N900 Competition – LG GW620

In the series of potential Nokia N900 competition, next candidate is the LG GW620 which was launched yesteday. It’s LG’s first Android phone and follows the unfortunate path of not-so-interesting Android releases coming from many companies lately (like the Motorola Cliq). Hardware specifications are mostly the same, especially for the internal parts, screen and camera. Also the general layout and design, a sliding Qwerty keyboard with 3-inch touchscreen surrounded by black and silver finished covers, is becoming a bit too familiar trend in this market segment.

What is more interesting is the fact that LG has chosen a dual-OS strategy (their choice being WinMo and Google Android), similar to e.g. Nokia with Maemo and Symbian. It seems that LG is positioning the WinMo phones to more business oriented higher-end and the Android phones will be marketed more to the middle market masses with social networking functionalities built-in.

Simply put, it might not be too fair to compare LG GW620 and similar late Android models with Nokia N900, as the latter is directed towards the very high end of the market accompanied by Apple iPhone 3GS and very few other contenders. LG GW620 is shooting for the middle market segment where these late Android models are all coming like mushrooms on rainy autumn days. In the end though, actual market positioning and how consumer perceives these different devices and operating systems is not that clear and will be muddied further by the varying operator subsidies. Until final consumer prices and options are clear, we can assume that same consumers are looking across all of these instead making artificial highest-end/high-end/lower-high-end restrictions to their choices when making the decision for their next mobile solution.

Here’s the specs of LG’s first entry in Android phones:

LG GW620

• Note! LG has not published detailed specs yet (15th Sep 2009), so there might be small updates for below specs later
• Landscape, slide-out QWERTY keyboard (5-row)
• 5.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash
• 3-inch touchscreen
• Battery: Li-ion (capacity not known)
• Weight: N/A
• Processor: N/A (but expected to be the same as for all Android devices to date, 528 MHz MSMxxxx)
• Internal memory: 256 MB (RAM), 512 MB (ROM)
• Screen resolution: 320 x 480 pixels
• Operating system: Google Android 1.5 Cupcake
• Cellular voice networking: GSM Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900), UMTS dual-band (900/2100)
• Cellular data networking: GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s
• Wireless LAN: B and G
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• MicroSD memory card support
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• MicroUSB connector
• A-GPS
• Multimedia (MP3/MP4/AAC/AAC+/EAAC+/WMA audio and MP4 video player)

Check out the other N900 competition here:

Samsung Omnia Pro

HTC Touch Pro 2

Motorola Cliq