LG's G8 ThinQ hopes a time-of-flight sensor will set it apart from the crowd

LG is dorsum with a new entry in its G-series.

The company announced the G8 ThinQ in Barcelona, Kingdom of spain at its Mobile Globe Congress keynote.

The G8's marquee characteristic is a new fourth dimension-of-flight sensor that enables a diversity of smashing features — though we'll accept to run into if consumers limited interest in them. MobileSyrup staff author Dean Daley explores them in greater detail in his hands-on with the handset.

With the sensor, LG is offering a new feature called Air Motion. In brusque, these are gestures which users can execute without physically touching the device. 1 gesture, for instance, allows users to quickly switch between two apps by either swiping to the left or right. Yet some other i allows G8 owners to answer their phone, while automatically switching to speaker phone.

Additionally, the time-of-flight sensor, in combination with an infrared sensor, allows future G8 owners to use their palm as a mode to confirm their identity using vein authentication. LG claims plam hallmark is more secure than using a fingerprint scanner.

The G8 is also the first G-series smartphone to characteristic one of the visitor'due south POLED displays. Previously, Thou-serial smartphones continued to feature IPS LCD displays even equally LG moved its V-serial to OLED tech. In whatsoever example, information technology'due south a 6.1-inch display with 18:9 attribute ratio and 3120 10 1440 pixel resolution. Notwithstanding, while still HDR10 capable, with a maximum brightness of 600 nits, the G8 screen's can't get as bright as the G7's one,000 nits display. It should, however, be more ability efficient, which is a skilful thing since the G8 features a modest 3,500mAh bombardment.

Getting back to the display, there'due south as well a sound component to it. The G8 is the first LG smartphone to characteristic the visitor's Crystal Audio OLED Display (CSO) applied science. Essentially, sound resonates through the display to help create stereo separation, even though the G8 doesn't feature stereo speakers. In combination with the G8's Boombox speaker, which LG first introduced with the G7, the G8 can get louder than nearly other smartphones.

Internally, the phone features Qualcomm'due south new pinnacle-of-the-line Snapdragon 855 chipset supported by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Storage is expandable past upwardly to 2TB cheers to a built-in microSD slot.

For photos and videos, the G8 features a dual photographic camera assortment with a main 12-megapixel sensor behind a fast f/1.5 aperture lens. Moreover, the primary camera includes optical paradigm stabilization (OIS), as well equally both laser and phase detection autofocus. The combination of the two different systems should make the G8 fast to lock focus. Thanks to the 855, the G8 can as well apply depth-of-field effects to video, in addition to still images.

There's besides a 16-megapixel camera with an f/1.9 discontinuity lens that features a wide-angle field of view, making it, like past LG smartphones, great at capturing big vistas.

On the front of the device is an eight-megapixel selfie camera with f/one.7 discontinuity and normal field of view. The time-of-flying sensor I mentioned earlier besides helps with depth-of-field photography. The sensor is capable to calculate depth faster than a traditional depth-of-field sensor. Equally a bonus, it should also work but likewise in depression-low-cal as in bright light.

Equally with past LG flagships, the G8 includes a Hullo-Fi quad DAC. There's also support for DTS:X 3D surround sound.

On the connectivity front, there'due south support for Bluetooth 5.0, Qualcomm'due south AptX HD Bluetooth sound codec, USB-C and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. I should likewise note the G8 is an LTE-only phone, compared to the V50, which is 5G-capable but won't be making its fashion to Canada.

Other notable features include IP68 water and grit resistance as well as inductive charging — though no word still if LG plans to make the latter exclusive to G8 models sold in select markets like the U.S. every bit it has with past M-series smartphones.

We'll accept more on the G8 in the coming days and weeks when it arrives in Canada this leap.