LG is getting out of the mobile phone business
axios.com
axios.com
The second screen is just the perfect solution for having an allways on display without a real (and stupid) notch. I love this feature. Also knock to power on is super convenient. Battery is replacable. The Screen is super sharp. Its thin despite its very accessible inner parts. The amp and music quality is absolutely awesome. The camera is awesome as is the sound recording quality. The IR Blaster ist just super convenient. Also the FM-Radio is a very nice addition. The camera-app is just awesome and i have yet not managed to find something simmilar. Also i like the gallery app. And the sound recording app. Its also fast, has enough power still to this day. And the SD-Card Slot combined with the internal memory gives me 640GB Storage. Also Dual SIM is nice.
Really it is such an awesome phone that im not sure how this phone happened in the first place. As each Smartphone does at least 2 things stupid or hase some dumb features no one asked for.
Its allways the same with me - as soon as i find the absolute perfect hardware - its already legacy and nothing like it is buyable in the future ...
The V20 is like the perfect tool. No stupid features only used for sales, no shortcuts, just a very nice package. Two things i would change: Cameras should never stick out and the volume buttons should be on the back like on the G4.
It has expandable storage, a headphone jack, a full screen with a very thin chin and forehead, a decent camera, loud speakers, a good fingerprint reader, FM radio, a battery that still gets me through a full day easily, and almost everything I want from a phone at what was a very competitive price.
The only thing it's really missing for me is a software update. If there was any hope for that before, there is certainly none now.
The only thing that appears to come close to being a suitable replacement is the ROG Phone 5 but it's expensive, lacks expandable storage, and I've heard bad things about ASUS's software support.
As excited as I am for the PinePhone and Linux smartphones in general, I don't see that being a viable main driver for at least three or four more years - probably longer. Maybe I can keep my V30 going until then...
Mine unfortunately got stuck in a bootloop last Thursday, so I'm going to have to go looking for new phones again - I'm considering just getting another V30, however.
It's worth noting, though, that I felt the same about my OnePlus X when it died ("no other phone will ever be good enough!") - perhaps I like the V30 mostly just because I've used it a lot.
I went with the V30 next because I needed the extra horsepower. I'm mostly happy - except for the headphone jack on top.
But LG also left a bad taste in my mouth. The last LG phone I used, Nexus 5X, died all of a sudden, but after months of despair, I could revive it using a freaking hair dryer.[1] Yeah, some of you who are well versed to soldering may not be surprised by this, but the fact that such a huge company makes such a minor mistake completely turned me down. My reaction might be irrational, but after the incident I could not get close to newer LG phones anymore.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus6P/comments/66wsvq/this_might_...
LG requires a shipment from Australia to Asia and a 3-4 week turn-around time.
Yeah nah...
What's the typical income in this country, in America if you're talking about a $700 phone, and you make $70,000 a year it's not completely unreasonable to replace it every year.
But if you're making $15,000 a year, spending $30 to repair your $700 phone makes much more sense.
I agree that's one of the reasons that repair is more common. Very few people would darn torn socks, because those are cheap enough just to buy them.
Wife's G3: Video chip error. Same source as the above failure: solder fails. Broken solder joints on BGA chips and card readers. Hers was just within warranty, but they had no G3s to offer, so she was given a G4. Guess what happened to the G4? Same failure. No further help.
In contrast, my Samsung Galaxy Victory from 2012 still works fine (carried it for two years). My Samsung S8+ works fine after carrying it nearly four years. My Moto G3 works fine after five years and having carried it for two.
The problem is LG. Good riddance.
I'm kind of regretting it already. I don't have portable bluetooth headphones right now, had to order some and I kept wanting headphones over the weekend since they haven't arrived yet.
I was kind of leaning towards and LG, but everyone online was saying this was going to happen soon.
(I still demand and sometimes use the built-in headphone jack, mind you. The SpectraX obviously sounds better than that, though.)
[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2019&chk35mm=...
[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/sony-xperia-1-iii-gets-possib...
May be the you should mention "flagship" because there are many android mid-rangers with both headphone jack and wireless charging, but this too is not true because sony's flagship xperia 1 mark 2 still have both headphone jack and wireless charging + sd card support that the others have abandoned.
Amazing pictures and nice and slim look, working with no problems for years now.
* Lack of updates * Occasionally non-flagship hardware * That Nexus issue many years ago
Their UI is better than Samsung. They're less intrusive than samsung. Their flagships are usually pretty good and come at good discounts soon after release.
I have an S21 now, and the number of bloatware samsung apps has me wanting to move back to Oneplus or even Apple, maybe. I only bought it because I wanted a flagship high-refresh phone under 6.5".
I'll miss LG a bit, it isn't as if we need fewer competitors in the Android space. It's Chinese brands, Samsung, and Google now pretty much, no?
Is there any UI that is *worse* than samsung?
They have ads in the menus now. And their UI layer adds significant touch latency.
Now it works mostly fine but some minor issues regarding Adaptive Brightness, Bluetooth laziness and camera not saving pictures when running from locked screen. Maybe these can be fixed with app-data wipe or permissions fiddling, but I can't be bothered as they impact me little.
