Best of both: the LG Wing is the phone I wish I’d tried before phone design became boring
With the prospect of rising prices and a RAM shortage on the horizon, we might look back on the current era as a good time for smartphones – even if phone design has actually reached a pretty boring plateau.
Still, I like the fact that, for now, it’s a great time for tech specs and value for money in the world of mobile phones – flagship prices have remained fairly stable over the past five years or so, and the best phones offer incredible performance, photography, and battery life.
That said, there is A phone I wish I had the chance to try before it was discontinued – and unlike my favorite phone of all time, the iPhone 5s, this one isn’t even that old.
The LG Wing, released in 2020, was the last hurray of LG’s mobile business before it shut down in 2021. The final in a series of weird and quirky phones, the LG Wing featured a rotating screen that allowed the phone to rotate in a T-shaped orientation – effectively giving you a landscape view without having to rotate the phone itself.
At 6.8 inches, this rotating screen offered a pretty wide view in its, uh, deployed state, and swiveling the main screen revealed a second 3.9-inch panel, to use as a keyboard or for other quick actions.
It’s possible that the Wing was a response to the advent of foldable phone technology – perhaps LG had hoped that consumers would prefer the sleekness and convenience of their rotating design, which measured just 10.9mm thick compared to the 16.8mm folded thickness of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. More than anything, the Wing was inventive: no other phone maker had offered an alternative to Samsung’s booklet-like form factor that was all as unique, and none has done it since.
In typical LG style, it was a bit odd, but the LG Wing was also well equipped. For $999 in the US, you get both screens, a triple-camera system with a special gimbal-style ultra-wide lens, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4,000mAh battery. And as if it didn’t already have enough moving parts, the selfie camera had a motorized pop-up system.
Unfortunately, the LG Wing came and went before I got my start in tech journalism, and with my trusty Huawei Mate 20 Pro keeping me company through 2020 and 2021, I had neither the means nor the reason to get a new phone.
Alas, LG’s phone division has been shuttered for five years and all the big phones are foldable, following in the footsteps of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. As cool as today’s phones are, none of them can really scratch the itch that the LG Wing left me with.
Of course, the LG Wing didn’t save the company’s phone division. Phones with moving parts have an increased risk of breakdown, a higher price than panel phones, and possible maintenance difficulties.
Still, it was bold for LG to pin its hopes on a niche device when it necessary a victory to stay afloat. LG was too far ahead for its own good. The LG Wing wasn’t a failure, it was ahead of its time.
Holding a phone horizontally sucks. This is not how phones are designed and normally results in hand cramps. That’s why pop grips and mobile game controllers exist, and that’s why vertical video is so dominant.
The LG Wing offered the best of both worlds – landscape and portrait, while still offering a vertical shot. The market was not ready for this. TikTok was just starting to gain momentum; YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels were launched the same year as the Wing, in 2020. The world hadn’t yet realized how convenient it was to hold a phone vertically. all the time itit would be.
I just can’t get over the LG Wing. It’s like an outlandish piece of technology that appears in the background of a Star Wars movie – perhaps useful and designed to look cool. It’s a phone you’d see in a 2006 YouTube video called “These Will Be Smartphones in 2012,” a relic of optimistic, experimental design.
The LG Wing is the coolest phone I can buy – it’s no longer made and buying a used phone with so many moving parts doesn’t seem smart. Let me know which phone you wish you could get your hands on in the comments below.
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