The maker of arguable the best Google device of its time, the Nexus 5, will be bowing out of the smartphone race. In a very competitive smartphone market, LG just could not find its niche. They tried being the phone for creators with the V series, being innovative with a number of their phones, and it felt like no matter what they did they could not turn their wireless division into something that was continuously profitable. Here are the reasons I chose not to buy LG phones.
1st reason have to do with updates. Being a big fan of both the Nexus and Pixel phones swift and continuous updates are a big deal to me. I have written a lot on this site about manufacturers I have swore off because of their failure to update. With LG being a manufacturer of Nexus/Pixel phones and seemingly trying to provide a more stock experience, LG could have indeed taken advantage of being one of the first in the update lines. Instead, they chose to allow a number of high end smartphones to go a long time before providing even a security update, that alone a software update. This alone was the top deciding factor in me giving a company like a One Plus a try over a proven company like LG.
2nd reason I chose to forsake LG had to do with their UI. The UI felt like a knock off version of Samsung and I personally do not like Samsung’s UI. Call me vanilla, but I like my UI to be as close to the stock look and feel of stock android. Though I’ll admit that I may be in the minority, stock vanilla android is how I like my android phones. Anything else and I will be itching to either change the look or find a way to go back to a stock android phone. Even if that means selling my phone and buying the latest Nexus/Pixel for that year.
Final reason is I felt like LG when it came to phones was almost there but they did not do enough to stand out from the pack. Samsung was dropping the hottest displays and features, Nexus/Pixel phones were providing a market for fans who wanted stock android the way Google intended, Motorola positioned themselves to be that strong budget phone option, and One Plus was moving through the ranks providing a high end flagship for less than flagship prices. LG tried being innovative but their innovations were either buggy or wasn’t enough compared to the innovations Samsung had released. They tried to be fan friendly by keeping the SD card and headphone jack, but not enough people cared about headphone jacks that they were willing to make that the deciding factor between them and the competition. And with all of what they were doing with the quad DAC audio, most people didn’t care that much about audio to where LG was in their view point. So at the end of the day LG never appealed to me outside of the Nexus 5.
Losing a competitor is never a good thing for the market. But when you look at where LG is shining, Smart TVS and appliances, it’s understandable why they chose to cut their losses. The reality is not enough people were buying their phones, and all of their innovations were finding it’s way in competitor’s phones and allowing them to cash out on LG’s work. Maybe if they were willing to release their V devices as Google Play Edition phones they may have snagged that group who were going after Pixel and One Plus phones, but the question would have been at what cost and if that would have been enough?