But Nokia seems to keep going with Android One. I will end up buying another at this rate.
The 4a is 6" and has a headphone jack.
Does this means that Motorola is now considered a fully Chinese brand?
Not meant as a snark (owned HTC phones in their heyday and also Samsung S5 and S8); just wondering if Samsung shouldn't aim for a larger influence on Android or even fork, for better or worse.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-co...
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe
I can't speak about wherever they're rebrands though, you'd have to take all their phones apart to figure that out.
Bonus camera points coz the lenses are along the same axis horizontally & closer to the centre of the device than in one corner, likewise for the front facing camera too, which could just be shoved into one corner without leaving a hole-punch or notch at all.
My Note 8 and a friend's Note 9 don't really have a camera bump at all, other than a barely raised ridge around the camera section. But unlike many other phones, this ridge is symmetric: it extends equally to the left and right. Even if this were a raised camera bump, it would still work for setting the phone on a table.
The iPhone I got from work is quite different: it has a rather thick camera bump on one corner. So when it sits on a table, if I tap on the display the whole phone wobbles.
That is very poor design, but now Samsung seems to have copied it! The newer Samsung phone have bumps in one corner just like the iPhone, so they would be just as annoying to use on a table.
For the moment I am hanging on to the Note 8 for dear life, until I find a newer phone with a good camera and either no bump or a symmetric bump. Are there any high end phones like this any more?
(Regarding a sibling comment about cases, that is one solution, but I don't use one and don't plan to.)
Unfortunately I don’t think this is a high priority because most people use a case, which means the camera is either flush or even slightly recessed depending on thickness.
I don’t use a case on my phone so this annoys me just as much as it does you, but for 99% of people I doubt they even think about it.
The fact that there is not a third choice is maddening. Even in the worst parts of the Microsoft era we had Apple as the underdog. Apple products had issues, but Apple die-hards at least could rest easy knowing that they were buying into a company who stood for something.
In the mobile space the underdog is Google; a company who sees dealing with people as an unfortunately necessity on the way to get to gobbling up more data.
I can't but feel that Android has sucked the oxygen of the space. I can't go out and buy a Tizen or Windows phone in large part because of Google's pathological Android licensing. Google force carriers to choose between their, supposedly open, ecosystem and shipping alternative OSes.
Apple simply plays the FOMO factor. They do deals with operators. And the deal is typically "take it or leave it and watch your customers jump to your competitors". When they first did that, a few operators were smart enough to say yes. The rest has since learned to do as Apple says. But even so, Apple pays the Qualcomm tax.
The rest of the phone industry plays this game by just sharing a lot of components (Google's Android, Qualcomm's hardware, Samsung screens, Sony camera sensors, etc.). Google has tried to get into that market directly by buying Motorola at some point and by doing their Nexus and Pixel phones. But they never really became a dominant manufacturer. Google is a supplier of mostly software in this space.
Out of all that stuff, Qualcomm is the one that has the keys to the ecosystem. You need 4G/5G compatibility, which they provide via their hardware and software. And you need to get your solution certified. Without that you have an interesting device that does not talk to a mobile network. Even if you manage to build your own version of that (which is hard, but e.g. Apple is doing it), you still need to get it certified and then after you succeed with that, you need to license a lot of patents from Qualcomm to actually ship it. The price of entry to the market is very high. Long story short, there are not a lot of alternatives in the market and a few that have issues being allowed in mainstream markets like the US for IP licensing reasons.
I don’t understand how such a licence can be legal. Surely it is monopolistic practices? Yes, Apple exists at a consumer level, but at the level of phone manufacturers google has a monopoly on licensing mobile OS to manufacturers. This is abuse of their dominance to prevent competition from android forks.
I see so many discussions on the internet, also on HN, following the same ritual. Apple does something bad, and people say "Just choose something from the competition, like Google". Then Google does something bad and people say "Just choose something from the competition, like Apple".
Even intelligent people get fooled by this.
It wasn't in the EU, which is why they had to change it.
Doesn't Android have 70% market share? I don't follow how they're the underdog, surely they're more like Microsoft in this comparison.
The only source I've seen cited for this comes from 2012 (https://www.pcworld.com/article/253335/ios_more_profitable_f...) and relates to Google getting more profit from iOS device users than Android device users.
Do you have anything from the last year or two? Or are you basing your comment on the article from 2012?
Even more so because Windows Phone was actually a pretty nice OS with some really interesting ideas. It just came far too late.
You would have thought they'd learn from how they won the desktop space...
I wonder if this will backfire soon. Wasn't LG the OEM for some of their Pixels? Who is replacing them?
What about Apple's mobile processors outclassing Android?
Google makes their own phones now with the part of HTC they bought.
Actually, there is: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5. It's expensive though, since it does not benefit from economies of scale and targeted ads.
I really don't want a phone that's all-glass. I know it's trendy, but, hard pass for me. The aluminum frame and plastic back are things LG got very right with the Stylo 5. Please put enough of a bezel on it that I can actually grab it without triggering something inadvertently.
And, yes, that 3.5 mm jack is important. Music-making apps are basically impossible to work with when your audio path includes Bluetooth delay.
