Last week, LG announced a new smartphone, with an enormous 5.9-inch display, called the G2 Pro. This week, it’s following up with a smartphone that’s decidedly smaller, with a 4.7-inch display.
Fittingly, LG has dubbed this new phone the G2 Mini. Mind you, the 4.7-inch display on the G2 Mini is still 0.7 inches larger than the current iPhone’s display. Up until the iPhone 5, Apple considered 3.5 inches an acceptable size for a smartphone screen.
4.7 inches is the size of the HTC One, the Moto X and the Nokia Lumia 625. It’s also rumored to be one of two sizes Apple is currently kicking around for a new, larger iPhone due out later this year.
So what qualifies the LG G2 Mini as “mini,” precisely? Well, “LG G2 Smaller Than Our Other Phones” just won’t fit on a smartphone box, first of all. Second, compared with the 5.9-inch G2 Pro and even last year’s 5.2-inch G2, after all, the new phone does qualify as a mini.
In July of last year, Samsung released the Galaxy S4 Mini, followed a month later by HTC’s One mini. Both of those phones featured 4.3-inch displays. Last month, Sony announced the Xperia Z1 Compact, which also measured in at 4.3 inches.
Keep in mind, just two years ago, 4.3 inches was considered a pretty reasonable — if not above average — screen size for the Galaxy S II when it was released in 2012.
Beyond the screen size, the LG G2 doesn’t pack anything too special. The processing power and display resolution of the screen itself don’t qualify the phone for the premium label that can be applied to other members of the G2 family.
Hopefully that means that the price will match, though LG has yet to announce one. We’ll likely find out a bit more on that front at next week’s Mobile World Congress phone show in Barcelona. We’ll be there to get some hands-on time with the G2 Mini, G2 Pro and any other surprises LG decides to toss our way in the meantime.