LG unveils dual-screen 5G smartphone

South Korea's LG Electronics unveiled a 5G smartphone on Sunday with a dual screen, the latest handset maker to pitch a new design feature in an effort to revive flagging sales. The two screens on the new V50ThinQ work independently, so a user can watch a film on one screen while browsing the Internet on the other.

LG, the world's No.7 smartphone maker, saw its sales decline by a quarter last year as Chinese rivals Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi grabbed market share in a slightly weaker global market.

Both announced 5G phones in Barcelona on the eve of the Mobile World Congress, the telecoms industry's main annual get together, with Xiaomi pitching a $680 model and Huawei smashing the price ceiling with $2,600 folding phone. LG nevertheless retains a following among those who value good video and audio quality.

Addressing those users, LG launched a second phone, the G8ThinQ, which can be unlocked without touching the screen. The handset instead uses light sensors to scan the veins in a user's hand or to recognise their face.

The phone's front-facing camera, which uses a sensor chip developed by Germany's Infineon Technologies , can scan in three dimensions - making it more secure than existing biometric methods of unlocking phones such as fingerprints.