LG Vu 3 Unveiled: Specs and Release Date for the Short and Stout Phablet

LG announced a new smartphone today: the LG Vu 3. And, though less boxy than its predecessors, it still looks like a heifer.

Maybe "huskey" is a more polite term for it. The LG Vu 3, the third in LG's Vu line, has a 5.2-inch display. But unlike the 5.2-inch touchscreen on the company's flagship LG G2, the display on the LG Vu 3 has a 4:3 aspect ratio. To give you an idea of what that's like, most smartphones have a cinema-like 16:9 aspect ratio, much like those of an HDTV, except usually we hold them vertically. Meanwhile, the LG Vu 3's screen is a lot closer to an old CRT 'tube' TV - set on its side.

That gives the LG Vu 3 a short and stocky look, making it by far one of the oddest-looking new touchscreen smartphones coming to market (if you don't count the double-touchscreen novelty flip phones being released). According to PCMag's translation of the press release, LG says the 4:3 "golden ratio," previously seen in the LG Vu and Optimus Vu, will make the new LG Vu 3 great for reading e-books and websites.

There's some truth to that. Websites that still don't have a smartphone-optimized mobile version (and there are so, so many of them) will probably be easier to navigate, though that annoying resizing after loading will still be an inevitability.

But the strange aspect ratio on the LG Vu 3 also may facilitate easier writing on the screen for some, as the Vu 3 comes with a Rubberdium stylus that offers eight different writing styles to choose from, including acrylic paint, charcoal, and pen.

LG has certainly been trying to think "out of the [smartphone] box," experimenting most recently with the 5.2-inch LG G2, which has a "rear key" on the back of the device (which means LG took the volume rocker and power button and put it where your finger rests when making a phone call).

The oddly-shaped LG Vu has been a similar experiment, being one of the smallest "phablets" this year - tablet/phone chimeras tend to range from 5.5-inches to 6.4-inches - but with an aspect ratio of a traditional iPad-shaped tablet. While the LG Vu 3 is only about 0.2 inches larger than the LG Optimus Vu (LG has dropped the "Optimus" title from all of its devices), the South Korean electronics company may be betting that sticking to the Vu's 4:3 aspect ratio will enhance the handset's tablet experience, without making the device un-pocket-able. The new Vu also shares some features of the LG G2, including the "Knock on" and Guest Mode, though it has a more traditional button placement.

The LG Vu 3 is headed to South Korea, with a release date of September 27, but no word on the price of the new Vu. There's also no word on a U.S. release date, but the LG Optimus Vu was released in 2012 under the moniker "LG Intuition" with Verizon, so there's a chance its hitting the U.S. at some time.

Other specs for the device include a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM, powering the 5.2-inch display, which only has a 1,280 x 960p resolution. The device comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a front-facing 2.1-megapixel front-facing shooter. GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and, of course, 4G LTE capability come with the Vu 3 as well. The LG Vu 3 runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.