LG takes the wraps off its “Velvet” smartphone, priced in Korea at $738

• The LG Velvet, in many colors. [credit: LG ]

After lots of teasing, LG has officially announced its next "flagship" smartphone for 2020: the LG Velvet. The Velvet represents a major change for LG in that it's officially a replacement for the LG "G" line—this would have been the LG G9. This phone also is a bit more downmarket than other flagships—it has a Snapdragon 765G instead of the Snapdragon 865 in most high-end devices. This phone has leaked all over the place, but the big news today is a full spec sheet and an official price (in Korea at least): ₩899,800 or ~$738.

For specs, we have a 6.8-inch, 2460×1080 OLED display, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, and a 4300mAh battery. For extras, there is nearly everything you could want: a MicroSD slot, NFC, wireless charging, a headphone jack, IP68 dust and water resistance, stereo speakers, and an in-screen fingerprint reader. For cameras, there is a front 16MP camera and three rear cameras: a 48MP main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide, and a 5MP depth camera.

One unusual extra is pen support—not a dockable, passive pen like on early Galaxy Notes but straight-up Wacom Stylus support. Pick from the many Wacom Stylus pen options and you'll have 4,096 levels of pressure and 60-degree tilt detection in supported apps. We're mostly picking though a Korean-language LG site for this post, so in-depth questions like "What Android apps support a Wacom pen?" are not things that can be answered at this time. I would guess the number is very small, but this "Nebo" app was given as the one example.