LG Optimus One with Google and Optimus Chic challenge for worst phone names ever
LG's Optimus banner will fly over a host of new devices this year, including a total of ten smart phones and at least one Android tablet
We thought we knew all there was to know about the LG Optimus GT540 Android phone when it was revealed way back in April, but we were wrong, because today LG has announced that rather than being just one phone, Optimus is in fact a series of ten upcoming smart devices bearing the transformational moniker.
The Optimus devices will apparently be running a range of operating systems and will include Android tablet PCs -- that's a pretty comprehensive slice of the market. Two smart phones are already in the pipeline, the LG Optimus One with Google and the LG Optimus Chic, both of which will ship with Android 2.2, aka Froyo.
The LG Optimus One with Google (up there on the left) has what's almost certainly the silliest name in the history of smart phones, and we take our hats off to LG, we really do. There's no word yet on whether LG will be skinning this phone with its own version of Android, but the use of 'with Google' leads us to believe it'll be focusing on hardware and leaving the nitty gritty of the phone's features and operating system up to Google, à la the Google Nexus One.
The LG Optimus Chic (over on the right) will appeal to fashion aficionados, we're informed. Here's some of LG's marketing guff: "[The Chic is] challenging the perception that advanced Android devices need to appeal to a hardcore tech crowd to gain widespread acceptance." Yeah you big nerds, stop demanding such ugly phones!
As for that mysterious tablet, little is known beyond an anticipated release later this year, and that this too will be running on the Android platform. LG reckons it'll deliver "vastly superior performance than other similar devices currently on the market while still managing to be thinner and lighter than competing devices". We'll forgive the slightly shaky grammar in that sentence because that sounds like a pretty tempting offer to us.
Finally, Gizmodo has cleverly spotted a third Optimus device, the Optimus Z, on LG's corporate Flickr account, branded with LG's Korean corporate name CYON.
More on the LG Optimus series as it happens, but in the meantime, what do you think of these two new phones? Is LG prioritising quantity over quality?