I thought the USB-C -> 3.5mm adaptors are just mechanical, or have no delay?
3.5mm on the other hand just works and is (was? ) ubiquitous.
If this is true, I might suggest that people who wonder "can't we just make our own open source phone" inject some realism into their estimates about how much work is needed to make an alternative that people actually want to use.
This seems have nothing to do with LG's move.
On the contrary, what drives LG to leave smart phone also enables the open source smartphone: the lowering of manufacturing puts more emphasis on software reconfigurability to the targeted audience of open source smartphone.
LG cannot sustain because they don't have a strong software product to make their smartphone profitable.
And open source smartphone is about open source anyway. It should not be compared to mass market products anyway.
RIP LG Mobile.
It's too bad that they started to concentrate all their efforts on coming up with the dumbest gimmicks possible (like that ridiculous second screen on the V20)
Sometimes it seems like Apple owes much of its success to the bizarre fact that all their competitors are completely incompetent.
As an android user, this saddens me.
To me, I don't see what I'm missing going up from the 4a to a high end Samsung at twice the cost. Maybe a 90Hz display and a slightly faster CPU/GPU, which seem very marginal.
I think if Google doubles down on its mid range strategy (again) it's on to a winner.
Fwiw I feel similar about the iPhone SE, especially if apple refresh it at some point without a home button and better res OLED screen. Feels we are reaching the end of the S curve on smartphones.
Pixel 4a and 5 were very disappointing to me. I could accept the mid-range hardware, but the lack of a camera update and especially better zoom camera options made me abandon them.
Their branding is terrible though. Their naming scheme is without any pattern, making it hard to tell which phones are their budget/flagship/new/old models, and so on. And they're hard to even get at all in Canada.
I've only ever owned 2 smartphones in my life: Samsung Note2 and my current Sony Xperia XZ. Until now I've never experienced the touch screen go broke after an Software update, and that the temperature limit of the camera set so weird that 10min continuous usage leads to a warning popup (that can be removed without hardware damange, if you root the phone).
Their lack of customer support is also not doing it any favour for getting respect.
I guess that I will have to give Google phone or Huawei a try, for my next phone. (once tried xiaomi, didn't like them)
And it confirms the GP's thesis that Sony is committed to keep making excellent phones while redoubling its efforts to ensure they're ignored.
What the article really says is that Sony is going to stop marketing and selling their phones in many regions, which means if you want one you might have to order it online from a reseller in Hong Kong or something. And then it may or may not be compatible with your local wireless spectrum. If it is, you'll have an excellent phone, and if it's not, you'll have an expensive pocket camera.
Probably what they've found is that outside of Japan, they can't compete against Apple's and Google-Pixel's mindshare (despite having far superior hardware than the latter, in my opinion).
> Xperia is by no means dead to the world and the company is actually redoubling its efforts with that brand in a bid to grow amid the spending cuts in regions where it will now be appointing its focus. The Sony Xperia 1 marked the start of that and is actually the result of those cost-cutting measures.
As someone else pointed out, the real problem with the Android ecosystem isn't so much the hardware imo it is the absolutely appalling software everyone but Google seems to ship (I definitely include Samsung in this). Microsoft could do a good job of this and has the $$$ to throw at marketing (plus could leverage the cloud streaming Xbox stuff).
[0]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-duo?...
The original quip was an application of Conway's law, in that if you have a rigid, hierarchical organization with lots of bureaucracy, you're probably not going to get great software out the other side.
At least for consumer devices. You might make exemplary software for other rigid, hierarchical enterprises.
It's nothing against Koreans. It's everything against how Korea has organized its corporate culture, even if it's making efforts to change that.
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-One-UI-3.0-android-1...
Btw, Nexus6P bootloop can be fixed in most devices by disabling the 4 Big. Cores and the phone can be used for less-demanding tasks with the 4 Little Cores. My Nexus6P has been resurrected this way[1].
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/resurrecting-nexus-6p-from-bootlo...
It's just not possible for a company to push out a software update that bricks your phone and refuse to fix it in a competitive market.
The whole G4 bootloop fiasco is why i'll never buy a LG phone again.
Went through 4 G4's in 12 months because of it.
Samsung always wanted to do things their way -- different (shitty) UI, Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse), reorganizing preferences for no reason, the stupid bottom button placement, non-remappable Bixby button, aggressively killing apps for power management and breaking widgets, etc.
LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
I had a Samsung Galaxy S4, then an LG G5, and now an LG V35. I hated the S4 and loved the G5 and V35. My fiance had an LG V20, and now has a Samsung Galaxy S20+ and feels similarly -- loved the V20, is super annoyed by stupid Samsung software quirks, even on this latest model.
Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality beyond the V30 is basically identical.
I think most importantly is Samsung's image presence vs LG. Can't remember the last time I've seen a TV advert for LG. Or a billboard in the city center, or youtube hype from influencers, etc. While Samsung is everywhere.
Second is the cool factor. LG has none while Samsung have this as a priority. From the design of the phones to their special physical presence in malls.
People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone. But they always have their mind made up by the time they ask and Samsung is the choice. The other options don't look as good, are considered a risk vs a known, and are also seen as a budget choice for those who can't afford a Samsung. Sometimes I feel they would be even ashamed of having people see them with anything "less".
