When talking about underrated phones from 2017, it's almost impossible to not mention the LG G6. LG made a huge comeback following the disaster that was the G5, but devices like the Samsung Galaxy S8 simply ate the G6 for breakfast and didn't leave it with much of a fighting chance to stand out from the crowd.
LG needs a winner this year with the G6's successor, and although details aren't quite as abundant as they are for the Galaxy S9, there are still a few solid rumors floating around that have us excited for what LG will release in 2018.
Without further ado, here's everything we know about LG's successor to the G6.
It won't be called the LG G7
If you noticed that we've refrained from actually saying "LG G7" so far, there's a reason for that. A report popped up on January 3 indicating that LG will be ditching its G-series branding in favor of something else for a phone that'll be released in "the first half" of the year.
We're expecting this rebranding to make its debut with what would have been called the G7, and while the phone in question will be the sequel to the G6, it'll have a much different name. LG is supposedly playing around with the idea of having the wholesale Samsung Galaxy S6 LCD screen launch with two digits in its name so that customers don't think it's outdated compared to the likes of the Galaxy S9 and iPhone X, but this could also change by the time the phone's released.
We'll refer to the G6's successor as the G7 throughout the rest of this article, but just know that it'll be called something else at release time.
The phone should be powered by the Snapdragon 845
As great as the G6 was, one of the main reasons you might have been inclined to choose the Galaxy S8 over it was because of the processor it shipped with. The G6 launched with the Snapdragon 821, and while the 821 was a perfectly fast CPU, the S8 launched just a few weeks later with the much newer 835.
This year, however, we aren't expecting LG to make the same mistake. A report from The Investor last May said that LG would be partnering with Qualcomm to release the G7 with its Snapdragon 845 processor, and towards the end of December, a list was found showing that the G7 would launch with the 845 in February.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 is a big improvement compared to the 835, offering speed improvements, better camera performance, faster cellular speed, and a lot more. If LG can get this inside the G7, that'll put it on a much more level playing field than what we saw with the G6 and S8 last year.
A curved OLED display with slim bezels
The LG V30.
LG was one of the first companies to market with a near bezel-less phone, but Samsung's curved glass and AMOLED technology outshined the G6's flat design and use of an LED panel. LG took a few notes from good old Sammy later in the year with the V30 and finally adopted curved sides and used its own OLED display tech. Curved screens and OLED displays are what we've sort of come to expect in flagship Samsung Galaxy S6 display these days, and that's likely what we'll see with the G7.
The OLED technology used on the V30 wasn't the best we've ever seen, but it was still a huge improvement from the last time LG toyed with OLED on the G Flex 2 back in 2015. In addition to offering deeper blacks and more contrasty colors, OLED on the G7 would also allow it to use Google's Daydream VR platform (something the G6 didn't support).
