Remembering LG’s finest (and strangest) phones

The pre-smartphone years

Earlier than Engadget, I labored at TechCrunch, and earlier than that, I spent my faculty years promoting telephones at Finest Purchase. And in these days, simply earlier than smartphones began taking on the trade, LG made a number of the most interesting characteristic telephones you can discover.

After I was coaching to, you realize, professionally work together with different people, the very first telephone I confirmed off was the LG Fusic, a largely unremarkable flip telephone with a twist. On the time, folks had been simply beginning to consider their telephones as music gamers, so the Fusic had a round cluster of observe controls proper beneath its exterior display screen. I don’t keep in mind promoting a lot of them, however LG was proper in a single respect: In time, folks actually would ditch their iPods, Zunes and Artistic Zens and lean nearly completely on their telephones for leisure.

Loads of different fashions stay caught in my head in any case these years. There have been days once I would promote nothing however the LG Shine, an AT&T-exclusive, all-metal slider telephone with a bit of observe nubbin for navigation. Just like the Fusic, it didn’t stand out past its design, however it’s important to do not forget that in these days, all you can ever actually do in your telephone was name folks, ship textual content messages, or putz round on comparatively glacial cell knowledge networks. When characteristic units had been that restricted, fashion arguably counted for lots greater than it does now.

After which there have been LG’s messaging telephones. Engadget’s head of social, Mike Morris, incessantly brings up the oddly named LG The V in random conversations, and for good cause. It was one in every of LG’s first telephones with a full — albeit tiny — bodily QWERTY keyboard, and he spent hours utilizing it to message his pals on AOL Instantaneous Messenger.

“For individuals who weren’t on T-Cellular or couldn’t afford a Sidekick, this was the subsequent smartest thing in my 14-year-old thoughts,” he says.

After the success of The V, LG and Verizon (Engadget’s present father or mother firm) doubled down on the messaging development with a slew of enVs, extra succesful fashions with assist for EV-DO knowledge, and improved flip-open keyboards. Engadget senior editor Karissa Bell tells me she’s “by no means been in a position to textual content as rapidly” as she might on her wine-red enV 2, and contemplating what number of of these I bought in these days, I doubt she’s alone.

Finally, the enV line gave strategy to what in my thoughts was the head of LG’s US non-smartphones: the Voyager, which took the thought of a flip-open messaging telephone and married it with an exterior touchscreen and a 2-megapixel digicam. Wanting again, it’s laborious to think about it being one in every of 2007’s most anticipated telephones, however there have been at the least a couple of folks camped outdoors my retailer ready to plunk down $300 with a two-year contract.

After all, anybody within the know understood that LG’s most interesting wares might solely be discovered abroad. The identical 12 months the Voyager was launched, LG began promoting its all-touch Prada, often known as the KE850. Regardless of packing a 2MP digicam with Schneider-Kreuznach optics and the very first capacitive touchscreen in a telephone, the Prada didn’t stay as much as its luxurious namesake. No Wi-Fi, and a paltry 8MB (sure, megabytes) of storage, all packed in a tiny, piano black plastic physique meant the Prada was all flash and little substance. It wouldn’t be till the debut of the stunningly stunning Chocolate BL40 in 2009 that LG’s characteristic telephones really peaked. However by then, it was clear that smartphones had been right here to remain.

Embracing Android

LG’s first wave of Android telephones wasn’t a lot to jot down residence about. 2009’s Area was mainly one of many firm’s messaging telephones with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, simply with souped-up specs to assist it run Android 1.0. It took a couple of extra years for LG engineers to hit their stride with gadgets just like the LG Optimus G Professional in 2013. Opinions on the time praised its efficiency and its 5.5-inch, 1080p IPS display screen, making it one of many first really nice massive telephones.

We didn’t realize it on the time, however the Optimus G Professional kicked off LG’s longest-running smartphone household, the G collection. And I’d argue that the corporate’s subsequent G telephone — the LG G2 — was what made it a critical contender within the flagship smartphone market. The good display screen and potent specs apart, the factor that also sticks with me concerning the G2 was LG’s ingenious determination to stay the telephone’s energy and quantity buttons on the again. That didn’t simply imply LG might slim down the bezels, however the way in which the positioning of the buttons ensured that lefties and right-handers alike might attain the controls. (It’s 2021, and I nonetheless need extra smartphone makers to do that.)

Proper across the time the Optimus G Professional was making waves, Google tapped LG for what would develop into a multi-year association. LG’s mission: to construct a collection of reasonably priced Nexus smartphones to indicate off what pure, unfettered Android might do on the fitting {hardware}. That deal began with the Nexus 4, a telephone that may stay etched into my reminiscence for a very long time. That is not as a result of I used to be head-over-heels for this factor, thoughts you — it’s as a result of I labored on my evaluation whereas stranded in San Francisco whereas my residence state was being battered by Hurricane Sandy. These had been amongst my most miserable days on the job, however I had work to do, and fortunately there was lots to love.

“The factor that stands out about my Nexus 4 is that it might need been the final time I used to be extraordinarily excited a few new telephone,” mentioned Engadget senior editor Richard Lawler. “It had a cool wi-fi charger when that was nonetheless thrilling, and even Picture Sphere was a cool characteristic then. Better of all, it lived as much as the hype.”

LG’s partnership with Google in the end yielded two extra smartphones, the Nexus 5 and 5X, each of which debuted to crucial acclaim however in the end left most of us at Engadget fairly dissatisfied in the long term. I distinctly keep in mind loving my Nexus 5 and utilizing it proper up till the second obtained caught in a boot-loop like so many LG telephones of that era did. And a fast straw ballot in our workforce Slack confirmed that just about each Engadget worker who purchased a Nexus 5X noticed it sputter to a untimely demise.