LG’s Optimus G2 Now Rumored for Fall Release

Korean news agency Yonhap is speculating that LG will release its Optimus G2, successor to the flagship Optimus G, in the fall. In the interim, it seems like LG may announce an in-between device with flagship-like specs at Mobile World Congress for a first quarter release with a codename of GK.

The GK model is speculated to have a 5.5-inch full HD 1080p display alongside quad-core processing power. According to Yonhap (via Android Authority), LG may be gunning for this release as it hopes to carve out some market share for this model ahead of Samsung’s release of the highly anticipated Galaxy S4.

As the original Optimus G was released in the U.S. months after the launch of Samsung’s flagship, it was often overshadowed and compared to the Samsung rival. LG has been building a better name for itself with recent releases, however, in the form of the Nexus 4 and the Optimus G.

It’s unclear why LG isn’t going with the Optimus G2 branding for the GK model. The Optimus G2 was at one point rumored for a debut earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, but that did not happen. A fall release may mean that LG may be waiting for new software from Google before it releases its flagship smartphone as Google may debut the next major version of Android at its Google I/O developer event in late spring. This would mean that the Optimus G2 would ship with the newest version of the Android OS and not have to be updated.

The Optimus G2 smartphone, and the GK, would likely have to compete against the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the rumored HTC M7 smartphone, the latter of which is highly anticipated to also be unveiled at Mobile World Congress next month and may be among the first to run NVIDIA’s new Tegra 4 ARM CPU.