A new year comes along with shinny new devices from different phone manufacturers, for LG, the LG G5 is set to be a major departure from the company’s previous flagship phones. According to rumor-mill the upcoming phone is expected to have an entirely new design featuring a never seen before accessory slot at the bottom. And LG just announced a new feature — according to a GIF posted to Facebook and reproduced below, the phone will have an “always-on” screen. “Never go asleep while others do,” LG’s message implores.
Just to be clear, that the phone’s regular display won’t always be on, of course. It looks like the screen will display basic information like the time, date, and notification alerts in a black-and-white state. We’ve seen such implementations done by what Motorola with active its notifications on phones since 2013’s Moto X, but it does suggest that LG could switch to a new screen technology for the G5.
The only screen technology that can offer such a feature is an OLED screen. As they don’t use conventional backlights, meaning they can save power when only certain parts of the display is used. That may be how the G5 is able to work with an “always-on” screen. The current LCD in the G4 would consume a lot of power no matter what it displayed, so OLED would tend to be a better fit for this kind of feature. Some other sources, however claim that the G5 won’t use OLED.
LG experimented with similar functionality by putting a tiny secondary display in the recent V10 phone, and the company recently announced that it will invest billions into increasing its OLED production capability. We expect the to be announced on Sunday February 21st at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. So stay tuned.
