LG Cherry-Picks Premium Features For Midrange X Cam, X Screen Smartphones

Like many device makers, LG has its fair share of relatively unexciting midrange smartphones, such as the K10 and K7 that the company showed at CES, but in a bid to make the midrange more attractive, LG cherry-picked a couple of premium features and put them in otherwise inexpensive handsets.

The X cam and X screen offer a high-end camera experience and “dual-screen” capabilities, respectively. LG did not declare a price, stating only that it will “rival” the cost of midrange handsets. Further, there are no plans as of yet to bring these phones to North America, according to the press release, which has availability pegged for Asia, Europe and Latin America in March.

The X screen has an “always on” second screen, previously seen on the LG V10, which is essentially a small ribbon at the top of the screen that shows oft-accessed apps and lets you control music playback, answer calls, see the time, and so on, even when the primary display is off.

More intriguing to some will be the dual-camera feature on the back of the X cam. We believe that this dual-cam feature is going to be a trend, actually, in part because of the rise of augmented reality. We should begin seeing more applications for stereoscopic cameras soon. On the X cam, instead of having to equal cameras, one is 13MP whereas the other is just 5MP (with an 8MP front camera), which is an interesting decision on LG’s part.

Throwing in a choice feature or two onto an otherwise non-premium device is a strategy that shows LG understands that the commodity smartphone market is saturated and that it needs to figure out ways to set its devices apart. Otherwise, these specs could be copy/pasted from a dozen other midrange handsets. (Kudos to LG for shipping these phones loaded with Android 6 [Marshmallow], though.)

LG will be showing off both handsets next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Seth Colaner is the News Director for Tom's Hardware. Follow him on Twitter @SethColaner. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.