After months of speculations, the LG V20 is officially coming to the United States. This was confirmed by T-Mobile in an Oct. 6 announcement, which also revealed that the LG flagship will begin shipping starting Oct. 28, a few days later than what was previously expected.
Now, LG V20 has been launched in early September and the latest Google Pixel smartphones, which was unveiled in Oct. 4, will roll out several days ahead. So what was the holdup?
Well, no one exactly knows except those privy to the LG-T-Mobile negotiations. But observers are noting that the LG V20's seems to be following the pattern by which Nokia phones have rolled out in the United States during its heyday. But this issue should no longer concern fans. What is important is that it is coming and LG is even throwing in a pair of Bang & Olufsen H3 headphones to sweeten the deal.
T-Mobile is also beside itself with excitement as reflected in its released statement and rightfully so. It will effectively become the first device to run on T-Mobile's new LTE AWS-3 spectrum. This also means that the carrier has beaten AT&T in deploying the latest technology.
"LG's V20 raises the bar again, and Android fans are gonna flip when they use this phone on our unlimited, blazing-fast network," John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile, said in an official statement. "With T-Mobile ONE, your V20 is fully unleashed, so you can binge, jam, scope, snap — and whatever else you love — completely unlimited on America's fastest 4G LTE network."
As one of LG's flagship devices, the LG V20 is, indeed, a cutting edge piece of technology. It will ship with Android Nougat and is packing a Snapdragon 820 processor with quad-core CPU. The camera is also quite spectacular on paper, as it comes in dual 16 megapixel as well as laser and phase detection autofocus. It also sports a widely praised design language, which should allow it to appeal to the sensibilities of those into fashion pursuits.
But, here's the thing. T-Mobile is still mum about the pricing. Fortunately, AT&T has also announced that it is offering this phone but if their pricing is any indication, then T-Mobile's V20 would be very, very expensive. The former listed the LG flagship for $830. To provide some context about the cost, one can turn to the iPhone 7, which starts at $769 or the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge at $769.
Those who are really bent on purchasing the LG V20 can, of course, rationalize their purchase. The B&O headset alone that LG is shipping with it costs around $149 already.
