LG waves its magic hand over the LG G8 ThinQ at MWC

LG waves its magic hand over the LG G8 ThinQ at MWC

Sometimes something catches your attention and makes you do a double-take. This is exactly what happened when I was watching LG perform some magic on stage at Mobile World Congress as they unveiled the LG G8 ThinQ.

LG g8 ThinQ motionI have been a fan of LG since the G4 – that camera was so ahead of its time back then so I can only imagine how much new tech is stuffed into that little phone now. The manual controls were beyond anything anyone else had and in fact, I still have my LG G4 and it was used to shoot many of my videos for my YouTube channel – yes, the camera wa THAT good.

So fast forward to 2019 and what has LG done to update my beloved G4?

The LG G8 comes with a 6.1 inch QHD+ OLED Fullvision display powered by the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 855 Mobile Platform. It has 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of Storage but also includes a microSD slot so you can expand your storage up to 2TB. The phone is powered by 3500mAh battery and with LG’s power management being rock solid, this should be plenty of juice to last at least a day’s worth of work.

LG G8 The phone has a 16MP Wide and 12 MP Standard rear-shooter and a front-facing cam with 8MP standard and a Z Camera.  Now if you are thinking what is that? Well, LG has taken 3D space and biometrics to a new level…

Air Motion for Touchless Commands

On the LG G8 you can unlock your phone in three ways with a feature called Multi ID: 3D face recognition, fingerprint scanning, and the new Hand ID with vein recognition.

No seriously.

lg g8 thinq motion unlockThe LG G8 uses only your palm as the phone is able to recognize your unique vein pattern in your hand. Hold your palm open above the camera in a Harry Potter spell style and the phone is unlocked.

But there is more.

Once the phone is unlocked, you just hold your hand again and the phone will allow you to swipe left or right to launch two applications. When you are in an app like YouTube, the same hand hovering motion can be used to pause or play the video and if you rotate your hand clockwise or counterclockwise you control the volume! These are called Air Motions and you can answer or decline calls, open your most-used apps, stop a timer or alarm, hit the snooze button without actually hitting anything.

I would love to test this feature in an environment where your hands are dirty, wet, wearing gloves – this is Minority Report style kinda cool!

Initial indicative pricing seems to be around $800, but will update once I have info on price and availability. Typically, LG doesn’t wait too long to get products in its customer’s hands!

 

Update 2/26/2019: Sprint will have this device “this spring” according to the press release and you can pre-register for your own register for the LG G8 ThinQ right here

Liron Segev - TheTechieGuy

Liron Segev is an award-winning tech blogger, YouTube strategist, and Podcaster. He helps brands tell their stories in an engaging way that non-techies can relate to. He also drinks way too much coffee! @Liron_Segev on Twitter