Whether or not LG will decide to throw in the mobile towel at some point this year and sell its long-struggling smartphone business to the highest bidder among a rumored group of at least five prospective buyers, one of the company’s 2020 handsets should still find a place on many shopping lists put together by early 5G adopters on tight budgets.
We’re talking, of course, about the gorgeous 6.8-inch Velvet, which is arguably one of the best inexpensive 5G-capable Android options available on all three big US carriers right now. Interestingly, each major wireless service provider sells a slightly different version of the upper mid-range giant, with Verizon charging a premium for Ultra Wideband support and T-Mobile scoring global exclusivity over a special edition powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1000C processor rather than Qualcomm’s hugely popular Snapdragon 765.
While the “Un-carrier” originally priced its exclusive LG Velvet 5G extremely close to AT&T’s “regular” model, said $588 tag appears to have recently dropped to $396 with absolutely no fanfare. That means new and old T-Mo customers can now pay over 200 bucks less than their Ma Bell-subscribing counterparts for essentially the same phone.
The greatest thing about this “deal” is undoubtedly that… it’s not actually a deal per se, but more likely a permanent affair. Similar to the quirky LG Wing just a couple of weeks ago and the mainstream high-end V60 ThinQ several months back, the Magenta-flavored LG Velvet is pretty much guaranteed to settle at its newly reduced price for good.
If you were hesitant to spend nearly six Benjamins on this low and mid-band 5G-supporting beaut, it is now very difficult to argue with the handset’s value for money and competitiveness against the likes of the $399.99 REVVL 5G or Samsung’s $504 Galaxy A51 5G.
In addition to a stunning design and reasonably powerful SoC, the LG Velvet 5G also has a sharp P-OLED display with a discreet notch going for it, as well as plenty of juice in the old tank (4,000mAh battery capacity, to be specific), three solid rear-facing cameras, 6 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of internal storage space, a microSD card slot, headphone jack, and wireless charging capabilities.