I remember seeing GQ articles that were interviews with celebrities that was kind of a "30 questions" thing where each celebrity was asked the same set of questions.
One of them was: "iPhone or Samsung?"
It didn't matter that the answer to every single one (in that issue) was iPhone. It didn't surprise me that celebrities would be 100% iPhone users.
But as a discerning high-end android buyer gravitating between flagship Google Nexus devices, HTC, and LG, the implication that the alternative to iPhone was "Samsung" was BEWILDERING to me.
1. LG are crap at discovery ( Sales and Marketing ) and distribution. Something which despite HN is a forum from VC and Startup, pays very little attention to.
2. LG's phone QA were never really as good. This has been the case since pre-Smartphone era.
3. LG WOLED, something they tried to get it work on Smartphone but never worked and their AMOLED panel were inferior, which sort of have a knock on effect on their brand.
4. They were just never as aggressive as Samsung, I dont mean Samsung Electronics and LG electronics, I mean the whole Samsung vs LG. I guess someone from Korea can chime in on that because I know LG is competitive in South Korea.
5. Samsung are great at making Smartphone. Their whole Business Model. If you think you know Flywheel because you know Amazon. Take a look at Samsung.
6. On a Hardware level, Samsung is way ahead of LG on Spec. Which is what nerds and Tech reviewers likes to focus on. UI and Software tends be subjective. And stock Android is like the year of Linux on Desktop.
7. You would have thought they could built some synergy with LG OLED from TV. Nope.
Samsung, for me, just works. It's a bit obnoxious to have doubles of apps, but otherwise I don't have a lot of problems. It's funny you mention Bixby key because none of those phones you listed have one - I supposed you could argue the S20 does, but the first thing I did was remap (using Samsung's built in controls) it back to the power button and I was on my way. I'm only reminded that Bixby is a thing when people complain about it.
They sold me their top-end phone, years ago, for a top-end price, on the basis that they would update Android in the next three months. It was a nice phone, but three became six, which became a few years - three or four or five.
Eventually they did offer the option, of course by then I was not using the phone, but I tried to upgrade anyway, and my phone would not upgrade. There was no support when I asked apart from 'download it and it should work'.
So in answer to your question, it's not about Samsung, it's about LG for me - and they destroyed all credibility with me - I don't believe claims on build quality, I don't believe claims about support, I don't believe any of their advertising. And I actively advise friends not to buy their products, when asked.
And I bought mine for $360 CAD (about $240 USD) at the end of its cycle. That’s hard to beat. Samsung makes crappier, more expensive phones IMO.
It’s a sad day for the phone ecosystem :-(
1. LG did not have one thing they stood for. At a time it was repairability (the LG G5 and LG V20 is one of the best older Android phones with an exchangeable battery), sound quality, supporting modules to extend the phone (but almost never releasing any), one release had a great camera, last year they released one with a cross display. There is no common theme, no follow up on their experiments. Quick, what's the newish LG Velvet about? Even I don't know, and I read the reviews (checking again: There is nothing special).
2. Product names suck, with them all colliding together over time. Samsung also does that a little bit, but not as much with their S line.
3. Repeatedly releasing phones at high prices, putting them in direct competition with almost flagship phones, and cutting them a week after release by several hundred dollars. Instead of cutting the price immediately and getting better reviews by thus being in competition with cheaper and worse other phones.
4. Not supplying reviewers with review models, at least in the US.
No surprise really. I would have loved a modern G5 at some point in the future. But now LG is gone, and the phones they released in between had nothing to do with what made the G5 and V20 good anyway.
They seem solid enough for me and some of them present better integration with the Samsung ecosystem . Those apps are also integrated with different third party providers including google .
I still despise bixby but I'm very satisfied with the rest of the phone.
The S7 onwards, Samsung phones have been superior to all other traditional android competitors at providing a fully rounded flagship experience. (vs Sony, Htc, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, Pixel).
The new OneUi 2.0+ experience has dramatically improved my impression of Samsung devices. Samsung phones now allow you to hide all the bloat away and the unremovable parts are quite pleasing. My phone hasn't lagged once in my 2 years of owning it and the basics (Screen, Camera, Battery, Smoothness, Updates) remain near the top of the line, despite its age. There is no reason for stock android to be considered superior to OEM skins. It just so happened that for majority of its iterations, OEM skins ruined more than their improved. However, when done well, an OEM skin can absolutely be superior to stock android. (HTC & Sony back in the early days of Android). I believe, One UI 3.1 is currently superior stock android. (As long as I can swap out the bearably terrible app drawer and remap the unbearably terrible bixby to google)
Now the S20 devices are 3rd in line on Samsung's flagship ladder. Fold > Note > S20. So, if you are really craving top of the line, then the S20 ain't it. Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on the Z-fold-3 whenever it comes out.
