New evidence the LG G4 could come with 3K display, Huawei says battery life isn’t worth sacrificing for ultra high res displays

We’re about ready to close out the first month of the new year and already looking ahead to the next round of Android devices lined up to launch later this year. While the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M8 are first round of flagships on the horizon, the upcoming LG G4 can’t be too far behind.

That being said, we’re now slowly starting to uncover hints and clues as to what the South Korean manufacturer could have in store for the LG G4, with the latest bit of news coming from a UA profile on Verizon Wireless’ website. According to the UA profile, a mysterious LG phone — going by the model LG VS999 — has shown up reporting a crazy 1620×2880 resolution display or what is also known as 3K. This would mean the LG G4 would trump last year’s model (LG VS985) by playing the numbers games and effectively upping the resolution to a PPI so high, the human eye likely wouldn’t be able to perceive any difference.

The odd part about this “leak” is that another LG device believed to be the LG G4 was recently spotted in a UA profile on AT&T’s website going by the model number LG H810, but had the same 2K of its predecessor. Then again, maybe it’s not that odd. LG giving one carrier exclusive hardware features isn’t entirely unheard of and if there’s any one of the Big 4 carriers willing to fork out extra money for a “better” flagship device, it’s Verizon.

We can’t help but voice concerns that with the move to 2K (and now 3K) displays, some of these manufacturers are turning a blind eye to the hit in battery life that will result from pushing all those pixels around onscreen. This sentiment was echoed officially by Huawei who chimed in on the issue. According to Huawei’s president of product Kevin Ho, he’s not entirely sure the trade-off in battery life is worth packing 4K into our smartphones.

“The power consumption would be so huge that your phone would last just half a day. Maybe we have to compromise. For huge screens, 4K is very good but for the smartphone, it is 5-inch or 6-inch at the very most. Maybe our eyes can’t tell the difference.”

As we being moving away from desktop and laptops for our computing needs, and primarily using our smartphones for business and pleasure, it’s time smartphone OEMs start looking to battery life as the new benchmark at which to compete, not needlessly high resolution displays.