LG is expanding its series of smartphones with the LG G4 name by adding two new models that look a lot like the company’s latest flagship phone, but which have substantially less powerful hardware.
The new phones include the 5.7 inch LG G4 Stylus, which is a big phone which comes with a rubber pen for writing or drawing, and the 5 inch LG G4c.
Both new phones feature just 720p displays, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, suggesting they’ll be substantially cheaper than the LG G4, which has a 5.5 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display, 3GB of RAM, and at least 16GB of storage.
The G4c might appeal to some folks looking for a smaller phone (when did phones with 5 inch screens start to qualify as small?), but while the phone looks like its big sibling, it has a lower-resolution display, less memory, and a less powerful processor. LG says the phone features a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, which is most likely a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 or similar chip.
The LG G4c has a 2,540 mAh removable battery, a microSD card slot, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, and support for 4G LTE. It runs Android 5.0 software and features 8MP rear and 5MP front cameras.
The larger G4 Stylus has slightly better specs including a larger 3,000 mAh battery, and a 13MP rear camera… at least on the 4G model. A 3G model has an 8MP camera for some reason.
LG says the 4G version of the G4 Stylus has a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, while a 3G model is available with an unspecified 1.4 GHz octa-core chip.
The LG G4c and G4 Stylus will be available in select markets in the coming weeks.
1GB of ram makes it a non-starter for an Android device that you will likely multi-task. Hard to compare to the $199 and $299 Asus products announced yesterday which have 2 and 4GB of ram, and better processors.