This is all YOUR fault!

[JordB]

 

After his unplanned plunge in the pool, Linus asked the community to pick his next phone. That was a poor decision.

 

Buy a Fairphone 5: https://geni.us/YQT7uvZ

Buy an LG Wing on eBay: https://ebay.us/haa4gs

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

[soccermomisqueen]

Can I just say that the Build Redux sponsor spot in the first segment was 10/10

 

I think that was a match made in heaven for the ad.

[Dejmajen]

I, and many others would still love for Linus to daily drive the FairPhone nevertheless.

[Catzzye]

19 minutes ago, Dejmajen said:

I, and many others would still love for Linus to daily drive the FairPhone nevertheless.

Check out the end of the video, said he's switching to it as that was his pick.

Also welcome o/

[JoHeJo06]

32 minutes ago, soccermomisqueen said:

Can I just say that the Build Redux sponsor spot in the first segment was 10/10

 

I think that was a match made in heaven for the ad.

thats the thing i was thinking

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

I like popup front cameras. 

Otherwise you need to tape it or open up the device to disconnect it. With pop up camera you can keep it and be sure it isn't filming.

[SorryBella]

Quote

"I dont want to use CRT aspect ratio, ill just use picture in picture mode like i always have"

credits roll

 

Seriously. That shouldve been the whole review sentence of every LG Wing review. Thanks Reddit and your infinite crotch wisdom.

[Needfuldoer]

Quote

[...] a wholly unnecessary self-own

"Self-own", or "cell phone"?

 

Gottem.

[PrizmJKR]

Watched the video and can't help but notice that the unit Linus purchased seems to not be actually brand new in box, it looks to be a shoddily refurbished unit. Linus's phone seems to be a T-Mobile US model, and if it was actually new it would've came in a box like the one below, which looks quite different from the box that Linus' phone came in. The plastic screen protector with the info on it doesn't look OEM as well, I believe the phone would've just had a clear plastic wrapping around it if actually new. Probably explains the weird bumps under the screen and the unreliable fingerprint sensor too lol, it seems to be uncalibrated.

 

I actually own an extremely abused and cracked up Wing and from my own experiences, mine somehow has a more reliable and accurate fingerprint sensor than Linus's, and also doesn't have any weird rippling under the screen, so....

[Aveniform]

I've owned far too many LG phones for my own good (as well as other brands), so I feel I can comment with some authority:

 

TL;DR most of these are Android 13 bugs or T-mobile specific bugs. On Android 10, which the Wing launched with, there was actually a good bit of optimization. I can only assume LG devs didn't bother porting them forward to subsequent Android updates (what incentive is there given the mobile division had already shut down?). For instance:

 

4:06 YouTube video closing to "landscape" orientation is hilarious, but I'm curious why there were no playback controls shown on the secondary screen while the video was playing. On Android 10 Youtube automatically shows playback controls (eg. play/pause) on the bottom small screen (see pictures below, pictures taken from video and GSMArena respectively). I can't help but wonder if LG had simply not bothered optimizing this aspect of their Android 13 update.

 

 

4:20 While the screen is swivelled open, the keyboard appears on the landscape screen instead of the bottom small screen. Is Linus using the stock LG keyboard or a 3rd party keyboard? On Android 10 (the OS version the Wing originally launched with), the stock LG keyboard automatically shows in the small bottom screen if the top landscape screen is swivelled open. Would not surprise me if LG didn't bother porting this to their Android 13 update.

 

 

7:06 is possibly a T-Mobile specific perk. On the Korean units for instance I believe all the bloatware apps are simply dumped onto the homescreen.

 

7:30 Not having a hotspot quick toggle is 100% a T-Mobile issue. Specifically a US carrier issue - all 4 US carriers are known to disable the hotspot quick toggle on not only the LG Wing, but almost all LG/Samsung/other Android phones sold through the carrier. This has been an issue for over a decade at this point. It's also an inconsistent issue because some generations of phones, on some carriers, might actually have that toggle. My Verizon variant LG V50, for instance, actually has a hotspot quick toggle, surprisingly. On a lot of older LG/Samsung phones people actually crossflash the phones to generic US-unlocked firmware (if possible) to get rid of bloatware/have a hotspot quick toggle/etc.

 

7:38 The screen 'over-zealously' turning off in calls is almost certainly an Android 13 bug, or more specifically, LG not bothering with optimization/testing.

