The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is still a good couple of weeks away, but faced with increasingly heated mid-range smartphone segment competition, LG wastes no time making a number of recently rumored non-flagship models official.

The most interesting of the new budget-minded bunch is probably the LG Stylus 3, aka Stylo 3, what with its natural-feeling 1.8mm diameter fiber-tip stylus, improved writing experience, fingerprint scanner, and pre-loaded Android 7.0 Nougat.

The pen-wielding 5.7-inch phablet also packs a respectably large and removable 3,200mAh battery, 3GB RAM, and octa-core MediaTek MT6750 processor. Its 13 and 8MP cameras aren’t half bad either, though we can’t help but disapprove the low-ppi HD screen.

Hopefully, it’s all for a noble cause, i.e. reasonable pricing, and the same goes for the many compromises of the updated LG K10, K8, K4 and K3. Generally very similar in terms of exterior design, these aim to borrow a few popular, “best-in-class technologies” from premium LG phones.

Indeed, the 5.3-inch K10 comes with a fingerprint reader in tow and 120-degree wide angle front camera, as well as Nougat software goodies, a metallic “U-frame”, and 2.5D Arc Glass construction.

The 5-inch LG K8 will also run Android 7.0 out the box, sport 13 and 5MP shooters, with 1.5GB RAM under the hood. Finally, the FWVGA 5 and 4.5-inch K4 and K3 are really nothing to write home about, Marshmallow, laggy quad-core SoCs, 1GB memory, 8GB storage, modest cameras and all. But let’s wait for availability announcements “in the weeks to come” before totally writing them off.

The post LG Stylus 3 and updated K series announced ahead of CES 2017 appeared first on Pocketnow.