LG's five-camera V40 to be announced on Oct. 3

LG announced today that it will host an event on Oct. 3 to present the V40 ThinQ, its next flagship phone and, notably, LG's fourth flagship product this year. The invitation to the event is adorned with the phrase "take five minutes", which is a bit depressing as a product slogan. (It reads a little like "it took five attempts to fix this problem.") But it does seem to be a new feature: the phone should have five cameras in total.

If this happens, the V40 could be the first smartphone to include five cameras – probably two in the front and three in the back. Although this combination is new, these configurations are not unprecedented. Huawei has integrated a triple camera system on the P20 Pro earlier this year and several companies have included dual camera systems on the front. This number of cameras allows for some sophisticated processing effects, but most importantly, it only offers different zoom capabilities.

LG has tried to differentiate its V-series phones by targeting people looking to create different types of media. Although this message has become confusing over time, additional cameras might begin to restore the focus of the line.

That said, LG still has a way to go to make this phone stand out. Its latest V-series phone, the ThinQ V35, was quickly forgotten after its launch in June, and has little distinction from LG's G7, released at the same time. We are now at least a few months away from LG's latest flagship phone launch, but it's not clear if LG is planning to present anything very different. The V40 should have a Snapdragon 845 processor and a quad DAC – both things are present in LG's latest flagship products – even though it's thought it would jump on a 6.3-inch screen with a notch, which would be new .