Never-before-seen flagship, the LG Rainbow, is being sold to LG employees

It seems LG has actually been able to complete designing and manufacturing 3000 units of a previously unheard-of high-tier SKU in their LG Velvet line: the Velvet 2 Pro (also known as the LG Rainbow). LG will be selling this elusive smartphone strictly to employees within the South Korean company. 

If the leak is to be trusted, these limited units are available to the employees in the colors Black, Bronze, and Ivory (although only Ivory is pictured above). Not only will LG employees be able to buy up to two of the Rainbow phones per person, but they can also expect factory repair services extending about 6 months, or "while parts last." 

The LG Rainbow will not be receiving any software updates, so it'll stay as-is, running Android 11 for the rest of its life. The phone will cost roughly USD $170—to put that into perspective, last year's Velvet 5G can be currently found for $280 (it's also expected to live to see Android 13 in the future). 

Employees purchasing the Rainbow are not allowed to re-sell, meaning that unless one of them leaks more details on the smartphone, it is likely closed off to us forever. 

If LG had only held on to their mobile business for another year, we might have seen these phones in the mainstream. The LG Rainbow certainly has that visual wow factor, judging from the leak. The Ivory version, as seen, boasts a sleek and glossy ivory-colored body, haloed by a thin gold rim around the edges. Fancy, eh? In shape and camera design, it looks nearly identical to the year-old LG Velvet. 

While we don't have details on the Rainbow's specs, we do know that the physical volume and home buttons have been ditched in favor of pressure-sensitive touch sensors. LG has always been one of those quirky innovative smartphone brands, and it certainly would have been fun to see what such a phone would feel like.