Best of both: the LG Wing is the phone I wish I’d tried before phone design became boring

With the prospect of price hikes and RAM shortages on the horizon, we might remember the current era as a good one for smartphones – even if phone design has actually hit a pretty boring plateau.

Still, I’m enjoying 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 held fairly steady over the past five or so years, and the best phones offer incredible performance, photography, and battery life.

With that said, there is one phone I wish I’d 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.

LG Wing

The LG Wing featured two displays – a swivelling 6.8-inch main panel and a 3.9-inch secondary screen hidden underneath (Image credit: Future)

The LG Wing, released in 2020, was the last hurrah from LG’s mobile business before it shut down in 2021. The finale to a series of weird and quirky phones, the LG Wing featured a rotating display that allowed the phone to swivel out into a T-shaped orientation – effectively giving you a landscape view without having to rotate the phone itself.

At 6.8 inches, that rotating display offered a pretty wide view in its, uh, deployed state, and swiveling out 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 folding 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 Galaxy Z Fold 2’s 16.8mm folded thickness. More than anything, the Wing was inventive – no other phone maker had offered an alternative to Samsung’s booklet-style form factor that was quite as unique, and none have since.

In typical LG style, it was a bit bizarre, but the LG Wing was also well-equipped. For $999 in the US, you got the two displays, a triple camera system with a special gimbal-style ultra-wide lens, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4,000mAh battery. And if it didn’t already have enough moving parts, the selfie camera had a motorized pop-up system.

Sadly, the LG Wing came and went before I made 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 pick up a new phone.

Samsung Galaxy Fold in-hand

Want a phone with extra screen space? Nearly all your current options owe their design to the Samsung Galaxy Fold released in 2019 (Image credit: TechRadar)

Alas, LG’s phone division has been shut for half a decade and every large phone is a foldable in the footsteps of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. As cool as the phones of today are, none of them can quite scratch the itch the LG Wing has left me.

Of course the LG Wing didn’t save the company’s phone division. Phones with moving parts are have increased likelihood of failure, a higher price tag compared to slab phones, and possible servicing difficulties.

Still, it was bold for LG to hitch its hopes on a niche device when it needed a win to stay afloat. LG was too far ahead of the game for its own good. The LG Wing wasn’t a flop, it was ahead of its time.

The phone featured three cameras – a main lens and two ultra-wide cameras, one of which was reserved for a unique gimbal mode only accessible with the screen rotated. (Image credit: Future)

Holding a phone horizontally sucks. It’s not how phones are designed and normally leads to hand cramps. That’s why pop sockets and mobile gaming controllers exist, and it’s why vertical video is so dominant.

The LG Wing offered the best of both worlds – landscape and portrait, while offering a vertical grip. The market wasn’t ready for it. TikTok was just gaining momentum; YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels launched the same year as the Wing, in 2020. The world hadn’t yet realized how convenient holding a phone vertically all the time could be.

I just can’t get over the LG Wing. It’s like over-the-top tech that pops up in the background of a Star Wars movie – possibly useful and designed to look cool. It’s a phone you’d see in a YouTube video from 2006 titled “this will be smartphones in 2012,” a relic of optimistic and experimental design.

The LG Wing is the coolest phone I can’t buy – it’s discontinued, and buying a second-hand phone with that many moving parts doesn’t seem smart. Let me know which phone you wish you’d been able to get ahold of in the comments below.

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jamie.richards@futurenet.com (Jamie Richards)

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