I say this with the caveat that no phone UX is perfect. I can see flaws in all of them. But right now, I prefer OneUI and it's level of out-of-the-box customization over stock. (Ex: You could hide the on-screen navbar and make all apps immersive with/without gestures)
I'd even argue Samsung has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting of adding new features to Android. Google frequently adds features that were previously only available on Samsung (and sometime other vendors) for generations. I've noticed when Google adds the same features, I find the UX to be a downgrade from what I was used to. This is because Samsung then adds the Google flavor (more taps!) and removes their own. I'm still annoyed at the latest camera UX and multi-window.
Then there's Samsung's hardware. The Wacom EMR S-Pen has become a must have for me. Also I've come to rely on Samsung Pay, which WAS the best mobile payment app (more on that later). Samsung has hardware in their devices that allows them to write to any magnetic strip reader on any POS system. This works everywhere NFC/Google Pay/Apple pay aren't available.
All that being said, I like Samsung a lot less than I used to. As of last year, ads have suddenly clogged up their software. (Want to pay for groceries using your phone? Look at this ad first!) Also Samsung Pay is being removed from newer devices, probably to make room for 10 more camera lenses. Sorry, NFC is still not everywhere.
Between the ads, removal of Samsung Pay, removal of features in general, and the lower screen resolutions of S20/S21s, I won't be upgrading to a new Samsung any time soon. There's also this homogenization of Android becoming more Apple-like and Apple becoming Android-like. At this point I'm seriously considering Apple, especially if they make a smaller Apple pencil to be used on phones.
G5 was a great phone though wasn't it.
Because everyone wants to own as much of the stack as possible: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/owning-the-s...
Samsung doesn't want to become a yet another interchangeable and disposable phone body manufacturer for Google.
Samsung bought more ads, maybe?
While I don't like a lot of their software, my experience with Samsung's hardware, and their warranty service for that matter, have been much more pleasant.
edit: On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a new Samsung TV. True to Samsung form, the software is terrible but the hardware has been very solid.
Samsung aggressively installed itself in even the most remote places. When you go through a small city (my parent's home) and find that Samsung has an official office with actual Koreans in it, it makes sense that people from that place will conduct business with Samsung.
Same can be said with Apple. For example, Apple is aggressive when it comes to international warranty. In my opinion, they understand that a good size of their products are sold/smuggled in the black market. When you offer international warranties, it gives you an advantage over other brands since now the Apple product is as cheap as Samsung's. Where I live, the official-partner Apple store is basically a warranty repair shop. Most people buy their products off-market.
I even like some of their apps. Samsung Health is, in my opinion, infinitely better than Google Fit. The latter doesn't even let me delete mistakenly input data. I'm not sure what Google's strategy on this app is.
I find Samsung apps to be much better than their Google counterparts. Samsung Health, Internet, Calculator and Notes are examples. Besides, they fit the UI really well along with the menus and other things. And whatever annoyances you've experienced can be tweaked since the UI is highly customisable (bar none).
In terms of long-term support, Samsung also provides 3 years of upgrades and 4 years of security updates. That's the best from any company bar Apple and it extends to their midrange devices too.
> LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
> Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality beyond the V30 is basically identical.
Well, knowing them only through my purchases of a Nexus S, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5:
The Nexus S is still around.
The Nexus 4 suffered from battery inflation.
The Nexus 5 suffered from a catastrophic failure that caused me to lose a year's worth of message history.
So all I can say in response to the news "LG is getting out of the mobile phone business" is "good riddance, they should never have been there in the first place".
Which one is "closer to stock Android" is a non-issue if you run stock Android anyway.
Are you talking about the home button? I actually love that and it's the reason I got the S4 and then S7. I've been putting off buying a new phone because all the new phones are digital buttons and I really like having the physical ones.
Samsung phones work well, they have one of the best cameras, the best screens, the best batteries, usually the most features. LG phones are famous for boot-looping.
> different (shitty) UI
It is a matter of opinion. I much prefer Samsung's UI over the garbage that is google's, and even slightly better than iphone.
> Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse)
Every Samsung app that replaces a google app is 2x better. The browser is faster, better than chrome. The contacts app is so much better. The dialer is like 10 years ahead. Gallery is at least 10x faster and less buggier than google photos. I always try to delete as much google bloatware from my phone as possible, and use the samsung apps.
> the stupid bottom button placement
What button? There are no buttons on Samsung phones for the past 3-4 years. The navbar is fully customizable (unlike google), and hidable.
> non-remappable Bixby button
Similar to the non-remappable squeeze button on pixels and siri button on iphones?? And the bixby button is remappable with an app nowadays.
> aggressively killing apps for power management
Samsung is hardly the worst offender here. And I can't blame them for trying to fix the clusterfuck that google has created with android.
> Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
I can't speak for others, but your "annoyances" are useful features for me. The alarm app turns on my bedroom lights in the morning automatically. Bixby routines automatically cranks the brightness and enables auto rotate when I play a video. Samsung health auto-tracks my sleeping schedule and tells me which apps are keeping me awake. Samsung browser blocks all ads and has an automatic dark mode for every website. Samsung pay lets me pay with my phone at any credit card terminal, not just the ones with NFC.
Switched to a Samsung A71 after having an Apple 7+. Gave my 7+ to my daughter who previously had a 6+.
