Whether LG phones are worth buying is debatable, but there’s one thing the company does that needs to be applauded: They make some of the best LCD panels on the planet. Last night the company announced their latest creation, a 5.5 inch panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, which gives it a pixel per inch rating of 538. Other impressive stats: It’s only 1.2 mm thick, it has 1.2 mm bezels, and it spits out 430 nits, which is plenty bright.
There’s a catch, however, and you can probably tell what it is from the headline. LG doesn’t say when this panel will enter into mass production, when samples will start shipping to handset makers, or when we can expect to see products using this panel on store shelves. Without those key pieces of information, this is just a fancy tech demo that means little to nothing. Realistically speaking, when should you expect to see a phone that can break the 500 pixel per inch mark? Likely towards the middle or end of next year. Similar to how you can’t just shove a huge engine into a regular car and not upgrade the rest of the vehicle, it’s going to be the same deal with this panel. You’re going to have to get one hell of a powerful processor, Snapdragon 800 class at a minimum, a ton of RAM, and a gigantic battery. But you all know this. There was a time when WVGA was considered bleeding edge. Now it’s low end. There was a time when 720p was thought to be the best thing since sliced bread. That’s now mid range. Today everyone is talking 1080p, but in two years that’ll be standard for 300 Euro phones. Oh how spoiled we’ve become. Update: Oh and in case you’re wondering why LG went with a resolution of 2560 x 1440, that’s essentially four 720p screens. LG goes so far as to call this a “quad HD” display, but it’s not really.
