LG Needed a 3-Year Plan

(Photo illustration: Jim Fisher/Sascha Segan)

I'm going to start my eulogy for LG with a story about Huawei. A decade ago, I went to Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen and the company laid out 10 phones in front of me. The lineup started with a production model and ended with a plastic placeholder. "This is what we're doing for the next three years," the spokesperson said.

Let's put a pin in that for a minute; now back to the deceased...

LG announced this week that it's shutting down its phone business in July. Once a giant of the US mobile phone industry, LG hasn't had a three-year plan since the disastrous launch of the G5 in 2016, a failed attempt at a modular phone with severe reliability and software problems. The company then deployed phones with features like wide-angle cameras, tall aspect ratios, gimmicky dual or swiveling screens, and the "ThinQ" AI/home control platform, while struggling with basic competencies like delivering consistent software fixes. And each year, from 2017 to 2019, LG switched out the leader of its mobile team.

There were many great ideas, but in last half of the 2010s, there was no focus, consistent leadership, or strategy.

This doesn't mean the individual phones, in isolation, were bad. The LG G6 was hard-edged, a strong performer, with a great camera at a killer price. It was my wife's phone for more than a year and she loved it. But Samsung absolutely crushed LG on marketing in the US, and newer Chinese vendors like Xiaomi destroyed it abroad.

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Most of LG's success in the past few years came at the low end, with prepaid phones like the Stylo 6, which Wave7 Research principal Jeff Moore told me "has been the #1 sell in prepaid recently." But this was just in the US, and was an artifact of how our carriers refuse to sell the new breed of low-cost Chinese phone brands like Pocophone, Vivo, and Xiaomi. LG's departure is going to lead to mad jockeying among Motorola, Nokia, OnePlus, and TCL to fill the holes left by the LG Stylo and K series.

Or maybe this just means more Samsung. T-Mobile is giving free Samsung A32 5G phones to almost anyone who wants one, as it tries to move as many people as possible onto its largely empty 5G network. I can't help but see that deal as a loss for OnePlus, TCL, and, for that matter, LG.

One good thing, though: At least you'll get three years of updates on your doomed LG phone. This is something the company should have announced three years ago.

Here's my ode to LG's weirdest US phones. What was your favorite LG? Pour one out with us in the comments.

Some slightly happier news this week:

• If you have a Verizon MHS900 Ellipsis Jetpack hotspot, it has been recalled (it wasn't so great anyway). The company will replace your possible fire hazard with another not-very-good hotspot.

• T-Mobile actually launched its 5G home Internet service! It costs $60 per month and the signup site is already overwhelmed. Check out our map of where it might be available, if you're lucky. I signed up, and I'll have a review in a month or so.

• Nokia launched six (6!) new phones in a refresh of its lineup. Most notably, they're all midrange or below, with no chipset more powerful than a Snapdragon 480. (See above about the potential hole in the prepaid world with the death of LG.)

• The next Google Pixel will reportedly have its own custom processor. Some commentators are comparing this to Apple's A-series chips in terms of breakthrough hardware performance, but I've been so relentlessly disappointed by Google's lackadaisical approach to phones in recent years that it's hard for me to have much hope. Still, though, there are no signs that the company is backing out of making phones.

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About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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