I'm about six months in and I'm going back to Apple or OnePlus. My iphone had a few quirks that I could deal with. Nothing major. The A71? OMFG every single day I'm dealing with constant issues with the phone:
- finger print scanner is the worst I've ever had bar none.
- All the Samsung apps continually turn on and fight with the Google apps for preference, even after I've turned them off
- The Samsung apps constantly run and drain my battery. A brand new phone, with a non-power user and it can't make a full day on a full charge? Unreal.
- I had to turn off all the notifications. It seemed like every 5 minutes a new system notification would pop up. Like: "Your wifi is unprotected! Use Samsung VPN to protect it!" Even when I'm already running a VPN??
There's a ton more that happen less frequently, but dealing with these every day has soured me completely to Samsung products. I had a OnePlus before my iPhone and loved it. Stock Android, no frills, battery lasted forever, no bloatware.
I just can't use Samsung phones ever again - no matter how good their marketing is.
I agree about the UI stuff though.
The big advantage is that they were powerful devices with a removable battery and a SD-card slot.
Downside was a tendency to overheat a bit (this was particularly bad on the S2 at some point, though I recall subsequent software updates helped a lot).
In all cases, the devices kept being updated to the latest android while I was using them.
The Samsung Android additions are pretty much useless except maybe one or two good ideas, but they also don't get in the way. I just spend 30 minutes to disable things when I get my phone.
Also I don't know if you've looked at real stock android (e.g. fire an emulator from Android studio for instance) but that stuff is real ugly (shouldn't be a big consideration - it can be themed quite easily, but I felt I needed to make this point).
To me, Samsung's UI has always been the clunkiest and worst of all I tried, plus their phones have a tendency to degrade fast in terms of battery consumption and lag (I don't know if due to hardware or software updates). And yet, the press has always praised every Samsung flagship while often lambasting the competition.
Honestly my hypothesis is that they just devote a lot of money to buy reviews.
Being able to take notes, draw simple pictures, use denser UIs again is just so refreshing! Also new stuff like on-hover translation overlay or stylus button actions.
Really, Samsung is preatty much the only vendor that cares about stylus support these days andvthat's sad. Also if you want to draw on the go, the only usable mobile drawing tablets come from Samsung, unless you want to lock yourself into the overpriced dumbed down closed nightmare that is the Apple ecosystem.
To each their own.
No.
> Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships?
Because hardware is reasonably good in a scorched earth kept by and endless race to the bottom that is the android landscape.
Their POLED screens killed it for me, though. I haven't seen a single phone that didn't have horrifically uneven colors, usually with the bottom half of the screen shifting to green. I kept hoping they'd fix it, and I bought and subsequently returned a V30, a V35, and a V40 before giving up on them.
They still have the best screens today. They still have the best cameras besides apple today.
Xiaomi is a well-known and rising (now the #3). Huawei was the a big player but losing ground. Oppo is well known: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile
Samsung pays for reviews [0] and engages in other scummy behavior that is given a pass anti-Applers see it as the sole champion against the Tall Poppy:
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=Samsung+paid+students+for+re...
I switched to Motorola since, the UI is quite close to the Pixel and the price range is reasonable.
I never considered LG because they do not offer software support. You might get 1 year worth of OS updates and MAYBE 2 years of security. Meanwhile samsung offers 3 years of OS updates and 4-5 of security updates.
Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? 'Cause if that's the case, maybe I am.
>LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
Motorola was always my go to for that, but I picked up an LG for the first time since my very first cell phone back in 2005 and so far, I've been pretty damn impressed.
It did come with a bit of extra prebuiltin crap, but it was actually possible to uninstall it, not just disable it like on Samsung phones. The unreprogrammable hardware button that does nothing but open Google assistant is kind of annoying, but I don't think that's an lg specific thing? Or maybe it is? I couldn't really tell when I was looking up if it could be changed to do something different.
Fun fact just because:
Samsung and LG also both make engineered stone for countertops, by and large the LG stone outsold the Samsung stone at the shop I worked at by a large margin.
LG Cirrus was like the third most popular engineered stone we sold after caesarstone and silestone.
We occasionally had some Samsung stone jobs, but they were pretty rare.
Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
In terms of hardware/updates Samsung is good enough. Only Chinese phones may give better value for money but they come with too many software quirks, which I don't like.
The Xperia X line came with amazing built-in noise-cancellation, which only required a special purpose made $20 NC31E earphone with a 5-pole connector.
The performance of this combo to my surprise was amazing! It matched WH-1000XM4 and Bose QC20 in home-office environments. Not having to carry around yet another earphone that needs charging was radical.
Sadly, the whole line failed, and the feature was removed in the following series.
People think that "survival" is proof of aesthetic and functional superiority (we've seen this in all sorts of things - from programming languages/OSs to philosophies to races to religions).
It is not.
It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends up installing a theme anyway.
Then Google only does the minimum in features, and their software is crap.
For many years, if you wanted proper music software, Samsung phones with their custom real time audio SDK were the only option on Android ecosystem.
Same applies to the quality of Vulkan drivers.
Android phones used to offer unique and useful features like removable batteries, headphone jacks, IR blasters, SD cards, etc. Now it seems that Samsung and Google are obsessed with copying whatever Apple does, even their controversial decisions like removing the headphone jack, even after making fun of Apple for doing it. No thanks, why would I buy a shittier iPhone with a worse OS?
