG Velvet offers an impressive set of specs and features given its mid-range position on the Australian smartphone market, starting with its 5G-ready Snapdragon 765G chipset.
Additionally, the LG Velvet offers 6GB of RAM, 128GB of onboard storage (with expansion via microSD slot), a 4,300mAh battery, dual SIM support and IP68 water and dust resistance.
Screen and camera
Sporting a 6.8-inch FHD+ OLED display with curved edges, the LG Velvet’s design is appealingly sleek throughout – particularly its rear-mounted, vertically aligned ‘raindrop’ triple camera array, which is a stark departure from the huge camera bumps seen on many other phones in 2020.
The raindrop camera offers a 48MP primary sensor, along with an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 5MP depth sensor for bokeh-style effects. According to LG, the Velvet’s camera also includes ‘Quad-Cell’ technology, which is said to capture brighter images in low-light situations using pixel binning sensors. On the front, the Velvet also sports a 16MP selfie camera.
Aimed primarily at content creators, LG Velvet has a few fancy tricks up its sleeve when it comes to capturing video, including improved 4K time lapse control and Voice Bokeh, a new feature that’s able to block out surrounding ambient noise when a person is talking to camera.
Listen up
Once again, LG has retained the 3.5mm headphone jack on the LG Velvet, however, the celebrated Quad DAC audio feature that’s been a mainstay in all of the company’s flagships since the LG G5 has sadly been dropped.
While the fan-favourite feature is gone, the LG Velvet has replaced it with a new feature called LG 3D Sound Engine, which uses AI to optimise audio content, making it sound louder, fuller and more immersive in the process. In our brief time with the phone thus far, we’ve found it to offer more or less the same effect as Quad DAC, which is quite impressive.
Availability
Unfortunately, the tradition of Australians getting the short end of the stick when it comes to smartphone colour options continues with the LG Velvet, as the phone will only be available in Aurora White and Aurora Grey when it launches Down Under. That means Aussies will miss out on the LG Velvet’s stunningly beautiful Illusion Sunset variant, along with a number of other colours that are available overseas.
Although an exact release date has not been revealed, LG has stated that the Velvet will be available to purchase from from JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and selected telcos “in the coming weeks.”