LG is often viewed as a secondary player in the smartphone market, with companies like Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Apple outclassing the company in terms of sales. Despite its ever-decreasing market share, LG remains one of the true innovators in the smartphone space and has led the way in numerous areas.
Of course, LG provides the classic smartphone experience, including a camera for images, a browser for searching things like games online, and a media player for music and movies. However, it is the company’s willingness to break the smartphone standards that help it stand out from the crowd.
Yes, consumers may not be flocking to LG smartphones in recent years, but here are some examples of things the company has achieved before its rivals.
Wide-Camera Lens
Every major smartphone manufacturer is now shipping its flagship devices with a wide-camera lens, but LG was the first to implement the technology. While the likes of Huawei, Samsung, and Apple are now embracing wide lenses, LG was doing it four years ago! With it’s LG V10 flagship (itself an all-round vision of smartphone innovation in 2015), the company provided a selfie camera with one “normal” lens and one ultra-wide.
For 2016’s LG G5, the Korean company moved the ultra-wide lens to the rear and started a trend that has continued to this day across the industry. Interestingly, LG received little praise for its foresight at the time.
Quad HD Screen
Like with the wide-camera lens, LG was putting Quad HD (QHD 1440 x 2560) displays on its smartphones long before its rivals caught up. Now, any Android flagship worth anything has a QHD screen, but for a long time, the LG G3 was the only game in town for the high resolution. Indeed, at the time of the G3’s launch way back in 2014, Full HD (1080p) was still something of a rare commodity.
Ultimately, LG and the G3 suffered because of this willingness to be innovative. At the time, battery technology was not up to scratch and the G3 was a battery hog because of the power needed to handle that QHD panel.
Steel Frames
If you pick up most flagships in 2019, you will see they are two panels of glass sandwiching a stainless-steel frame. Apple to this day talks up the stainless-steel frame of its iPhone 11 Pro, while Samsung and Huawei are two other industry giants who use a similar design choice. However, it was LG that first embraced this construction method and once again with the V10 way back in 2015.
At the time, removable batteries were still part of the smartphone experience. As a result, the V10 did not have the glass construction flagships of 2019 do but instead had a removable plastic backplate. While striking, the LG V10 was not quite the next generation of smartphone design its stainless-steel frame suggested.