When my LG V20 bites the dust or becomes obsolete I don't know what I'll replace it with. I hope that the Linux phone ecosystem matures by then otherwise I might buy an iPhone.
Android's power user ecosystem couldn't be matched in iOS. Even without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect of the OS - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over email?[1], Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of news?[2], Want a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux runs a Linux container and it can run complete Linux distribution inside it with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker & Termux can communicate with each other for endless possibilities.
Of course Google can mess it up with their policy/API changes for Playstore, but that's where 3rd party app stores like f-droid comes in and can ensure open-source apps like Termux can be published without hurdles. Not to mention the privacy focused apps on f-droid.
And if one doesn't want anything to do with Google, LineageOS has proven itself to be a viable replacement for stock android.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
[2] https://abishekmuthian.com/voice-summary-of-news/
[3] https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-po...
IPhone is an aspirational brand with awesome marketing, so things like notch which don't make much sense are copied by everyone.
And! And! Someone managed to unlock the bootloader. So there's a variety of decent roms one can run on it. All aging now, a little bit too old at this point, but this 2016 device was swinging mightily until it became utterly bereft & unsupportable.
It's just so pathetic that we rely on these shitty ass vendor OSes. The v20 is a case study in how amazingly awesome devices are when consumers have any right what-so-ever to maintain & work with their devices. By hook here! One uses the "dirty santa" exploit (with pixelated santa junk) to unlock the blasted thing. And with that it is a semi-modern, loveable device. By community effort. By contributor effort. No thanks to Google nor LG.
But modern phones are more impervious. This 2016 device is one of the last devices that (unintentionally) allowed access. After this, everything slid downhill. Everything went to shit. Android collapsed into a pitiful shitmound. Libre was squeezed out. Consumerism & obsolescence are enforced in firmware now, almost ubiquotously. What a pathetic trash heap Android is. John Deere tractors have nothing on the disposable technology that Android levers against it's users. It's a vile situation. Unlock the bootloaders you frigging jerkwads. This is hell you perpetuate against your users! Stop this madness.
I wouldn't love a Linux phone but app support is going to be in need of help unless it can run android apps
If it wasn't for the Apple silicon (and the advantage is clearly Apple's) it would be just come down to whether you preferred iOS enough to overcome the obvious feature advantages on the Android side.
That is, whatever iPhone decides to do, they just copy it.
I don't know if it is because the business just decide to follow market trends or if the designers are secretly Apple fanboys.
https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus
I'm too spoiled on having snappier phone specs to enjoy something like this, myself.
> removable batteries
Those usually require relatively flimsy backs that slide fit onto the phone. This has problems with water proofing and it's a part that can wear and eventually fit poorly or fall off. It's a lot easier to waterproof/resist a phone when you can seal the whole back of the phone off from the outside world. It also allows using soft polymer batteries that can eek out a bit more volume without the protective bits removable batteries need to be safe(r) to handle.
On the more cynical side maybe they figured it'd induce people to replace their phones more often though I don't have data showing how much of a factor bad battery is in replacing a phone versus other stuff like better performance or FOMO.
> IR blasters
Honestly don't think I had a phone with one of these since my Palm Centro in high school and college and I don't think I ever used the IR feature on there. The only real use I see is slow data transfers (better accomplished with Bluetooth now) and controlling TVs. The latter isn't a huge draw for most people I bet because people generally either have one remote (that more often can control everything if setup properly either through ARC and HDMI control signals or the cable box remote also sending the TV signals when needed) or many remotes and are willing to spend money on a nicer universal like a Harmony. There's probably still some out there today but it seems like an extra part that most people won't care about so the extra fractions of a cent + to include it gets wiped out to increase profits over a few million phones.
> SD cards
This one is maybe a little more cynical. There's some justification for reducing the number of intrusions in the waterproofing seals and increasing the internal volume available to squeeze more battery in. I think another reason is to induce people to buy the more expensive version of a phone. If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage in a phone
> headphone jacks
This one I think is a mixed bag. Including the jack sets some hard design limits on the shape of the edge of the phone and it's a pretty large hole to plug against water and other intrusions. I think Apple might have had more coldly calculated reasons for doing it with the close launch of their own AirPods. Some phone companies have similar offerings where you could see a calculated plan to increase profits.
I think we're maybe also just reaching the more mature phase of the smartphone design. There's a basic set of features most people care about and optimizing for that pushes companies in a pretty similar direction. There's some margin for small experimentation around the edges but those induce compromises in the core features people judge on so that limits the market and profit of making those choices.
There's technology like foldable screens that might shake things up but they're pretty new with some big compromises at the moment so they haven't really hit the core incentives and forces that are corralling phones into the same tight design and feature list.
I love wireless headphones myself. But you’ve got to admit that it’d be much harder to sell those if phones had 3.5mm jack. It’s as if corporations do anything to increase revenue...
samsung galaxy xcover pro: removable battery, headphone jack, SD card. That's just one example.
Apple can "get away" with it because to a lot of people it's a luxury/lifestyle brand. Android vendors copy them because they want to create new revenue streams by removing features/out of nothing too!
