Calling time...
As electronics firm LG drops out of the smartphone game we look back at some of its best – and more surreal – moments
IT’S sad to say goodbye this week to one of the most eccentric mobile-makers in the business – the Koran electronics company LG is not going away, but it says it’s not going to make smartphones any more.
As understandable as it is, given the dominance of Apple and Samsung in that game, it would be wrong to think of LG’s phone efforts as a failure.
It did, after all, announce the first phone with a touch-screen, just before Apple changed the game with the iPhone in 2007.
That wasn’t the only innovation LG came up with, either – here’s a look back at some of its best moments, which were also sometimes its worst...
NEXUS 5X (2015)
LG’s work started to get interesting when it hooked up with Google to make the final Nexus phone for the search giant.
Prior to that, LG’s phones had been competent but unremarkable competitors to Samsung’s Android efforts.
By the time the Nexus 5X came out in 2015, the phone was regarded as the pinnacle of the Android ecosystem – the best phone you could buy with Google’s mobile software.
Just a year later the Nexus disappeared to be replaced by the Pixel line, which Google made itself.
G5 (2016)
The G5 was where things started to get weird for LG – it was a fairly bog-standard handset, but came with a system of modular add-ons that worked with or attached to the phone itself.
LG called those add-ons Friends. Some of the more outlandish ones that were announced – including a rolling ball-shaped robot – were never actually produced, but a camera-grip with extra controls, a battery pack, and a high-end digital audio converter made in collaboration with Bang and Olufsen did hit the market.
Unfortunately, hardly anyone bought any of it, and LG quietly discontinued the idea and never spoke of it again.
V40 (2018)
A couple of years after the G5, though, LG came up with an innovation that almost all the other smartphone makers would eventually make their own – the three lens camera system.
The V40 was a high-end phone that put photography at its core.
And it was the first to bring the now familiar wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lens set up to a smartphone.
GX8 (2019)
There was yet more innovation that others copied a couple of years ago when LG released the GX8 – it was a standard slab of glass and metal, but you could buy a case that included a second screen – so you could open it out like a book.
It foreshadowed the world of foldable phones that we see taking off today, and was very like the Microsoft Duo that came out earlier this year.
WING (2020)
The Wing, released just last year, was perhaps the most bonkers thing LG made, perhaps hinting at the desperation the company was feeling.
It was a two-screen phone, with one placed on top of the other.
The top one could twist to reveal the screen underneath, forming a kind of cross-shaped dual display.
Despite getting decent reviews, sales did not match the ambition…
AND FINALLY…
The small footnote to LG’s exit from the smartphone business is the phone we’ll never see.
It was only in January the company announced it would release a phone with a rollable screen – so it could expand in size from a phone to a tablet – this year.
That will never happen now, but don’t be too surprised to see LG’s mobile legacy live on as that technology finds its way into other devices made by other manufacturers
Despite getting decent reviews, sales (of the Wing) did not match the ambition