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T-Mobile is giving you 36 months to pay off select phones
T-Mobile is giving people more time to pay off their phones. On Friday, the mobile carrier will launch a new 36-month installment plan that will stretch the cost of a smartphone out over the course of three years rather than the standard two-year period. Only a handful of phones will be available for the plan at first -- and it's not clear yet how good of a deal this might be, as well.
LG G7 ThinQ review: A worthy S9 rival with a notch
When it comes to Android flagships, Samsung is king of the hill. According to a recent IDC report, Samsung is the No. 1 Android brand in the world, with Huawei and Xiaomi close behind. Nowhere on that top-five list is LG, which might seem surprising. After all, with solid feature sets and good-looking designs, the V30 and last year's G6 aren't too shabby. LG even had a little bit of help from Google along the way; the G6 was the first non-Pixel phone with Google Assistant, the V20 was the first new phone to ship with Nougat, and the V30S ThinQ was the first with device-specific Google Assistant commands. The G7, then, is a sign that LG isn't giving up. Instead, it's doubling down, with features like a more powerful AI camera, a super-loud speaker and LG's brightest display on a smartphone. And, like its predecessors, the G7 features a handy Google trick in the form of a dedicated Google Assistant button -- a first on an Android phone. It all adds up to a pretty compelling handset that theoretically should please most Android fans -- maybe even those looking for a Samsung alternative. [Note: The LG G7 reviewed here is a pre-production unit]
LG's G7 packs a dedicated Google Assistant button
LG is expected to unveil its next flagship smartphone, the G7 ThinQ, at a New York event on May 2nd. Aside from the ThinQ artificial intelligence, the phone will get another new feature: A dedicated button for Google Assistant. According to a CNET report, it's located on the left side of the phone opposite a power button on the right, with the fingerprint reader staying on the back. Like the recent AI-equipped V30S, the G7 ThinQ will supposedly get custom LG commands to ask Google Assistant.
LG's flagship G7 will launch in May
LG's artificial intelligence technology, ThinQ, first made its way to the Korean company's phones as part of the V30S. Now, the brand has confirmed that ThinQ is also coming to LG's flagship G-series, specifically the G7 that's debuting in New York on May 2nd and Seoul on May 3rd. According to the company's announcement, the G7 ThinQ's 'Empathic AI' -- that's how LG describes its artificial intelligence, which it says is capable of human-like thinking to a certain extent -- is better than its predecessor's. We'll have to wait for the device's official launch to know how exactly it's better than the V30's, though.
An LG G7 showed up in Barcelona after all
After revealing an AI-powered version of its late-2017 flagship, LG seemed to be having a quiet MWC. As it turns out, the real action was happening elsewhere. Israeli news site YNET posted a brief hands-on of a smartphone called the G7 (NEO) that appears to pack a Qualcomm 845 chipset and a 6-inch, 19.5:9 OLED screen with a notch carved into the top. YNET's report further suggests the device could come with either 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, or 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, as well as a 16-megapixel dual camera. Given its name and its apparent horsepower, this just might be the new flagship phone LG was planning to reveal after MWC, though the company stopped well short of confirming that.
LG's latest financials explain its shift in mobile strategy
Earlier this month, LG said that it would row back on its smartphone ambitions by abandoning an annual cycle of smartphone launches. Rather than releasing a flagship just because Samsung did, LG would only pump out a handset when it felt that it should. The report speculated that the move was in anticipation of more bad news for LG Mobile when its fourth-quarter financials were published. Now that the figures are out, it's clear that LG's patience for the division has worn thin, since it managed to lose $204.8 million in just three months.
