LG officially unveils G2 Mini

After teasing us with suggestions that a smaller version of its flagship Android smartphone was on the way, LG officially announced Wednesday that the G2 Mini would be unveiled in a matter of days at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Although the handset maker had posted an image to its Facebook page of a G2 accompanied by an identical but smaller smartphone, LG hadn't yet spilled the beans on the G2 Mini's specs. Until now.

The G2 Mini will feature a 4.7-inch screen with a 960x540-resolution, a little smaller and less flashy than its predecessor's 5.2-inch 1080p display. The smaller handset will also come with the same rear-panel controls for power and volume introduced on the G2.

However, "to meet the needs of millions of people around the world," the new handset will come in several variations, including single or dual SIM, and with either 3G or 4G LTE network connectivity. The G2 Mini, which will run Android 4.4 KitKat, will be powered by either a 1.2GHz Qualcomm quad-core chip or a 1.7GHz Nvidia quad-core Tegra 4i.

The G2 Mini sporting 3G Dual SIM will make its market debut in March in the Commonwealth of Independent States counties, followed by the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and finally Europe. No North American availability was mentioned.

After going for bigger handsets, phone-makers have been paring down phones for midrange experiences, in addition to making them slightly smaller. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, HTC One Mini, and Motorola Droid Mini all follow this pattern, as does the iPhone 5C.