LG Electronics Inc., South Korea's No. 2 smartphone maker, said Monday it will begin preselling its latest flagship smartphone this week ahead of an upcoming global launch.

LG said the company is scheduled to roll out the G4 on April 29 in South Korea and five other countries, including the United States, Britain and Singapore.

For a seven-day presale period starting Wednesday, a customer can make a purchase in advance of a new G4 with one of the three local mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Inc. -- either via their websites or an offline shop, LG said in a statement.

LG said it will offer the customers who preordered the new handset a 64GB external hard drive for free and a one-year guarantee for display repairs.

The G4 is the next premium smartphone which LG hopes will bump shoulders with bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co.'s latest Galaxy S6, sporting a higher-spec camera compared with Samsung's new phone that enables more vividness in the dark.

It comes with a leather casing on the back that is designed to give users a better grip.

Its features are already known to the public -- unlike the usual cases in which the market speculates on a new phone's undisclosed specs and design ahead of its release -- because details on the G4 were leaked last week on LG's microsite for several hours, with some saying it was done on purpose by the company to see the market response. (Yonhap)