Last year at IFA in Berlin Samsung introduced an entirely new device with an entirely new form factored. The device, dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Note, was a cross-breed of tablet and phone. Many are calling the device category “phablet” or “phoneblet”.
Samsung is having great success with the Galaxy Note. They recently announced that they’ve sold 5 million of the devices to date.
It didn’t take LG long to develop a device to compete head to head with their South Korean rival. LG’s new 5 inch Optimus Vu looks to do just that.
The Optimus Vu features a 5.0 inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1024×768. LG uses the IPS panel in the Optimus Vu that you can find in the LG Optimus LTE 2.
Like the Samsung device, LG’s Optimus Vu also features a stylus. Their stylus is a little more bulky, about the size of a #2 pencil. That may actually be a good thing as many have found the stylus that ships with the Galaxy Note to be a little too short and a little too thin. Samsung actually offers an accessory to make the stylus more of a pen size. Unlike the Galaxy Note though the LG Optimus Vu doesn’t have a place on board to store the digital pen, which may result in costly accessory purchases.
The LG Optimus Vu runs on top of a 1.5ghz dual core processor. It has 1gb of RAM and supports 4G/LTE (as does the Galaxy Note). It features an 8mp camera on the rear which shoots 1080p HD video.
The LG Optimus Vu is available now in Europe and Asia. The LG Spokesperson in the video below wouldn’t mention anything about a U.S. release.