After an exclusive stint in South Korea and Japan, LG's Optimus Vu is about to take various other parts of the world by storm. Select countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America will be seeing the Vu hit store shelves in September, and I imagine it's going to be pretty hard to miss. It's big. That's the joke.

LG's press release says the Vu "blurs the line" between phones and tablets for a "truly unique experience." I'll certainly buy that. Having used it in early prototype form myself back at MWC, I was baffled at how LG could go about justifying a smartphone like this, and I don't mean one with a 5" screen, but one that has a 4:3 display aspect ratio to go with it. It just makes the phone so... square. Anyway, we already know the Vu is headed to Verizon here in the US (when is another question), so it looks like LG is doubling down with its mondophone.

We do know it's shipping with Android 4.0, and that this international 3G version is packing a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, which should provide ample horsepower to match the Vu's outward posturing. Unfortunately, one part of the Vu's spec sheet almost certainly promises to hold it back compared to even the previous-generation Galaxy Note: its resolution. A rather anemic 768x1024 pixels puts the Vu at at a disadvantage compared to phones like the One X  and Galaxy S III, or even LG's own Optimus 4X HD. Still, the company says it has sold over 500,000 Vus to date, so there's clearly some kind of market for this thing. Hopefully we'll be getting our hands on one soon enough to let you know what we think of LG's interesting form factor experiment.

Check out the specs and press release below:

Key Specifications:

On the heels of its successful debut in Korea and Japan, the Optimus Vu: will make its global debut starting in select markets in Europe, Asia, Middle East/Africa and Latin America starting in September. With the world’s first 5-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display, the Optimus Vu: blurs the line between traditional tablets and smartphones for a truly unique smart device experience.

Since its March debut in Korea, the Optimus Vu: has sold over 500,000 units, demonstrating public acceptance of its form-factor. The reception the device received in Korea prompted LG to launch the Optimus Vu: in Japan this month, where it has also been received positively by Japanese consumers.

For the global roll-out, the Optimus Vu: will be equipped with NVIDIA? Tegra? 3 mobile processor, the super 4-PLUS-1™ quad-core with 5th battery-saver core, that offers a superb balance of performance and power requirements. 4 cores are used for high performance tasks such as games and multitasking. For voice call, email, music and video playback, only 5th battery-saver core is enabled and it consumes very less power.

When paired with the high-resolution 5-inch, 4:3 ratio IPS display, the Optimus Vu: becomes something special – a device that’s both pocketable and spacious. The Optimus Vu: will come with an upgraded version of QuickMemo™ and Notebook, two features which make great use of the large display real estate.

“The different form factor makes Optimus Vu: unique even in the 5-inch smartphone category which we expect will catch on once they become more widely available,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.