Love them or hate them, those ubiquitous Android skins aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Now the latest one to make an entrance to the overlay game is LG’s UI 3.0, which the Korean outfits says will make the overall experience of its handsets easier, speedier and “more convenient.” The new UI brings features such as a novel drag anywhere-style lock screen, an Icon Customizer for setting your own photos as icons / shortcuts, a revamped Pattern Lock that lets you preset apps for quicker launch and a Voice Shutter trait for taking snaps via voice commands — à la Sammy S Voice. UI 3.0 is set to make its debut next week with the launch of LG’s Optimus LTE II in Korea, while the Optimus 4X HD will also come sporting the fresh skin once it launches in June.

SOURCE via LG

We know almost too well how smartphones perform in US market share; what we don’t usually see is how happy customers are once the shrink wrap’s off. Going by a newly-expanded American Customer Satisfaction Index, it’s the iPhone that most scratches the itch at a score of 83. Despite having just been added, Apple was noticeably ahead of a three-way tie between HTC, LG and Nokia at 75. You might not want to look if you’re a freshly-minted RIM executive: the BlackBerry made its freshman debut on the charts at the bottom, or 69. Big carriers have their own reasons to wince, too, knowing that smaller carriers like US Cellular and TracFone scored higher on the happiness meter than incumbents hiking service fees. While there’s definitely some wiggle room for your own experience to have been better or worse, if you were an iPhone owner on a regional carrier in the past few months, you were statistically the most likely to be on Cloud Nine.

SOURCE via The ACSI

The March smartphone market share tally for the US is in from ComScore, and it paints a familiar picture that’s rosy for Apple, Google and Samsung, but not so flush-cheeked for everyone else. Android is still tops and jumped almost four points to 51 percent of new American buyers. Apple’s still riding high after shipping 35.1 million iPhones, however, and moved up to 30.7 percent. As is often becoming the case, it was Microsoft and RIM that took the biggest hit, with the BlackBerry dropping as much as Android gained and tumbling down to 12.3 percent.

A total of 106 million Americans had a smartphone, nine percent higher than in December, and that was mirrored in the hurt dealt out among total cellphone market share. Outside of Samsung’s gangbuster run in smartphones keeping it on top at 26 percent, the only other company to move up as an individual cellphone brand was Apple, which staked out 14 percent of the US cellphone space for itself. HTC, Motorola and LG are all shedding market share, with HTC no doubt hoping that the One X and One S will turn its fortunes around pretty soon.

SOURCE via ComScore

Unlike today’s other phone announcement, we can’t say we were expecting to see LG come out with something of its own — and it’s a bit of a doozy, at that. Samsung’s Korean rival decided not to let the Galaxy S III have the full spotlight for long, officially unleashing the Optimus LTE2. The mind-blowing portion of the spec sheet is its inclusion of 2GB RAM, a milestone we haven’t yet seen in a smartphone. Additionally, the LTE2 will feature the company’s “True HD IPS” display, WPC-backed wireless charging capabilities, Android 4.0 and a 2,150mAh battery that LG claims will increase the battery life by an astounding 40 percent. We haven’t received word on which CPU will be used, though we’re hopeful that a quad-core beast (or Krait, perhaps?) will complement the astounding amount of RAM. The LTE2 is due to land on at least three carriers in Korea sometime in mid-May, but we haven’t heard any pricing or additional country availability at this time. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more. In the meantime, check out LG’s Flickr page down below for more images, and start thinking of ways to take advantage of the extra horsepower.

SOURCE via Flickr

One day before the purported launch of Samsung’s cloud service, Korea’s other technology giant has unveiled LG Cloud. The eponymous service offers 5GB free space as standard, while owners of LG’s Smart TVs or smartphones will get 50GB free for six months. It’ll push content between your devices, appropriately compressed for the medium, so high definition images on your TV will be slimmed down to save your phone’s data cap. The free beta begins in South Korea and the US from May 1st, with a global rollout pencilled in for next year — but don’t worry, the company made it clear you’ll be able to use it on your holidays, if you can find a signal.

SOURCE via LG

If a spiritual and titular successor to LG’s Optimus 2X has you a little hesitant, then maybe its rumored relative the D1L might make you feel more comfortable. The spec sheet makes it clear that this machine is a high-end affair, though it trades in the 4X HD’s quad-core Tegra 3 for a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 and an LTE radio. Otherwise it sounds quite a bit like that other LG flagship announced at MWC, including a 4.7-inch 720p display and Ice Cream Sandwich. Of course, there’s no guarantee such a phone will ever see the light of day, none the less here in the US. Let’s just hope if and when the D1L lands, it does so with fewer bugs than the much maligned G2X.

SOURCE via DDaily.co.kr

If TVs only had a brain — oh wait, now they kind of do. LG’s Smart TV series has already begun to flood the market with its suite of apps, streaming video services, support for Flash and gaming all in tow, save for one promised service — Voice Control. Announced by the company today, an update enabling that feature should hit flat panels by month’s end, giving users with Magic Remotes access to simplified search and navigation. Curious to see how it works? Then check out the awkwardly dubbed and unintentionally hilarious video demo after the break.

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LG has made no secret of its fondness for flexible e-paper, but those dreams became a reality today, with the announcement of a six-inch display that promises to “revolutionize the e-book market.” The malleable plastic display sports a resolution of 1024 x 768 and can bend at an angle of up to 40 degrees. At just 0.7 millimeters thick, it’s about one-third thinner than similarly-specced glass displays, and weighs in at 14 grams — about half the weight of its glassy competition. LG also claims that the display is super durable, as evidenced by a series of successful drop tests from a height of 1.5 meters. The plan going forward is to supply the display to ODMs in China, in the hopes of bringing final products to Europe by “the beginning of next month.”

Mozilla hasn’t exactly been quiet about the fact that it has some big stuff to show off at Mobile World Congress. We’ve already gotten a peek at Boot to Gecko and it’s announced it’ll be joining the app market fray. But, what we haven’t heard anything about just yet, is hardware. A mobile operating system and software outlet are only useful if you’ve got a physical platform to run it on. Now rumors are circulating that LG is in cahoots with the makers of Firefox and will be building developer hardware for for its fledgling OS. Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich has said publicly his foundation will be at MWC with “partners…” plural. Who exactly those ally companies are isn’t clear, but we’d say it’s safe to assume there is at least one hardware maker in the mix. And, if the sources at ExtremeTech are right, that manufacturer already has a rather busy schedule.

SOURCE via ExtremeTech

If LG failed to impress you so far with the Android 2.3 phones it’s shown off in the run up to MWC 2012, perhaps the Optimus 4X HD can turn things around. This 4.7-inch beast will hit Europe in the second quarter and is it’s first to feature a 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 as its benchmark destroying CPU, a 4.7-inch True HD IPS LCD (1280×720) plus what appears to be a lightly customized version of Ice Cream Sandwich.

Perhaps the only logical follow-up to its Optimus 2X that kicked off all the dual-core madness, it also includes a 2,150mAh battery, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Despite that huge screen, at a depth of 8.9mm it’s only slightly thicker than the superwide 4×3 Optimus Vu.

Just like the Fujitsu prototype we saw at CES, the Tegra 3 features a 4+1 “Companion Core” design, with a fifth low power unit available to take care of more mundane tasks without draining the battery. This is all pretty close to the leaked “X3″ specs we’d heard, however there’s no mention of NFC or HSPA+ just yet, only DLNA and MHL.