My life in five LG phones
LG: one of Korea’s famed dynastic conglomerates and a globally known brand for durable goods and consumer electronics. It was pretty good at making phones for a time — people might most fondly remember the Chocolate from 2006, but the more obscure and dirt-cheap KP100 candybar from 2008 outgrossed it in sales. Then came the groovy 2010s: the company went nuts with freaky form factors, fancy accessories, and a gutsy urge to stretch the limits of what a slabby-looking thing could be and do. Sure, one thing wrong after the other ultimately led tothe mobile division’s demisein 2021, but I think its efforts have been maligned with a broad brush — much as I revere AP alum Ron Amadeo, his LG obituary forArs Technicastraight-up trashed the company at every turn. Now, I’m no fanboy, but I do want to exhume the company’s body of work from the dumpster for a more balanced, maybe more romantic, but definitely personal eulogy.
LG V10: My therapist always said to keep a journal
It’s 2015. I was young, dumb, and full of… my journalism degree. An internship turned into my first job writing for our now-sister site Pocketnow and it just happened to be when LG announced this all-new phone called the V10. Boy, let me tell you: it wasextra. Depending on where you got your talking points, the V10 was made for fashionable indie filmmakers like brand ambassadorJoseph Gordon-Levittor office obsessives like, uh, Dilbert. I was eager to see what our team thought of the phone. Unfortunately, the same year had in store my first Techtober: during those 31 days, we were handling coverage on phones from Apple, BlackBerry, Google (neé LG and Huawei), HTC, Motorola, OnePlus, and others. I could go on.
The problem was that my editors couldn’t.
One of the casualties of being overwhelmed by this torrent would be our V10 review package. So, I stepped up to volunteer my device upgrade on T-Mobile for a pre-order. I was writing, shooting, and editing for many restless hours to put up 11 minutes of faff on YouTube and 3,400 words of “what am I doing” on the site. Being so green, I probably wasn’t paid enough for the work and I definitely wasn’t mindful enough to write off my $600 work purchase with the IRS, but for all the hemming and hawing, how did I sum my thoughts about the phone?
A big, fat “meh.”
Smartphones were becoming mainstream commodities. The market was spoiled for choice and stratified like an elaborate wedding cake where the V10 was the $600 thin cream layer between the $400 mid-rangers and $750 premium devices of 2015. Rolling in that context, I was fixated and lost in an exercise of compare and contrast.
I knew that this was a phone for the most hungry of power users and, as one of them myself back then, I should’ve stood my ground. Cruddy launcher? Download a new one. Weird marketing? Go to a store and try it out yourself. Between the mix of silicone and stainless steel in the industrial design, the gimmicky-yet-handy Second Screen, and the ability to split-screen apps in the days of Android Lollipop, I thought this device was worth every penny. Plus, I could remove an empty battery from my V10, chuck it in the charging cradle I got from the pre-order benny bundle, and reboot the phone with my bonus battery. I even still have the 200GB microSD card from the bundle, stuck inside my HTC U20.
In the end, very little of that positivity broke through the murk of relativism to which I believed I was duty-bound. Hell, my review wished it could be as downright effusive asCameron Summerson’s for AP. I could see myself toting this phone around for a good while.
LG G Flex 2: A one-night stand
“A good while” lasted until the spring of 2016 when I decided to switch from T-Mobile (back) to Sprint so I could pick up a free LG G Flex 2. You know,the phone with all the problems: an overheating chipset that had to be throttled for its own good, the OLED panel that was more papier-mâché than smartphone display, and the overall cheap feeling. The phone was more than a year old at this point, so why did I bother?
I guess I just literally wanted to feel it out. Ever since people began complaining about how unwieldy these technology rectangles could be, I was curious whether bending the physical arc made living with them more tolerable. It was pretty inoffensive. If we were talking about the original G Flex, maybe I would have had more to feel and more to say — the concept was newer, the screen was bigger, and it was pricier to boot. But I don’t know what more to say here than that I asked a stupid question and got a stupid answer.
This phase definitely says a lot more about me as a person than anything about an average LG phone with an underwhelming twist. To wit, I spent $80 to pick up a Microsoft Lumia 650 and then never used it. I was attracted to all that was new, interesting, or cheap. If I could have it all, I would try to.
I ditched the G Flex 2 for an HTC 10 that summer… which makes it incredibly hilarious that I not only took on the LG V20 that fall, but also Google’s Nexus 5X (also an LG make) and somehow picked up a G6 review unit along the way, too. That was quite the trifle.
LG V20: The steady one
I picked up an LG V20 right as it came out in the fall of 2016. It became my daily driver for the better part of the next year. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the device handling itself gracefully under fire or the other way around. For starters, it had more reliable horsepower than the V10 in the Snapdragon 820. LG was also the first OEM device to launch with Android Nougat, so it had an edge in software, too — well, at least to start.
