LG is said to be planning to introduce a smartphone based on an in-house System-on-Chip (SoC). 

LG’s SoC plans have been a subject of speculation for more than a year now, but so far the company has little to show for its efforts. LG’s first SoC, codenamed Odin, was leaked a number of times over the past year. 

In April it was rumoured that the chip was ready for production. It first appeared in a benchmark last December. At the time the chip delivered competitive performance, but it ended up slower than the Snapdragon 800. 

It remains unclear whether the upcoming phone is indeed based on an Odin derivative or an entirely new chip. The Odin was designed a high-end chip in ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration, with four Cortex A15 and four Cortex A7 CPU cores and Rogue graphics. A year later that sort of spec does not make much sense, especially not in 28nm, as there are already numerous SoCs with similar specs on the market. 

The new phone is said to be a 5.9-inch device and it could appear as early as next month. Although the size of the screen points to a phablet, that does not mean it is a high-end device. According to Korean business publication Money Today, there is speculation that the phone could be part of LG’s G series or that it could be part of an entirely new product line.

Cheap, oversized phones are quite popular in some emerging markets, so the size alone does not tell us enough. LG’s first SoC could be a design with flagship aspirations like the Odin, or it could be an unspectacular design for mid range and entry level devices.