LG announced the K7 and K10 smartphones at the beginning of January, but hinted that more K series phones were on the way. A post on Facebook in mid-January revealed the LG K4, K5, and K8 would join the party sometime this year.
Based on the timing, we thought there was a good chance we would see these devices at Mobile World Congress, but LG chose to concentrate on the G5 instead. Now, after the smoke has cleared, the company has gone ahead and officially announced the K5 and K8.
As expected, both phones are mid-range models aimed at developing areas. However, they have solid designs with an attractive choice of color options.
The K8 is the higher-end of the two with its woven back cover reminiscent of the LG V10. It also has similar rear power and volume controls.
It sports a 5-inch display with a resolution of 720p (1,280 x 720 pixels). It’s powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and has 1.5GB (Europe, North America) or 1GB (Latin America) of RAM. The press release didn’t specify the internal storage, but we don’t expect it to be less than 8GB.
The rear camera captures photos at 8 megapixels, while the front-facing selfie camera captures at 5 megapixels.
The 2,125mAh battery is removable, which is a nice touch. It also has LTE connectivity and sports Android Marshmallow.
The K8 will be available in either gold, indigo, or white and it will be introduced later this week in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, CIS, and Latin America. Unfortunately LG didn’t specify pricing.
The lower-spec K5 has a more metallic look, similar to the LG G4. It also sports a 5-inch display, but its resolution is only 854 x 480 pixels. It’s powered by the same 1.3GHz quad-core processor as the K8, and it has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.
The rear camera comes in at 5 megapixels, while the front-facer is a modest 2 megapixels.
The 1,900mAh battery is smaller than the K8, but it’s also removable. The K5 features 3G connectivity, but the biggest downer is it runs Android Lollipop, which is almost two generations old.
The K5 will be available in either gold, silver, or titan and it will be introduced later this week in Europe, CIS, and Latin America. It will be called the Q6 in Mexico. Just like the K8, pricing wasn’t specified in the press release.
Although LG didn’t announce the K4 at this time, we expect that it will very soon.
