From the front, the Velvet looks like most of today’s smartphones: 6.8-inch 1080 x 2460 OLED screen with a 20.5:9 aspect ratio. No real surprises there, but round the back it’s a little bit different. Instead of a dark cluster of lenses, the Velvet has a raindrop effect, with a larger lens at the top, two smaller lenses below and a flash at the bottom, all spaced out . It’s a good look – check the picture. The cameras themselves are a 48 MP main sensor, an 8 MP ultra-wide camera and a 5 MP depth sensor. It’s a 16 MP selfie shooter on the front. As expected for a phone of this calibre, there’s an in-display fingerprint scanner.
Driving the smartphone is a Snapdragon 765G chipset with 5G support. There’s 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage and a microSD card slot which is always a welcome addition. The 765G might not be top of the range but it’s a strong performer and most people will find it very acceptable.
Keeping the juice flowing is a 4,300 mAh battery, and the Velvet offers both wired fast charging and 10 W wireless charging. I imagine that battery will keep the phone going for over a day. In terms of other features, the Velvet has IP68 rating for dust and water ingress, and there’s a 3.5 mm audio socket for the audio fans.
And for the Velvet’s party tricks…to start with there’s support for LG’s dual screen accessory, which I think is a great idea to increase screen real estate without the risks of a folding screen. But in addition to the dual screen, the Velvet also supports a stylus pen for fine editing and control. That’s something that I’ve only heard of on tablets and it’ll be interesting to see it in action on a phone. It’ll be even more interesting if the dual screen supports the pen too.
For now, the Velvet is only available in South Korea but an announcement is expected in mid-May regarding the rest of the world. Price-wise, it’s going to be ₩899,800 in S Korea, which is around US$730.