LG Electronics May Close Down Mobile Phone Business

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: LG Electronics may shutter its mobile communication business rather than sell it, DongA Ilbo reports, citing an unidentified person in the electronics industry. Negotiations with Germany's Volkswagen AG and Vietnam's Vingroup JSC on possible sale of the smartphone business seemed to have failed, according to the report.

LG Electronics' CEO said in January that all options were on the table for the loss-making operation. The company was said to have halted development last month of phones with a rollable display, and DongA said Sunday that LG has shelved a planned first-half rollout of all new smartphones. LG may share its decision on the business' fate with employees as soon as early April, the DongA report said.

Oh no!

[mobby_6kl]

Anyway.

I'm sure their 5 current users will be mildly disappointed.

Re:

[malphiusII]

LG had solid phones but they could never never tell people why to use them over a Samsung slab. Their marketing was really trash tier if it even existed at all. I used LG for a long time just because if you waited a while they would hit excellent value territory for a pretty new flagship.

I really liked my G4 and G6.

Re:

[fred6666]

I also used LG phones. I got a bunch of brand new LG G6 for about CAD$75 when they were discounted. Good phones for the money, but I understand why they weren't making any profit.

Re: Oh no!

[antus]

Yeah I loved my G4. Nice slightly innovative case with the curved leather back, thin at the edges, best in class camera a the time, nothing too weird about it to be a turn off. everything was great until the manufacturing defects started killing all the phones before their used by date. mine was replaced under warranty, the store said they were all getting replaced under warranty - it was unlikely the carrier would bundle LG again. they didnt. then my warranty phone out lasted 2 years and LG dropped softwar

Re:

[Kvasio]

same here, G4 had superb specs. 1440x2560 screen, replacable battery, full spectrum of sensors, infrared beam.
It would be hard to find such specs now

Re:

[Kvasio]

and suerb camera.
I still start my G4 when I want to take better photo than my current samsung a50.

Re:

[TwoUtes]

Being one of the five, I really like my G7. It's been a very good device for the past two plus years, it takes fantastic photos, people can hear me, fewer dropped calls. Far, far better than the Droid that preceded it, on which nobody could hear me with that pinhole microphone on the back side. I would have stuck with LG for a new one, but now I'm not sure what I'll get when the time comes. Oh well...

Re:

[fizzer06]

I'm one of those satisfied LG customers, you insensitive clod!

Disappointing

[Aighearach]

I would hope they would stop the moronic rollable R&D and that sort of stuff first, and see if they could just focus on making a good product profitable.

I like my Motorola, but my wife prefers LG.

Reading between the (Head)lines.

[geekmux]

"LG may share its decision on the business' fate with employees as soon as early April."

As if stories like this, don't provide any clue.

good

[drinkypoo]

They sucked at phones anyway.

My Nexus 4 (LG E960) died due to digitizer failure and due to design it was cheaper to replace than repair. That's shit design.

Farewell, LG phones, die in a fire.

Re:

[deadaluspark]

Seriously. Every LG phone I had was crap and I had multiple dead N4's. First one was broken out of the box, second one had cellular radio fail after a few months.

Re: good

[antus]

yep n4 and g4 era, they didnt get the hardware right

Re: good

[1s44c]

I had 2, they both work perfectly with 1 major exception. The cameras on my LG V40 just don't focus. A phone with 4 cameras has no usable back cameras. The front one does work though.

Their support sucks too. After a whole load of drama they said they would fix the phone under warranty and promised to send me a return package. It never came.

Re:

[mahmut_kursun]

The LG G2 was great, 2013. It was a real competitor to all the high price phones of that time.

The G3 was not really better, the new thing was beeing modular instead of 1-piece.
The G4 was again not really better, the new thing was Leather back.

And Huawei became a bigger and bigger competitor from 2014 on. While Apple and Samsung were settled.

