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The LG G3 family is getting a little bigger. Today, LG has announced a new mid-range device for the G3 series, and it’s coming to U.S. carriers. The LG G3 Vigor will be available on AT&T and Sprint later this year. The Sprint variant will be available in Burgundy Red and Metallic Black for just $299 off contract, or 24 payments of $12.50. AT&T will have pricing and availability later this year.
The Vigor has a 5-inch 720p IPS display, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 8MP camera, 2540mAh battery, and Android 4.4.2. LG has designed the Vigor with “selfies in mind,” yet they gave it only a 1.3MP front-facing camera. We’ll save our judgement for when we can use this device ourselves, but it seems like a pretty standard LG phone. One that you might find on Verizon for $50 with a crazy name, but this time they slapped the “G3” title on it. Hopefully it’s worthy.
I LOVE the trend Moto has started. It appears every major manufacturer has released a device with Moto G-like specs and pricing. Big display, low clocked Quad processor, 1GB RAM, and 8MP should be the base requirement for all Android hardware, to keep costs low. Although not future proof, it at least promises optimum performance at a fair price from now to foreseeable future. Let people continue to pay more for premium build materials, highER definition screens, more battery life and sensors, etc.
Either the smartphone business has peaked, or we’re finally beginning to see the end of spec wars. Price is no longer synonymous with performance (for the time being, at least) Either way, I love where Android is headed. Lets not forget Google’s goal is to put Android in as many hands as possible, in “priority” and emerging markets alike. Apple can keep the elitest group who will always pay more for much less…while Android caters to everyone else. /rant
Only so much you can do when Google led the price undercutting trend. Moto hasn’t fully changed over to Lenovo either, so the Moto G could’ve been one of their plans before selling Moto to Lenovo. The Nexus undercuts so many OEMs because it provides high end specs while focusing on more Google Services. That’s how they bank their future profits. Tbh, years ago, the only mid range device for $100 that you can get for a half decent phone was the Lumia line.
That is very true. Nexus 4 really raised the bar for products with premium build and super LOW pricing. I completely agree..except that as we have seen thus far, no matter how cheap or feature-rich, Nexus devices were and will remain attractive to only hobbyists and nerds. Without major OEM backing, the “pure” Google experience remains a niche market. The real prize winning combo is Nexus-like pricing, reliable specs, and a strong marketing campaign from a big OEM.
This is likely why the Moto G blew the sales of the N4 out of the water, even though they are nearly the same device.
I agree! I absolutely love my moto g it’s awesome to see them updating the firmware frequently. I’m running Kit Kat 4.4.4 latest android version something that a lot of phones even high cost phones don’t always get.
I like where they are going, but I feel like they miss a niche that Apple has been exploiting for years. Offering last year’s top notch hardware are reduced prices. You will always have early adopters ready for “the next big thing” but some people could care less. Another wasted opportunity, and I hate to say it, is the dumbing down of “mini me” phone models. At 5″ this phone could have easily had a 1080p display and last years Snapdragon 800 from the older LG G2. Instead, they make a phone with even weaker internals than last year. My back-up phone, the LG Optimus G that I passed down to my daughter has a 720p display and it’s Snapdragon S4 Pro is still higher specced and it was a flagship phone from 2012! You can’t tell me the economies of scale are so bad that it’s cheaper to use a lower specced newer chip than to use a higher specced one from a previous generation?
To be fair the 400 is still quite a bit more powerful than the s4 pro you are talking about.
The 400 is not more powerful it’s quite a bit weaker. It has four cortex a7’s compared to the S4 pro’s four krait 200’s. Krait 200 was based off the Cortex a15 ARM’s reference high performance architecture. The a7 while capable was ARM’s low end design meant to offer good enough performance while consuming as little energy as possible. So on the CPU side the S4 pro easily dominates the 400. The GPU side is more of a mixed bag. The adreno 320 found in the S4 pro has quite a bit more grunt than the 305 in the 400. But since the adreno 305 is newer it has updated drivers and is a bit more optimized. I’d say on the GPU end it’s more of a tossup the S4 pro has more grunt there too but the 400 is efficient and not too far off. One category that does favor the 400 is ram the S4 pro’s of yore used lpddr2 while the 400 takes advantage of lppdr3 which actually makes a bit of a difference. The factor that balances out the ram category is that most of the S4 pro soc’s had 2 gigs of ram and most snapdragon 400’s have 1, some have 1.5 or even 2 gigs though. So overall if we’re taking about power the S4 Pro easily takes it, but the 400 has pretty solid performance as well while also being highly efficient and having slightly more modern software support making it the better choice for midrangers.
i COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOU, SIR!!!!! I, too, owned an Optimus G which was one of my faborite devices, to date. Best example i can think of: Why didnt Moto just rebrand last gen X as the new G? Its a perfectly good device, with tons of life left. Releasing a hobbled device (new G) with no LTE makes no sense. They were able to revamp the original G with LTE AND expandable mem slot…while keeping the SAME low price point. I seriously dont get it. Maybe for new Moto users on a budget, but for us existing G users that new G is NOT an upgrade. /rant
As far as the choice to embed a lower specced chip than to use an older, higher specced one…probably battery life and GPU improvements? Good question. Perhaps manufactures hault production of older silicon once new ones are out. it’d be pretty cost effective to keep producing old chips, while releasing new ones, and R/D for upcoming ones.
The G with lte was $219 it wasn’t the same price it was still affordable but it wasn’t the same price as the stock moto g.