How do you feel about LG exiting the smartphone business?

By Jeramy Johnson
published

LG Wing
LG Wing (Image credit: Alex Dobie / Android Central)

One of the best parts of the Android ecosystem is its diversity, both in software and hardware. The more phone manufacturers there are, the more choices we as consumers have, and the list of the best Android phones has only gotten better each year. LG was one of the most important Android brands since the beginning and one of its most innovative as well. From the G Flex to the G 5's Friends, to the Wing, the company continued to push forward with interesting ideas, but unfortunately, it couldn't seem to follow through on them.

Late last night, LG confirmed what we all suspected would happen and said it was shutting down its smartphone business for good. Naturally, our AC forums community had some things to say about this...

That means they won't be making any Pixel devices in the future I guess? Damn shame.

Grabber5.0

Oof, that's an unfortunate pill to swallow.

Morty2264

Sad day :((

mustang7757

It has officially gone. Very sad because there are loads of members on this forum that loved LG and only used their phones. Death of the headphone jack is complete I guess.

Kizzy Catwoman

Now we want to hear from you — How do you feel about LG exiting the smartphone business?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Jeramy Johnson
Jeramy Johnson
Editor-in-chief

Jeramy is the Editor-in-Chief of Android Central. He is proud to help *Keep Austin Weird* and loves hiking in the hill country of central Texas with a breakfast taco in each hand. You can follow him on Twitter at @jeramyutgw.

25 Comments
  • One less choice...very sad for the consumer. Also, LG was NEVER afraid to innovate/push the envelope. I will always have respect for that. Bummer.
  • I so agree. BlackBerry, and now this. Arghh
  • Who are phone makers going to copy now?
  • Who was copying LG again?
  • Very disappointed. After owning the latest Samsung, when the V30 came out, I bought in for the high resolution quad dac. Well, turns out that the V30 was the best phone I've ever owned. To this day, it's still fast, great screen, has sd card support, and literally does everything extremely great. I have no plans on giving it up. What killed LG was professional reviewers never giving them a fair shake.
  • I agree that some of there phones didn't get a fair shake from reviewers, but that's not what killed LG. Their software was terrible and their advertising was basically nonexistent. They simply couldn't hang with the big boys.
  • *their phones. To late to edit.
  • *too late to edit. Haha, sorry ;p
  • Clearly I lost at comments today.
  • LG slit their own throats in not fixing their software and hardware problems and learning from Samsung in how to do hardware and software right, LG got what they deserve, people need to stop crying over a failure of a smartphone OEM that was simply not good enough against Samsung.
  • Came real close to going with an LG wing last year, I respected the hell out of their being willing to go outside the norm... but I just couldn't quite do it (got note 20 ultra instead, combination of camera and stylus won out). I've gone with LG before, used G2 and G3 as my daily driver, and liked having something less common. Was the wing their final phone? Might want to see if they are gonna discount them, wouldn't mind still getting one as an alternative...
  • Not that big of a deal. LG has been kind of isolated since the LG G5 days and never recovered due to their own mistakes. 
  • One less choice, but the people won't notice LG's absence from the smartphone market since very few ever purchased their phones. LG's skin on Android was the worst and I never purchased their phones because of that.
  • They have no one to blame but themselves. Just one of the most incompetent companies I've ever seen. If they had only listened to consumers they would've killed it.
  • Listening to consumers is generally the fastest way to sink a company.
  • Listening to consumers would have helped LG no end but LG didn't keep up with the market nor Listen to their few fans they had, good riddance, they won't be missed by me, Samsung were always better than LG anyway.
  • It's sad to see, but it makes sense.
  • They had plenty of opportunities and a long history of hardware knowledge to build from (unlike Google). They needed a home run at the right price amd couldn't produce it. I applaud their boldness and wished they had made a modular phone something that turned into the future of upgrading devices.
  • Too bad. I've always preferred LG phones. My last 3 or 4 phones have been LG. IMO they were the best ! for the $.
  • When you lose 4.5 billion dollars over the years, LG has nobody to blame but themselves? Several reasons, no marketing, the lack of updates, iffy software? In the past when the bootloops appeared, they never took responsibility and turned around and laid blame on the users! I had two, the G3 & a phone I loved the V10? After those two, I said never again. To me, that was a turning point for many consumers. So now this turns out to be a very 😥sad story, actually a damn shame!
  • The LG G4 was amazing, but I feel like that's right around when they peaked. Props for doing new stuff to try to avoid the dreaded review of "it's the same as the old model," but it always came out half-baked.
  • My only two LG phones were the Nexus 4 and 5. I absolutely loved them both. Great built quality and snappy fast. At the time I thought oh great this is definitely a take off for LG they'll learn lot from Google on how a phone should be designed and how it should function. Boy was I wrong. Seems LG never stuck to an idea of their own and did not have any type of direction. Sad to see them go. RIP
  • I never cared for LG phones, they sucked, had hardware and software issues, which they didn't fix, I've heard all the horror stories about the "bootloop" gate of the LG G4 along with similar issues with the G5 but for all their innovation, LG dropped the ball with their software and didn't learn from their mistakes and got what they deserved, only the diehard LG fans will miss them, I will not and as far as I'm concerned, they were always the poor man's Samsung and fell short of the superior Samsung's superior software and hardware. So yeah I have zero sympathy for LG who deserves their fate.
  • I loved HTC then they went down. (still make a phone now and then but not like they used to) I liked Samsung till they had a bad software update on my S7 edge and i went to LG. V40 was my first and now my V60 and i really like it. Sad to see them exit the market as my next phone was going to be an LG too..
    Guess ill either get a Samsung or Pixel.
  • The number 1 reason this happened is this..... No marketing. LG makes and made some really great phones over the years. But if you don't believe enough in your products to put more than a modicum of money to market the business, you can't expect anyone outside of LG customers to even know what they are selling. What features does the phone have? How often are you updating the feature set? Although the average consumer doesn't care about updates, they do care if the phone just works. And some of those earlier issues like the great bootloop fiasco didn't help. And now the other questions will pop up. What about those that own current LG phones? Updates to the OS? Warranty status? Repair? It's just a news that really didn't have to happen.