LG has announced that its 5-inch, 4:3 aspect Optimus Vu smartphone/tablet will be released in worldwide this September. LG says that healthy sales figures for the Optimus Vu since its March debut in South Korea and recent launch in Japan through NTT DoCoMo demonstrate widespread acceptance of the not-quite-a-tablet-but-bigger-than-a-smartphone form factor.
Public reception has been so strong that the Korean consumer tech giant has now decided that the time is right for folks in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America to take advantage of the extra display real estate offered by the 5-inch, 4:3 aspect touchscreen device.
The only significant change in the specifications for the global release is the ditching of the 1.5 GHz dual-core processor in favor of NVIDIA's Tegra 3, which uses four processing cores for high performance tasks and a battery-saving fifth core for less power hungry functionality like calls, texts and emails. The extra-wide smartphone/tablet (or phablet, if you prefer) will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) out of the box and be shipped with upgraded versions of Notebook and QuickMemo.
QuickMemo allows users to take a screen grab of any type of displayed content (such as web pages, graphical images, photos and videos for example) and then add personal graffiti to whatever's been captured using a finger or stylus. QuickMemo notes can be shared with others via text, chat or email.
The Optimus Vu is also reported to be heading Stateside before the end of Q3, although carrier details have yet to be disclosed.
Source: LG
