LG’s next flagship is getting a 3D front-facing camera

LG's never been much on waiting for a big show to announce its latest offering. Mobile World Congress is still weeks away, and the company just dropped what's likely to be the biggest new feature of its upcoming flagship, the G8 ThinQ.

Clunky naming conventions aside, the handset once again finds LG focusing its efforts on imaging, with a time-of-flight sensor built-in to the front-facing camera array (sensor pictured above, incidentally). Here's LG on what that means,

While other 3D technologies utilize complex algorithms to calculate an object's distance from the camera lens, the ToF image sensor chip delivers more accurate measurements by capturing infrared light as it is reflected off the subject. As a result, ToF is faster and more effective in ambient light, reducing the workload on the application processor thereby also reducing power consumption.

For the end-user, that means the camera will be more capable of advanced face recognition than what most Android handsets currently offer. The addition of depth sensing brings more advanced biometric authentication, closer to what you get with the iPhone. The feature also goes a way toward validating earlier leaks of the phone, which bring a larger top notch.

As for the rest of the details - LG's got to save something for MWC, I guess.