This was one of the first touchscreen phones in the world.
When everyone else was building sealed slap phones, this phone could flex when other phones broke.
This thing healed itself.
This one was modular when foldables popped up.
This flipping phone showed up with a rollerball on the way.
This was all from LG You know, LG, they make awesome OLED TVs.
They're also the company that announced that they would close their mobile phone business worldwide.
How could this have happened?
Well, some seriously bad timing and some bad luck.
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This is the rundown, skip around.
If you want this Still is.
In 2002, LG entered the phone world.
Let's look at LG his own history page to see what the company was up to in 2002.
In May, LG launches the world's first fifth generation TFT LCD production line.
In August we get LG Life Sciences.
Super, let's fast forward to 2006, shall we?
LG introduces the LG VX8500 also known as the chocolate.
Internally, it was called the music phone.
The chocolate had Bluetooth, a one megapixel camera, a two-inch screen and a digital music player with 128 megabytes of storage.
And it had this really cool touchpad as a controller.
How would you dial numbers with the wheel?
Side that thing out, there's a keypad.
What did the rest of the field look like in 2006?
Well, there was the Moto razor, the Telstra hiptop 2 and of course, the BlackBerry pearl 8100.
The LG chocolate stood out from the crowd.
Also around late 2006, rumors of LG's newest phone pop up.
It drops the keys in favor of a touchscreen.
There's even a press release touting LG partnering with product to create this phone in January 2007 LG makes the ke 850 product phone official.
It has a three inch touchscreen and a two megapixel camera.
LG reportedly called the product phone the world's first completely touchscreen mobile phone.
There was just one thing that kind of messed up things for LG.
Nine days before the product got official, this thing got introduced.
An iPod, A phone and an internet communicator.
And we are calling it iPhone.
Yeah, that's the first Apple iPhone.
And according to some excellent reporting by cnet's Roger Chang, it turns out that LG did not deem Apple a threat.
Because the iPhone was tied to AT&T as an exclusive.
Whoops, in around 2009, LG was making lots and lots of money and feature phones.
At this point, the iPhone's a few years old and Android is relatively new.
The LG NV touch arrived.
A big three inch touchscreen phone that had a full keyboard when you open it up.
It was running, not Android.
Instead, the Nv touch was running on brew.
That's the same year that Motorola had the droid popping up as the true iPhone rival.
When did LG get Android going?
2010, the iPhone was on more than one carrier at this point, Samsung had launched the Galaxy S. Well enough doom and gloom.
LG gets a real shot at the big time with the Google Nexus four.
This is a phone that is almost universally loved to this day and had a great screen a lot of power, the latest version of Android and a really low price.
It even had a nice little LG logo on the back.
A quick aside, Google released a number of phones under the Nexus sprint.
phones were produced by different manufacturers.
Now it's all pixels.
Now it's all Google.
LG managed to hang on to the Nexus deal for the Nexus five and 5x.
Then we get the LG G Flex in 2014.
This phone had a curved screen and it had a self healing Polymer.
If it got scratched the phone would fix itself.
Why didn't this take the world by storm?
LG tied itself up with carriers.
Samsung, on the other hand, was getting its Galaxy S phones everywhere.
In 2016, we get true innovation in the phone space.
LG introduces the G five.
Unlike a lot of other phones, this thing is modular.
The G five had an all metal body.
You could pop the battery out or in there was an option to add a camera grip for controls.
You couldn't hotswap modules though.
And this phone also had Two cameras on the back.
Take a look at the Galaxy S seven and the iPhone seven, one camera on each.
But to be fair, the seven plus had to rear cameras, but all their batteries were all sealed up.
The downside was that the LG G five did not have the power of the g7 or the waterproofing either LG kind of potters around for a while with some solid looking phones.
We get some pretty cool video features on the v series.
We get the LG velvet with a headphone jack, a huge 6.8 inch screen.
The velvet had the ability to work with a second screen.
The back was also pretty sleek.
Lots of cameras, no big bump.
Then we get the LG wing.
Look at this thing.
Other phones are folding, but the wings swivel.
Why?
Who cares why it was a different design in a world of boring phones.
LG then shows off a rollable phone, forget folding roll.
It's why, who cares?
It's also different.
As we all know, LG sold billions and billions of phones and became the leader Android phones.
Now, we get a press release saying LG is bowing out.
The mobile phone biz is going to put by July 31.
LG tried some really interesting things over the years.
You've got to admire their willingness to experiment.
When the phone world was looking all the same LG tried something else.
The only thing is people did not respond to LG products.
I mean, the G five should have been a huge hit.
There was an ad with many Jason Stadium's Take a look at this.
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So what's LG gonna do now?
The company says it will focus on growth areas such as electric vehicle components, smart homes, robotics and AI.
Here's hoping it tries like a crazy winged Smart Car something.
Do you think some other companies should have bought LG phone business?
Maybe Facebook, Amazon.
How about Elon Musk?
Let us know in the comments.
I've been Iyaz Akhtar and I'll see you online.
[FOREIGN] LG.
