LG Electronics Co yesterday unveiled a curved-screen smartphone, taking on rival Samsung Electronics Co in a niche market seen as a first step on the road to fully flexible products.
Despite its name, the “G-Flex” does not bend, but uses flexible OLED (organic light-emitting diode) to produce a curved 6 inch display.
The model is “the best representation yet of how a smartphone should be curved,” LG mobile unit president Park Jong-seok said, in a clear dig at Samsung.
Earlier this month, Samsung started retailing its “Galaxy Round” — a 5.7-inch handset with a display that curves from side-to-side fitting the contour of the hand.
The “G-Flex” is curved on the vertical axis, the company said, to “follow the contour of the face.”
Curved displays are already commercially available in large-screen televisions offered by both Samsung and LG.
The displays are supposed to offer a more immersive viewing experience, but are significantly more expensive than standard screens.
The Galaxy Round is only available in South Korea and retails at 1.08 million won (US$1,000).
Curved screens are still at a nascent stage in display technology, which is shifting toward flexible panels that are bendable or can even be rolled or folded.
LG said the G-Flex would be available to South Korean consumers from next month, but did not provide a price estimate.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
AUSPICIOUS TIMING: Ostensibly looking to spike the guns of domestic rivals, ByteDance launched the upgrade to coincide with the Lunar New Year China’s ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country’s most widely used artificial-intelligence (AI) app, the company announced on Saturday. ByteDance is one of several Chinese firms hoping to generate overseas and domestic buzz around its new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese partake in family gatherings in their hometowns. The company, like rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), was caught off-guard by DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise to global fame during last year’s Spring Festival, when Silicon Valley and investors worldwide were