Apple – American
Samsung Mobile – South Korean
Nokia Mobile – Finnish
Google Pixel – American
Sony Mobile – Japanese
LG – South Korean
BLU Products – American
Lava – Indian
Sharp – Japanese
Fairphone – Dutch
Philips Mobile – Dutch
Yotaphone – Russian
BQ – Spanish
Acer – Taiwanese
Asus – Taiwanese
HTC – Taiwanese
Essential Products – American
Cherry Mobile – Philippino
DoCoMo – Japanese
Panasonic Mobile – Japanese.
Afrione – Nigerian
Mara Phone – Rwandan
Librem – AmericanBut what's more important, I very strongly suspect it's a wrong decision. Yes, they don't care about making me happy, they care about making money, and it's a fact, that their mobile division only loses money. And I do understand, that my phone preferences might be somewhat different from average, so I accept the hypothesis that these aren't "best for everyone". But either way, these are not bad phones. Especially if you skip the weirdest models like G5 (which I also skipped). In fact, their weirdest decisions always seemed like am attempt to answer the question "what are we doing wrong?". And it still seems obvious, that the only possible answer is marketing. Uber-popular samsung flagships never were really better than LG flagships (and for me they are actually worse), but the real and obvious difference were huge samsung billboards all across my city. And I honestly don't remember a single one by LG. Not to mention (obviously) sponsored reviews and posts on all meme-websites like 9gag every time Samsung made a new phone. No surprise they were selling better even at higher prices. And even today I saw a lot of "TIL: LG had a mobile division" posts.
So if I am right, and the problem is their marketing, getting out of mobile business must mean that they didn't learn the lesson. And if so, what good should we expect from whatever new divisions they'll make?
All out great experience.
It’s hard to point to anything very wrong with that phone. It even had an Amoled always on display, which was ahead of its time. Reviewers thought that front and rear glass was an awful design decision, and they may have been right, but look where we are now?
They will be missed. In a world of ever-increasing smartphone conformity, they were the ones reliably rattling the cage by placing a screaming punk of a product just in the middle of the worldwide white-collar market...
I sent it for warranty repair three times, and every time they "repaired" it instead of giving me a new one, and it would happen again. The fourth time it happened I just gave up.
Not enough people want an OS that doesn't have native support for Android or iOS apps. Even windows couldn't cut it.
What are my LG v20 alternatives now ?
Their modern phones are good and simple, alas, the company never recovered its image following the G3/G4 fiascos.
https://www.change.org/p/lg-electronics-lg-to-open-source-th...
Sign it and share it if you want that too. Thanks!
Fuck LG and every company that decides to don't give a shit about their loyal customers.
I guess mass market junk approach pushes good options out.
An end of an era...
I didn't particularly care who the manufacturer was. LG kept winning out.
Palm LG Nokia RIM (BB) Microsoft Amazon Obi Worldphone
I know BB still makes phones but it is no longer a dominant arm of their business.
I am fuckin' livid. Especially since I can't unlock the bootloader on the fucking thing (apparently only Europe can, not Australia or the US)
After plugging the phone in we called it from the store phone and sure enough not long after answering the thing gave me a nice big zap on my hand.
Never recommended LG phones after that.
Postmarketos and the Linux community can benefit a lot from it.
anyway…
There are basically three markets nowadays.
1. Ultra luxurious $1000+ phones. These phones are bought purely based on brand name. As a result they generally have a smaller set of features and put the users through some amount of pain. For example, the latest iphone does not have headphone jack, does not come with a charger, does not have expandable memory, does not have a fingerprint sensor, has outdated 5 year old-looking screens with a huge notch, etc. You cannot compete in this category with good, technically sound products. People will pay $1200 for a brick with an apple logo on it, but not for a genuinely advanced phone packed with features, just because it ain't from apple.
2. Mid tier phones. These phones are bought based on a mixture of features and brand value. It is possible to compete here because the customers are making some sort of logical decisions. That is the reason Oneplus is able to gain significant share here. But these also have started falling into the trap of removing features and making users suffer a bit for the brand.
3. Cheap commodity phones. These are extremely cheap, the software is barely acceptable and the hardware is decent. Once again, it is difficult to compete here because these customers will buy the absolute cheapest phone there is with the set of features they want. They will entirely disregard any software polish, any brand association, anything that requires attention to detail. As a result, chinese manufacturers are absolutely killing it in this space.
So the only place for LG to fit here is the 2nd one. This is a downgrade from earlier when they used to be in the flagship game, before apple fucked it up. I guess they are not able or ready to adapt to the new reality of the market. Sony did the same. I respect the decision on some level.
To me regarding LG, I was never a fan of their phones, but less competition is always bad in my book.
Edit: Yes I remember the Windows Phone and it’s failures, was thinking more of starting a newer OS these days rather than several years ago.
Blackberry too.
And Samsung (Tizen)
And there was also WebOS which I know was used in atleast one tablet, maybe some phones too, and which is currently owned by LG.
Just think about how manufacturers are struggling to find success with their own smartphones. Imagine trying to do that with the added burden of developing a custom operating system.