Slow your roll: LG reportedly puts new smartphone on ice as it mulls future in market

LG has reportedly put its novel rollable phone on ice, telling suppliers to pause work on the project as it re-examines the long-term viability of its loss-making mobile business. LG introduced its rollable phone – dubbed Project Explorer – at last month's CES 2021 trade show. Whereas traditional foldable devices use a hinge …

[Dave 126]

LG Wing

The LG Wing didn't grab me when it was launched, but the other day it occured to me it could be great for browsing a mix of text and images - if its browser automatically displayed landscape images on the landscape screen whilst the user scrolled through webpage on the lower portrait screen.

Landscape pictures on a portrait phone screen are underwhelming, reading and scrolling text on a landscape phone is a faff.

[Snake]

LG phones

If LG goes out of the cellular phone market it will be a sad day for me. I like LG phones, they strike a pleasant balance of usable features with a little bit of glitz; I refuse to buy Samsung as they take their glitz far, far too seriously.

[Dave 126]

Re: LG phones

Samsung also sell 'de-glitzed' versions of the flagships, such as the S9 E and the S20 FE. Buying those would give Samsung hard sales figures that might affect their future decision making. Just a thought.

I like the LG phones too. The G2 was a great all-rounder and first Android device with support for native playback and output of high res audio. After that, the G range went a bit odd ( like their doomed from the start module system), leaving their less publicised V range to be their sensible offerings (at a time when it was harder to distinguish Android flagships). Then LG had a bit of bad luck with a bootloop issue.

Freeing up screen space by placing signal and battery status bars in line with the front camera was implemented by LG (with a small secondary screen) before the iPhone did the same with the 'notch'.

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Re: LG phones

Maybe they should have shipped updates for more than a couple of years and I wouldn't have to ditch them for a more serious vendor...

[Dave K]

Re: LG phones

I'd also be sad to see LG depart. My trusty old G4 has been the best Android phone I've ever owned.

What I have noticed lately is that LG's naming scheme is all over the place, so it's difficult to tell where each of their phones fit in the market place. They also seem to have struggled with some of the basics such as decent support, and I often struggle to see what the USP of many of their recent handsets it (outside of gimmicks such as the dual-display thing they've recently been pushing, and which I have no interest in).

I'd love to see LG go back to basics and try to fill some of the gaps that have emerged in the marketplace. I recently had a look at new phones and I could not find a single high-end Android phone that had an SD-card slot, headphone jack and decent camera in the same device. If LG could go back to basics and make a decent and expandable phone with a guarantee of at least 3-years of OS support, there's definitely a market for such a device IMO. Adding in a removable battery would also be a stand-out feature in this day and age, although I appreciate that's difficult to do if you're wanting something water & dust resistant.

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I hope they fold their computer monitor business too - LG make bloody awful displays: boards die fast, hard to source replacements even after just 12 months.

[TeraTelnet]

Man, I remember that my first ever portable television was a Lucky Goldstar... that thing lasted me through a C64 and two different Amigas. Good times.