Thursday, September 1, 2016

LG V20 confirms world's first phone with Google In Apps search, launch in India this month



LG V20 will launch on September 6 at an event in San Francisco. The smartphone is the first non-Nexus device to be launched with Google's latest Android OS version -- Nougat. 

Speaking at the company's factory visit today, Kim Ki-Wan, managing director of LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd., hinted that the LG V20 might be launched in India within a month.

Google made its name as a search engine, but when it comes to Android the search experience has always been slightly limited. Sure, you can search the web and search for apps, but until now there wasn't a native way to search within apps.

That's all changing with Google's new In Apps feature, which will add a new tab to the Google app, bringing up content from within Gmail, Spotify and YouTube, while Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Evernote, Glide, Todoist and Google Keep will be added in the coming months.

Essentially the feature allows you to find notes, contacts, songs and more from one centralized location, without first having to launch the relevant app.

It's a potentially useful feature, but it's set to be at its best on the LG V20, as Google has confirmed that this will be the first smartphone to get a dedicated In Apps shortcut. The shortcut will be available from both the main screen and the second screen, which handily confirms that the V20 will have a second screen if there was ever any doubt.

The In Apps feature will also work with pre-installed apps on the LG V20, extending the feature's usefulness beyond the handful of apps Google is initially supporting.

The LG V20 is the successor to the LG V10, which featured an Always-On secondary display and a dual-rear camera setup with a wide-angle lens. LG V10 was launched in October last year but was never made available in India. Instead, the company's first modular smartphone, the G5, along with its 'Friends' debuted in India in June this year.

With just a week to go to launch, the company has already teased several features of the LG V20, including a 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC, and audio powered by B&O Play. Teasers have also indicated that the smartphone may feature a modular setup, if going by the 'Play More' tagline.

Recent leaks have contradicted the modular smartphone speculation however, and point to the presence of both a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the smartphone. Other leaked specifications and features include a dual-rear camera setup, just like the V10, as well as a QHD display with a display size of either 5.6 or 5.7-inches. It is rumoured to be powered either by a Snapdragon 820 or Snapdragon 821 SoC, coupled with 4GB of RAM.



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