When LG announced last year that it was shutting down its smartphone business, the company promised that it wouldn’t leave existing customers high and dry. LG was promising to offer a few more major Android updates to its most recent flagships and some mid-range devices.
It looks like the company is delivering on that promise, because after promising last month to release an Android 12 update for the LG Velvet smartphone, LG has begun rolling out the OS upgrade to some customers in South Korea.
The LG Velvet was released in 2020 and originally shipped with Android 10 software. Last year LG released an Android 11 update, and now it looks like Android 12 is imminent. LG has also promised at least one more update for the phone, so expect it to receive Android 13 sometime after Google releases the next major version of its mobile operating system later this year.
The Velvet features a 6.8 inch, 2460 x 1080 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a microSD card reader, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, a 4,300 mAh battery, a 16MP front camera, and three rear cameras: 48MP primary, 8MP wide-angle, and 5MP depth.
There’s also a fingerprint sensor on the phone, stereo speakers, support for 5G, WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, and NFC, and the phone is rated IP68 for water and dust resistance.
It sold for $599 when it first launched in the US in July, 2020. But if you don’t mind buying a phone from a company that doesn’t make smartphones anymore, you can now pick one up for just over half that price.
LG will also roll out security updates for the LG Wing dual-screen smartphone soon, as well as several members of the company’s Q series line of phones.
via /r/tmobile, xda-developers, and GSM Arena
This article was originally published February 28, 2022 and last updated March 16, 2022.
There’s no mention of which version get the new OS update. Is it only the 5G version or includes the 4G version as well?
The 5G version does not include the 4G/LTE version although I have to assume that the OTA update will follow on the heels of the 5G OTA update if not simultaneously in other markets around the world. I guess we have to wait and see….
Got update for the LG velvet 4g a month ago , South Africa
This isn’t quite the same as an official announcement, but there’s a post from last month on the LG V60 subreddit that shows Android 12 being beta tested in Korea, so hopefully that’s coming soon too.