Meh

[hdyoung]

Oh well. Apple and Samsung have swept the tables on the high end, Chinese manufactureres are probably going to dominate the low end, and the mid-range is totally saturated from every direction. Tough business to be in.

Re:

[bored]

How many Chinese phones have you tried?

Ever heard of HUAWEI? Those were some of the best phones on the planet. I'm a bit partial to oneplus, despite being repackaged Qualcomm parts, but they put the engineering effort into assuring their phones last for a few years, via updates and the fact that the parts have generally been easily available years after the phones stopped being sold. People in the US might be forgiven for thinking its a samsung/apple fight, but samsung isn't even in the top couple android b

This is typical

[boudie2]

In 2005 I bought an IBM laptop and six months later they got out of the laptop business. Last year I got an LG phone and now they're getting out of the phone business. Way she goes.

Please stop

[raymorris]

In that case, please stop buying stuff. Especially, I hope you never buy anything from me.

Re:

[boudie2]

How much for your seester?

Re: This is typical

[1s44c]

Please buy every product Microsoft sell. You would be doing the world a huge favour.

Subject

[MBGMorden]

I hate to see the market lose a competitor but realistically LG phones have just never really felt great compared to Samsung, and there are other companies out there beating them at the dirt cheap game.

And their insistence on keeping that rear mounted action button certainly didn't help. I gave that an honest chance when I used an LG phone as a primary phone for about 7 months, but no matter how long I used it it still never felt right to have the button there.

Re:

[danomac]

I loved the buttons on the back of the phone.

I looked at the new LG phones last year and was wondering WTF they were doing, and wound up with a Samsung phone.

The Samsung phone has 4 or so buttons on the edge of the phone, and I'm always pressing buttons accidentally when picking the phone up. That never happened with the LG phones I used.

The problems with LG phones

[guacamole]

While I loved the hardware design and LG's Android skin, those phones came loaded with often impossible to uninstall bloatware, locked to carriers, and with locked bootloaders.

Depended on carrier

[SIGBUS]

Not that it really matters anymore, but T-Mobile's (US) LG phones had unlocked bootloaders. The catch is, though, that running a custom ROM became such a hassle in general, and the Stylo 5's Android skin good enough, that I've never bothered.

Sucks that I won't see a followup to the Stylo 5, which has been rock solid. They always seemed to offer a bit more for the buck than Samsung.

Good riddance

[DigitAl56K]

I had multiple LG/Pixel phones and their replacements that died of boot loop, among other troubled LG devices (smart TV and DVD player also died early). I would never, ever buy another LG phone.

Still using a LG G5

[Robert Frazier]

It is from 2016. Now running LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11). No Google apps on it. I replace the battery once a year to keep it in good shape. This is easy since it is one of the last phones with a slide out battery. I've also had to replace the headphone jack module, again easy and inexpensive (15 minutes, £5.98). I've been happy with it.

Best wishes,
Bob

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Damn...

[rnturn]

I've liked LG's phones. Power button and volume rocker switch. All a phone needs. (They have fallen down on the job regarding Android updates, though.)

I like their phones

[intercision]

I had a LG G3 and then a V35 ThinQ and they were both solid phones with good cameras and I love the power button placement on the back. But their flagship phone sizes just kept creeping up and I wasn't ready to buy a phablet. Still sad to see them go though, on their low end models they had batter cameras then comparable Samsungs.

My LG V40 has been solid

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I'll use it until they stop providing updates or some unobtanium component fails. I've had it for about 2.5 years and haven't felt the need to upgrade.

Best,

Re:

[postmortem]

I have V40 too, but AT&T is claiming it is not compatible to their VoLTE network, so they are telling me that I can use it until Feb 2022.

I've had an LG V20 for awhile now

[dancegroove]

I've had an LG V20, and I may grab another unless the 4G lte service gets deprecated too quickly. Replaceable battery, very sturdy along with great audio quality, which was the feature I was seeking with it. I didn't buy the year it launched, so LG may not have made much from me.