The current state of smartphone hardware looks like this: touchscreen phone with a 5-megapixel camera, LED flash, 720p HD video recording, minimum 8GB internal storage, 512MB of RAM and a 1Ghz mobile processor. LG's leaked flagship smartphone known currently as "Star" will likely lead the way to a new standard for smartphones in the next year or two.
According to Engadget, the LG Star will have a dual-core mobile processor (improved battery life and better multitasking heaven!), a Tegra 2 graphics processor, 4-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera with LED flash and support for full HD 1080p video-recording. The smartphone is reported to be loaded with a "near-stock" version of Android — likely 2.3 Gingerbread or the next version which is 3.0 Honeycomb.
LG's Star is slated to be released in early 2011. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl — if the image optics are made of quality stuff I'd be more than happy to leave the DSLR at home next time I'm out and about. It's natural that hardware will improve over time, but here in the U.S. we just got 5-megapixel cellphone cameras whereas Nokia and Sony Ericsson have been churning those monsters out in Europe and Asia for years. Yeah, we know that more megapixels isn't everything, but 1080p recording in a smartphone would be awesome.