 

8:48 Uninstalling apps dumping you onto the homescreen instead of the app drawer is just always how the LG launcher has worked (my V50 did this exact same thing on Android 9 and 10). A matter of personal preference I suppose, but I can see why Linus finds it annoying. One potential workaround is to go to Settings > Apps and uninstall apps from the list there.

 

9:05 Rebooting and not getting notifications after until unlocking is unfortunate and inexcusable. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a bug introduced by LG's Android 13 update they never bothered fixing (sense a theme here?).

 

10:24 (and 12:08) I hate to break it to you Linus, but I strongly suspect the "BNIB sealed" unit was likely just some crappy Chinese refurb. It's very common for some LG phones, especially the V60 and G8, to be sold as "brand new sealed" by Chinese sellers when they simply glued together some refurb screen and motherboard and shoved them into knockoff boxes with "OEM" chargers that are literal fire hazards. That may also explain the rattling after 1 month, but I wouldn't be surprised if the LG Wing just inherently isn't a very durable phone given the relatively untested design. You can run as many tests as you want in a sterile lab environment but it simply can't simulate real-world use completely.

 

10:57 LG under-screen fingerprint sensors are notoriously bad (their physical capacitive sensors are fine though!). The sensor on my G8X is simply AWFUL and only unlocks if you place your finger at a very precise angle with enough pressure. It's less reliable than even the Samsung S5's horrible swipe fingerprint sensor. Overall, I find the G8X sensor so unusable that I have mine disabled.

 

I hope this doesn't read like LG apologia, as it's not intended to be that - there's just a lot of interesting tidbits that Linus' team wouldn't have known about without being enthusiasts or having prior personal ownership.

 

With all that said and done, I'm not surprised that LG's last ever phone was the Wing. It should have never made it off the drawing board. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together could clearly see it was a very niche phone with likely low adoption rates. Why they thought this justified some fairly extensive R&D expense to bring this finicky concept to market, however cool, is beyond me. Why they thought this would help their mobile division (which had been incurring significant losses for 16 consecutive quarters) that desperately needed high volume sales, profits, and mindshare, is inexplicable. The almost certainly abysmal sales were probably the nail in the coffin, and furthermore may have helped VinGroup decide against purchasing the ailing division. They made some decent phones but ultimately it was not bad software or the lack of updates that killed them (don't listen to Reddit, they have no idea what they're talking about), but rather poor leadership.

 

[Rarity]

now this has got me wanting to get one ..

[VinLAURiA]

It feels like the form-factor has potential, but it just suffered from being a first-gen product. I skimmed through the response of the guy on Reddit who suggested the thing and he did make a point that Linus seemed to never try using the T-shape orientation in anything other than the big screen on top, and I have to agree I can see some use for the other orientations which I think Linus missed out on. That being said, considering all the weight is in the back half of the phone, I do wonder how comfortable those other orientations would be to hold. And there are some other design decisions that were just really not very thought out, like the position of the side buttons.

 

If anything, I'm sad that LG's phone decision shut down, because I'd have liked to see them keep trying with this form-factor. Maybe an LG Wing 2 would've ironed out most of the issues?

 

As for the app compatibility, this is a slight pivot but I strongly believe that more apps - indeed, more technology in general - should be made with the potential of multiple screens in mind. Not specifically in the LG Wing form-factor, but more agnostically-designed to just know there are multiple screens and gracefully adapt to that and whatever relative sizes they have, with the Wing just naturally reaping the benefits of that by virtue of being a multi-screen device. You can lump PCs and gaming into this too, which is why I was so big on the multi-screen trend in gaming a decade ago with the Wii U, (3)DS, Xbox SmartGlass, and what Sony was doing between their handhelds and home consoles. Not to mention everyone who have multi-monitor PCs. We need to start designing our software to be able to take advantage of that more if desired. There's even a whole discussion to be had on building multi-display experiences out of several independent devices, but I digress.

[AamirA]

16 hours ago, soccermomisqueen said:

Can I just say that the Build Redux sponsor spot in the first segment was 10/10

 

I think that was a match made in heaven for the ad.

I know right, Dennis is killing it. I sometimes wish floatplane had sponsors just cause I like watching them

[Naveen Prashanth]

9:54 notifications issue is there with Xiaomi too. It's something to do with DND mode and not disturbing the user until he wakes up I guess. You can set alarm so that after first alarm it will turn off DND or else turn off scheduled DND entirely.

[Agall]

Comparable screen sizes to the Z Flip 5 but markedly less useful, reversed in its screen layout.