I loved my LG Phones, once they gave up on making phones I moved on to iOS. There was always something nice about each model. The LG G2 had an IR at the top of it, so it was a universal remote control, it doesn't age very well (wife still has hers, but you cannot see the screen), but it was at its lifetime / prime an amazing phone, the only change I would have done is add an SD card to it.
The G5 was another great phone, I believe it was designed to be a "modular phone" the bottom would come out letting you take the battery out, but it could also add an attachment to the phone, I never did buy an attachment though, and I think the last one I had was the G7.
I enjoyed their tablets too.
For some reason people cling to other brands, and slept on LG which made some really decent Android phones.
Both my G5 and G7 still turn on, I always say that by the release of the G7 (I forget the year) and possibly the G5, all decent quality smartphones got to the "good enough" stage of smartphones where it feels like I could own one for more than just 2 years before it shows signs of wear.
LG got it right with the original Nexus 4, although battery life was a problem for all phones in that era. That phone had everything in a small form factor and it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service, which was rectified with a little rubber piece.
The Nexus 4 should have lofted LG into the big league and the Nexus 4 owner should have graduated to a LG flagship. But this didn't happen, in part because people stayed with Google and moved on to what would become the Pixel series.
The problem with smartphones is that they are ultimately 'hand rectangles' and the average customer only needs adequate rather than super-deluxe. For a while it was possible to compete on features, battery life and mega-pixels, for people to queue outside phone retailers to be first with the new status-symbol-gadget. But times changed as the tech matured.
Most people couldn't care less about their phone specifications, so long as it works. Getting the latest and greatest phone makes as much sense as on insisting on the latest model of hand basin or the most hi-tech garden trowel. Who cares apart from reviewers or people with little going on in their lives.
> it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service
I used to put mine on my wallet, and it took ages to figure out why I kept dropping it: the moment you set it down, it would start sliding _incredibly_ slowly.
The almost imperceptible sliding took me w while to find out too. My phone was always on the floor any time I wasn't watching it. And if it vibrated, it was all of a sudden in a hurry to plung off tables. Active obsolescence I am telling ya!
Every morning I had to wakeup fast enough before the vibrating alarm would have it jump off my bedside table.
Of course the back cracked quickly with the constant falling. It eventually met its demise during a bike accident. I landed on a tiny rock that pushed through my pocket, exploded the glass, and ultimately broke the charging circuitry. You could see the hole through the front glass! And it was still playing music. At least until the battery died.
My G4 succumbed to this issue, and I was never able to revive it. I had some important documents and images there that I hadn't yet backed up to cloud that disappeared along with it. Still very sour about that. Other than that I enjoyed the phone, felt the dimensions were perfect and the camera was good for its time. But a defect of that nature is too serious to overlook so that was the last LG phone I ever owned.
My first LG ended up being my last LG because it was defective. Screen issues started popping up about a year after purchase. Sending it in repairs didn't accomplish anything. They probably returned the same phone to me untouched since the screen issues would go away if the phone wasn't used for a few weeks (but it would always come back). While other people had similar issues, LG never acknowledged the problem. It was not confidence inspiring.
In terms of what the phone delivered between software and hardware: it was a wonderful phone, but I lacked confidence in the brand to buy another.
In contrast, I have never had a defective phone from another company. Heck, I've only had two phones that ended up with cracked screens (and those were clearly my fault).
I had a similar experience. I had an LG V20 and I loved so much about it, especially the extra display at the top for notifications and such, and the really incredible DAC. But the glass, both on the screen and the camera on the back, broke 4 times over the two years I owned it. It's still the only phone I've ever broken glass on.
I will forever remember the V20.
I was at the mall shooting the shit with some friends in late 2016 waiting for the bus to bring us back to campus. We went to the Verizon store to look at the hottest new phones none of us could afford.
There was a V20, and someone had changed the little top screen to display the static text "dicks out for harambe"
I still have a photo of it kicking around here somewhere.
Which model was it? Curious, I know older LG models were not the best, but it felt to me that their last few sets were good enough for me. I am a power user for phones too. I use Discord, Slack, etc.
If I recall correctly, the G4. The issue was definitely more memorable than the model name: the image on the right half the screen would gradually compress vertically.
I can't really speak for other Android users, but in those eras I either owned or was paying more attention to the HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Pixel, etc. phones because of their aftermarket OS support.
I really liked the G2 as well. It was the first phone (at least that I saw) to put the power and volume buttons on the back of the phone, where a ton of later phones would eventually start putting the fingerprint sensor.
I replaced LG's ROM with CyanogenMod back in the day, and it was such a smooth experience. The main reason I moved on from it was because I cracked the screen and the replacement screen I got (installed by a local repair shop) had a touch sensitivity issue along the top edge.
The V series were always my favorite - also moved to iOS after owning a V60.
Never used it with the dual screen case as it was too large. But funnily enough I now use it all the time as a pro music player, remote for my Tv, tablet, etc. The dual screen is actually very well implemented and so is the "desktop" mode if you plug it in via usb-c to a big screen. The thing even shoots 8K video !
I liked my LG phones until I broke a screen and the cost to get a replacement was absurd because noone has them in stock.
I am still kind of shocked that the non-leading manufacturers haven't standardized on hardware. Every company besides Apple, google, and Samsung, should get together and create the beige box computer of cell phones, you can get influencers modding them, gamers overclocking, etc. all the things that keep the desktop market alive.
Instead of working together, every one of these companies acts like a greedy monopoly when they don't have monopolistic powers, or even any soft form of lock-in. Even if all they did was make phones that had easy to replace standardized screens and batteries. I could see them quickly making in-roads in corporate IT, and for kids.
But none of them want to work together, so we get iphones, a few higher end iphone ripoffs, and a bunch of low end iphone ripoffs.
edit:
I'm also mad that I lost my cat S61, and that the S62 looks like everything else.
edit 2:
I also hate that I switched to an iphone, and how comfortably easy it was to get full locked-in in two years.
The G5 was another great phone, I believe it was designed to be a "modular phone" the bottom would come out letting you take the battery out, but it could also add an attachment to the phone, I never did buy an attachment though, and I think the last one I had was the G7.
I enjoyed their tablets too.
For some reason people cling to other brands, and slept on LG which made some really decent Android phones.
Both my G5 and G7 still turn on, I always say that by the release of the G7 (I forget the year) and possibly the G5, all decent quality smartphones got to the "good enough" stage of smartphones where it feels like I could own one for more than just 2 years before it shows signs of wear.