LIVE FROM LG G4 DAY LONDON: LG Electronics became the latest top tier vendor to reveal its premium smartphone for 2015, with the company focusing its presentation on the “human-centric user experience” it offers.

“The LG G4 started with a small but very meaningful goal. The focus of the innovation should not be pure technology. It must be based upon understanding the user – put simply, innovation for a better life,” Brian Na, president of LG Electronics Europe, said here today.

Much focus was on its design, which sees the familiar touch-screen front face mated with a “hand-crafted, genuine full-leather grain” rear. A version with a ceramic rear will also be available (pictured).

G4 has a “slim arc” which runs along the body, which LG said offers 20 per cent better durability than a flat smartphone in face-down drops, while giving a more comfortable and secure feel in the hand.

Andrew Coughlin, head of mobile for LG Electronics UK and Ireland, said: “Over time smartphones have become monolithic slabs of flat, uniform cold metal. “What’s wrong with that?” I hear you ask. They are thin, they are slim, and they are pretty. But you have to wonder if these designs truly cater to customers’ needs and desires”.

The executive noted issues with the current standard smartphone design including metal and glass bodies that are “not all that comfortable or stable”, while attracting fingerprints.

Unsurprisingly the company was also keen to highlight technical developments including a 16MP front camera with f1.8 aperture lens, which enables more light to hit a sensor that has been increased in size. It is also said to be the world’s first smartphone with a colour spectrum sensor, which can assess the RGB values of the ambient light in a scene to enable accurate capture.

Also new for the G4 is a “manual mode”, which enables “experienced photographers” to control a number of parameters, with the ability to save images in RAW format.

LG G4 also features a new 5.5-inch “IPS Quantum Display”, which is said to offer 20 per cent greater colour reproduction, a 25 per cent improvement in brightness, and 50 per cent greater contrast.

Other highlighted features include a removable high-capacity 3,000mAh battery, “a rare feature in today’s high-end smartphones”.

LG G4 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, rather than the chipmaker’s range-topping Snapdragon 810. In a video talking up LG’s work with Qualcomm, Steve Mollenkopf, the silicon vendor’s CEO, said that the device “is an ideal example of how optimising technologies to meet customers’ actual needs can enable superior results and experiences, beyond just increasing the number of cores and aiming for higher benchmark scores”.

Other features include 8MP front facing camera, 32GB of on-board storage with microSD expansion slot, and 3GB of RAM. It runs Android 5.1, with LG’s latest user interface, UX4.0.

LG G4 will start its global rollout today in South Korea, and will eventually be available with 180 operators worldwide.