By Richard M. Sherwin

LG attempting to regain its former No. 1 status in mobile phones has decided to use design and simplicity to try to compete against market leaders arch rival Samsung and Apple.

The Quad HD display (very high resolution) based G3 smartphone, which will be available for all carriers in a few months, is also backed by a bigger promotion than LG has used in ten years.

All four national carriers will offer the Android 4.4.2 phone for around $199 with two-year contract.

Senior U.S. marketing VP Chang Ma said The G3 will benefit from a “full integrated marketing support,” and was ready willing and able to compete and overtake its rivals with features that have not been seen in the north American market. To simplify cosmetic design, the phone features sides and front panel with no buttons, improved rear keys, and a color strip along the bottom of the front panel to match one of the five colors available for the metallic back panel.

Features such as the industry’s first resizable onscreen QWERTY keyboard and the company’s first phone with one-touch picture taking, which lets users automatically focus and snap a shot simultaneously by tapping on the part of an image on which they want to focus.

In DFA thirty minute experience with the new device, it really seemed like LG had gone past Apple and Samsung and others, in making this phone based on consumer feedback, not just from a tecchies dream.

The G3 will also be the company’s first phone with Quad HD (2,560 by 1,440) display and the first in the industry with laser autofocus, which speeds up focusing of the 13-megapixel to 276 milliseconds to ensure users don’t miss a picture. Laser autofocus is available only on select SLR digital cameras, the company claimed.

In other maneuvers aimed directly at Samsung, LG enlarged the screen size to 5.5 inches from the G2’s 5.2 inches. Also to simplify use, a smart keyboard can be swiped to increase keyboard size; consumers can hold down the space bar and slide their finger on the spacebar to position the cursor, and like some other smart phones, users can swipe up with their left or right thumb to select the word that the keyboard suggests. The combination of features is promoted as speeding up typing while reducing errors by more than 75 percent.

A personal-assistant-like Smart Notifications feature also simplifies use, executives said, by using plain English language to, for example, remind users if they haven’t returned a call, ask whether they want to delete little-used apps, and remind them to put the phone in battery-saving mode when the battery is low.

“The phone can still be used comfortably with one hand because of a narrow-bezel design that brings the width close to that of 5-inch phones and delivers a screen to front-panel ratio of 76.4 percent, “ said James Marshall, head of mobile product marketing during a somewhat bloviated worldwide webcast in London. The phone measures 5.76 inches by 2.94 inches by 0.35 inches.

The company also turned to an arched matte-metallic back to maintain comfort in one hand. Like the G2 which never quite caught on in the U.S. with consumers or carriers, the G3 features rear-panel on/off and volume buttons to enable one-handed use.

The phone also features Q Pair, which enables its caller ID notifications and text messages to appear on the company’s G Pad tablet. The tablet can also be used to bang out text messages for transmission by the phone….a feature that DFA loves in the LG Tablet.

The device provides more than 11 million subpixels,  or almost double twice that of FullHD displays, to deliver more realistic onscreen color reproduction.

Three colors will be available in the U.S. and when the screen lights up, wallpaper colors will match the color variations of the phone’s front and back panel. In other enhancements, CPU speed goes up to quad-core 2.5GHz from 2.2GHz, RAM goes up to 3GB from 2GB, the phone’s speaker gets a 1-watt amplifier, The new model also gets a MicroSD slot lacking in its predecessor. The slot accepts cards up to 128GB, largest capacity among its arch rivals.

The new model also adds Knock Code to wake up the screen and unlock the phone by tapping a numeric code on the screen; Content Lock to prevent photos and documents from being viewed even connected to a computer; and a kill switch that can be used to remotely wipe the contents of a phone, lock it, or completely disable it in the event of theft.

Like its predecessor, it will support select features of LTE-Advanced.

Also like before, the phone features a 13-megapixel main camera but with improved optical image stabilizer. The phone will continue to record and play back 192kHz/24-bit WAV and FLAC files. Memory capacity will be 16GB or 32GB depending on carrier.

To go with the phone, LG will offer its first folder-style QuickCircle case, which lets users check the time, place calls, send text messages, take photos, control the phone’s music app, and get health updates through the case’s circular window.

The phone will also work with an accessory Qi wireless-charging device and with the company’s first smart watch, whose ship date hasn’t been announced. Another new accessory is a stereo Bluetooth headset with audio performance developed by Harman Kardon.