LG G5 available for pre-order on March 18th

With LG having announced the LG G5 the same day as Samsung did its Galaxy S7 and S7 edge (Sunday, February 21st), you’d think both Seoul rivals would sell their smartphones on the same day. Since Samsung has opened up pre-orders now, with sales to go live worldwide on March 11th, you’d expect LG to do the same. Unfortunately, LG G5 fans will have to wait longer — particularly if they live in the US.

Best Buy has its LG G5 page up and running, with the words “Available for Pre-Order: 3/18/2016” posted beneath the phone’s description. In other words, LG G5 fans won’t be able to pre-order the device until March 18th, one week after Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge sales arrive on the worldwide market. To put this into perspective, LG won’t let you pre-order the device until just one week AFTER Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are available in your local market. In the US, this means that you can now pre-order the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge, while you’ll need to wait another three weeks to pre-order the LG G5. By the time Galaxy S7 and S7 edge customers get their new handsets, LG G5 fans will be pre-ordering their handsets. At the rate of sales, LG G5 customers may not get their handsets until the end of March, early April, at the earliest.

The LG G5 features a 5.3-inch smartphone with a Quad HD display, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 32GB of onboard storage with a 2TB microSD card slot for expandable storage up to 2TBs, and runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. For you interested LG G5 customers, the Korean manufacturer has eliminated its app drawer this year, leaving Android users who loved the app drawer the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge as your return to it. We’ve been told also that LG has slimmed down its software experience, though it still needs some work (according to our sources). The LG G5 does feature a removable battery and sports a metal design, with the company solving a design dilemma for some customers who crave both a metal design and removable battery in one smartphone. Alongside of the LG G5, fans can also pick up LG’s new 360 VR headset, which sports its own display as opposed to the Samsung Gear VR that uses the S6 edge Plus or Note 5 for the headset’s display.

We still have no word on what LG will provide as the retail price for its LG G5 handset, but, if the past G2, G3, and G4 are any indication, US customers can expect to pay about $700. “Life’s Better With Friends,” as the company says, but if you want LG’s friends, expect to pay for them.

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