LG Z is a bonkers banana phone with a bendy screen
LG's back on crazy form with this curved mobile, a 6-inch high-end phone that fits your face.
Hooray! LG's made something bonkers! I was beginning to worry it had gone a bit safe -- after years of making the most unbelievably weird and often hilariously unusable devices, its most recent phones have been disappointingly conventional.
This bendy phone, ZDNet Korea reports, is a flexible 6-inch smart phone, curved like a banana.
The curve mimics that of LG's beautiful OLED TVs, which are supposed to give a more even view to someone sitting directly in front, because your eyes are equidistant from every part of the screen. That means the Z's screen will be better suited to movies, LG reckons, than traditional flat screens.
Now, my Korean's not up to much, and neither is Google Translate, so it's not entirely clear whether you can bend this ludicrous thing, but I'd guess not. Flexible OLED displays do exist, but bendy circuitboards and batteries are a tad harder to make.
While specs are yet to be confirmed, ZDNet Korea reckons it'll pack a Full HD screen, 4G and a mighty Snapdragon 800 chip -- currently starring in LG's G2, and rivals the Sony Xperia Z1 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
It's not the first curved phone, with the Samsung Galaxy S Advanced sporting a very slightly concave screen for enhanced face-friendliness. It was nowhere near as banana-like as LG's effort though.
The G2 recently went on sale in the UK for a pretty reasonable £460 SIM-free, which is cheaper than most of its Snapdragon 800-packing rivals. It's mostly free of wacky gimmicks, but it does have a funky rocker button on the back that you can use to control the volume with one hand while you're on a call.
Fingers crossed the LG Z makes it to the UK, but I'm not holding my breath. Let's just hope LG keeps churning out the craziness.
Would you bend something like this round your phizzog? What eye-popping wackery will LG come up with next? Go nuts in the comments, or on our sober and considered Facebook page.
Image credit: ZDNet Korea
Update: My colleague Roger Cheng at CNET News has heard from a source familiar with the launch plans that the Z will be called the LG G Flex in the US, where it will go on sale in November. It will have a fixed-curve 6-inch screen.