South Korean tech giant LG Electronics Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to release its latest flagship smartphone, the LG G2, in the U.S. and Germany this month, in a bid to further shore up its presence in the global high-end smartphone market.

The 5.2-inch smartphone by the world's third-largest smartphone maker debuted in South Korea last month to take on rivals Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. in the domestic market.

The LG G2, the first device rolled out by LG Electronics after it dropped its Optimus brand, uses a quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system, a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, and comes with 2 gigabytes of RAM.

The LG G2 has all its buttons on the rear of the device, making this the first smartphone to be completely devoid of side buttons.

The smartphone with a Full HD display also presents compelling key features. For one, "KnockOn" lets users turn on their phones by tapping the display twice. Also, the smartphone automatically picks up a call when the phone is raised to a user's ear.

The LG G2 allows information embedded in text messages to be selected and easily saved in a memo or calendar and searched on a map or the Internet.

The device also protects the owner's privacy by displaying only pre-selected apps when guests access the phone with a secondary unlock pattern.

It also provides support for the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) network, which will allow users to take advantage of connection speeds of up to 150 megabits per second.

The LG G2 will be released through some 130 mobile operators around the globe by the end of October, including AT&T, Sprint and NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics said earlier.

LG Electronics is aiming to sell 10 million G2 smartphones around the globe, twice its previous targets for its Optimus G and the Optimus G Pro.

In the first six months of the year, LG sold a combined 25 million smartphones. (Yonhap News)