LG has had few smartphone hits, but it will still be missed

If you read it on a phone, chances are that LG did not reach it. The Korean technology giant has been losing money and market share with its smartphone division for years, so it was no surprise when it finally planned to pull the plug today. You can be forgiven for shrugging your shoulders.

But LG deserves to be remembered as more than just an also-running. His phones were seldom big hits, and even less often the kind of polished product we ever recommend most over his competitors. Despite this, LG has introduced several features and innovations without which the phone world would be worse off. The company, for example, placed the first large cameras on its phones, and these were groundbreaking in the form of smartphone designs without screen buttons on all screens that dominate the market today.

And especially in the US, where Android competition is extremely low, the loss of LG will only further strengthen the Apple-Samsung duopoly. LG is the third largest phone seller in the US, with about 10 percent of the market share, although many of them are prepaid devices in the middle range sold by carriers. LG may not have been at the top of your shopping list for smartphones, but if you live in the United States, the list just gets boring.

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge

LG has claimed to be a taster in the world ahead of the smartphone. Its Chocolate and env phones were stylish devices that helped LG expand its brand recognition around the world. But after the iPhone and Android changed everything, LG struggled to adapt. Here I am obliged to mention the original LG Prada, which has a capacitive touch screen and was technically announced, just in front of the iPhone, but the real legacy of it is mostly that people point it out in online comments.

LG’s early Android phones were not impressive. The 2011 Nitro HD, for example, was its first flashy flagship device in a long time, but it was saddled with outdated, clumsy software and poor battery life. Its successor, the Optimus G, was a bit of a refinement, and by the time the G2 arrives in 2012, LG’s new G series was a pretty believable alternative to Samsung or HTC. The G2, for example, was one of the first flagship smartphones to attempt to reduce the size of the ring, and LG made the buttons on the screen an important part of the design before most others.

It was also around this time that LG found a new partner in Google that released two Nexus phones in a row. The 2012 Nexus 4 was built around the guts of the Optimus G, and it had its fans despite its crippling lack of LTE, poor battery life and an unimpressive camera. Next year’s Nexus 5 found an even stronger cult, though it also had a poor camera and poor battery life. (The red version looked good, and the $ 349 price did not hurt.)

LG’s mobile division kept typing and turning out respectful phones like the G3 and G4 without really challenging Samsung. The software was still a tough adaptation of Android, and LG still lagged behind peers with its pace of updates, but the hardware was solid. It was the 2016 G5 where things really started to fall apart. The phone was designed around a series of switchable modular accessories called ‘Friends’, and the phone quickly pretended it never happened. Suffice it to say that if you bought a camera grip or a DAC Hi-Fi audio accessory for your G5, it would not be able to make friends with the 2017 G6.

It’s unfortunate that LG has focused on gimmicks with the G5 because the phone introduced one new feature that would be ubiquitous in the smartphone market years later: the ultrawide camera. With ultrawides on smartphones, people can take photos that were previously only limited to camera cats, and it’s hard to imagine you buying a new phone today. But it took a long time before other phone makers complied with the utility; Apple, for example, launched its first in 2019.

The V20, which was released the same year as the G5, had another unique feature that would become a feature of the company’s phones for years to come: an honest-to-God headphone jack in the year that Apple decided to to drop it. And not just a headphone jack – one that worked with a built-in four-wheeled DAC, designed to increase sound quality and address sound movies. Did it sell a lot of phones? Well, no. But it has since become a feature of LG’s high-end devices, offering an option for wired headphone lovers who despair because other phone makers have followed Apple’s lead one by one.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The 2017 G6 got the G-Series back on track. It was the first major smartphone released with a now-famous higher aspect ratio, with an even stronger focus on eliminating edges than ever before. Of course, not many people noticed this, because Samsung immediately follows the similar but slimmer Galaxy S8 and its “Infinity Display”. Later that year, LG released the V30, which had a completely new (and very nice) design, but it will always be hard to sell if your (also very nice) haptics system is your most distinctive feature.

From now on, LG’s flagship phones have mostly faded to one. The G7 was a pretty good fax from an iPhone X, and even won an Editor’s Choice nomination Edge editor Dan Seifert. The V40 was the pioneer of the currently common triple-camera setup. The G8X has a dual screen case that Microsoft’s Surface Duo really didn’t improve much a year later. But all these phones looked basically identical to each other, and none of their most important features were considered so much more than gimmicks at the time.

For every good idea LG had, there would be something useless like the G8’s ear-sensing “Hand ID” solution. Despite the fact that the company is making a big announcement about a new software upgrade center to increase the pace of Android updates, nothing has changed. And in light of Samsung’s unstoppable marketing machine, LG’s best attempt at a brand identity was to add ‘ThinQ’ to the name of each flagship phone.

In the last year, LG’s mobile division has tried to address issues. The Explorer project was intended to produce more innovative designs, such as the beautiful but understated velvet and the odd double screen wing. At CES, the company announced a Rollable concept phone that he said plans to go to market.

This will never happen now, and it’s hard to say it’s a big loss, as companies like Oppo and TCL are likely to get their own reports. But in the context of the US phone market, there will be fewer choices, and those who end up offsetting LG’s lost market share are unlikely to be as creative.

LG’s phones have rarely, if ever, been the best available, but the company has had a significant impact on the smartphone world. With the demise of its mobile division, the US market becomes even more homogeneous.