The phone also was my enabler for some new media preferences: even though the company was putting in 32-bit DACs into its devices prior to the V20, it was here with this gregariously gray monolith of stoicism that I felt the most at home plugging my obnoxious Audio-Technicas into. The phone also cemented my preference for super-wide-angle cameras instead of the telephotos which, in my opinion, were premature.
I ended up dropping or throwing the V20 around more often than I did with the V10 and felt okay about it thanks to its polycarbonate and metal chunkiness, though I wish we had gotten the smaller version of the V20. Exclusive to Japan, this mini-V was known as theisai Beatas well as the LG V34 (no relation to the V30 or V35) and traded away the removable battery for certified water resistance. It also came in a gaudy gold color and, honestly, I could’ve seen myself rocking it just for giggles.
At the end of the day, I’m pretty proud that I was able to go steady with the V20 for a pretty long time. That is, minus the few months I spent visiting family in Asia.
Google (LG) Nexus 5X: Stolen valor
I picked up a Nexus 5X as I was eager to try Google Fi — back when the MVNO was still known as a Project — for its simple, no-nonsense overseas cellular coverage. The timely software updates were nice and the clutter-free Android experience was both refined and fine. Oreo was the turning point for me in altering my preferences for (and against) OEM skins.
With the advent of smartphones with multiple rear cameras, I loved taking photos with the 5X’s single unit in the same way that I would come to love it with thePixel 3a: point, shoot, and get great results without having to huddle down in the settings. That may have foreshadowed the kind of amateur photographer I would become.
Oddly, I appreciated the 5X just for the sense of pride I got out of owning a Google-sanctioned Android phone. Was this the feeling early adopters had of owning a Nexus One? Not quite, I figured, but maybe in the ballpark.
My only regret is with losing this device along with my Essential Phone the next year at the airport in Barcelona. You know, because it’s not enough to pickpocket hapless visitors to MWC; you have to go and snatch the luggage from right beneath their legs.
LG G6: Drowning in a rising tide
I don’t remember much about my experience with the LG G6. It was given to me as a review unit, though I don’t remember being asked to review it. Other than ushering in the era of the extra-tall display, this one didn’t particularly excite me if only because LG was up against tough competition: OnePlus was well into its ascension, HTC went glossy like we’d never seen before (in a good way) with the U11, and Google had just become a hardware competitor in its own right. What didn’t help was that LG itself had to do some soul searching after the absolute debacle that was the G5 and its so-called “Friends” family of modular accessories. But combine that stagnation with the lack of regard to software updates as well as the burgeoning bootloop boom and I think I was just done. The company couldn’t commit to keeping my attention.
In choppy waters, ships will sink. By the time Apple came around withthe iPhone Xto clobber LG on the matter of full-fascia screens, I was convinced there were greener pastures elsewhere. I stopped daily driving my V20 and picked up a Pixel 2. It somehow became my longest carry at nearly two years.
Leaving for the crowd
It was long after I had abandoned my LG wares that those dreaded bootloops took hold for my G6 and V20. While the extent of that problem and LG’s dismissive attitude towards it was legitimately off-putting, I didn’t appreciate the debacle becoming an all-the-time-every-time punchline. I did findour Nexus 5X “yule log” livestreamhilarious, but honestly, my shtick was more making fun of the whole “ThinQ” branding – the marketing department said “think you,” and we said “think you very much, you’re welcome.”
I may have a different epilogue to this vignette featuring the LG V40 ThinQ that I bought in the waning days of Sprint’s existence if I ever get to write about my time with the struggling national carrier. For now, I think I’ll stick with the outright resentment I felt when the manufacturer decided to call it quits right when the folks at engineering were making things interesting again. The Wing was a mess of intentions that was probably never going to be properly supported by all the first parties you’d need to get involved, but it definitely had developer fan club potential. As a roving YouTube viewer, I loved the thought of comfortably cradling a phone while watching Bill Wurtz toss text and colorful boxes to his eclectic soundtrack. It’s really too bad all we can ask now are “what ifs” about thatrollable phone project, but I guess that’s to be left alone forever.
I’m not ashamed to admit my own flaws and failings in associating who I was (and, perhaps, still am) with the phones I’ve owned. I still miss LG’s trademark rear combo rocker switch that made adjusting volume such a pocket-friendly experience. Sometimes I still miss switching out empty batteries for new ones. I definitely miss being genuinely surprised by a smartphone.
I liked LG way more than I despised it. And it’s not just me. We saw an outpouring of reaction from LG phone owners who were affected bya major bug on T-Mobilein 2022, well after the mobile division called it quits.
LG may not have made a penny from them for the 25 consecutive fiscal quarters before it gave up, but it was willing to put up a good fight for that time and, in the process, made very likable products all throughout. I admired the tenacity of its engineers, but hated how short it came up in all the other places where it counted.
There’s nothing to sugarcoat here. I just think LG deserves a better rap.
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