LG’s curved Flex phone flexes its form for the world to see

If CES 2013 was any indication, curved smartphones could be the next big growth area before we’re all folding our handsets and pocketing them like paper aeroplanes.

Earlier this month, LG announced that it had the technology technically ready to go, with Samsung talking up a new Galaxy product only a day later that featured curved pocketable OLED technology in a smartphone.

Now, LG is ready with its own curved device, flexing muscle in the LG G Flex, an interpretation of the LG G2 that features an OLED panel with a slight curve, one that supports a vertical arc that can help make the smartphone be pressed against the side of the face more easily, essentially supporting its contour.

LG tells us that this curvature increases the volume of sound from the speaker against the more typical flat smartphone, and even fits more comfortable in a back pocket. If you hold it in your front pocket, this might not affect you, though the curve doesn’t look too pronounced that it will look like you have a small banana sticking out from your front pocket.

The design is familiar to those who have seen the G2, with a slim black body supporting LG’s new back-buttons, with the volume and power toggles sitting underneath the rear camera lens, but there’s also more in the G Flex than just a G2 with a curve.

For starters, the screen is bigger, raised from a 5 inch Full HD display to a 6 inch HD (720p) screen built on a plastic OLED display, a curved battery supporting 3500mAh of power, and a “self healing” coating on the back that can apparently fix the small scratches incurred from regular use.

Functionality from the G2 is also here, with support for 24-bit lossless audio, the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, LTE support, NFC, Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean,” and 32GB of storage.

Availability in any place outside of Korea is unknown at this point, though LG does have plans to launch in other places after November, so stay tuned.