LG V20 is the first Android Nougat phablet with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 power

LG has announced the V20, its latest flagship ‘phablet’ smartphone that comes with two screens to take on the likes of the iPhone 6S Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

While the LG V20 has been expected for some time, this is the first time the Korean company has made the official specifications known, allowing it to stake its claim as the first smartphone to come with Android 7.0 Nougat pre-installed.

Flagship phablet

The V20 sports a 5.7in IPS display with a QHD resolution of 2560×1140 to give it its phablet the size and chassis large enough to fit a 3,200mAh battery and 64GB of storage, which can be expanded to 2TB.

In an attempt to stand out from the crowd of rival smartphones and phablets, on top of the V20’s main display is a smaller second screen, much like the one its predecessor the V10 had.

Much like the Edge display found in certain Samsung Galaxy handsets, only without the aesthetic appeal, the V20’s secondary display acts as a notifications bar to alert the user’s attention to snippets of information without turning on the main screen, thereby cutting down on battery consumption.

Keeping with the theme of doubling up on components, the V20 also comes with dual rear cameras, offering 16MP and 8MP image capture with optical stabilisation, as well as an obligatory 5MP front-facing camera.

LG has also packed the V20 with some high-end audio capabilities, with 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC, support for lossless audio formats like FLAC, Apple Lossless and AIFF, and the abilty to capture what LG claims to be “studio audio quality” recordings with the phone’s trio of mics.

Powering the V20 is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chip and 4GB of RAM, which should make navigating Android Nougat a smooth experience and allow the phablet to be used for both work and play.

This gives the V20 the power it needs to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, when it’s not spontaneously bursting into flames. But LG has yet to reveal if its new flagship phone will be released into the UK, meaning phablets from Samsung, Apple and others currently have the edge over LG.

With Apple due to announce an iPhone 7 Plus this evening, the super-sized smartphone market is about to get a little more crowded.

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