LG is done making mobile phones. The company is promising to continue selling existing models for a few more months and to provide operating system and security updates for some indeterminate time. But phones that LG had in the pipeline for launch this year? They’re not coming.
A series of real-world photos are giving us an idea of what they would have looked like though.
Several photos and a few other details have been shared on Twitter by @FrontTron.
According to one post from @FrontTrun, the LG Rainbow (shown below), which may also have been known as the LG V70 in some regions, looks like a follow-up to last year’s LG Velvet. Like that phone, it has three rear cameras stacked one atop the other, a curved back, and what appears to be a metal frame. The phone would most likely have featured mid-range specs and a mid-range price tag if it ever went on sale.
The LG Rollable, meanwhile, would have been a much more unusual smartphone. Also known by the model number LM-R910N, this device was expected to feature a rollable display that would allow the screen to stretch from phone to tablet-size or back again with the press of a button.
LG had been teasing the rollable since September, 2020 and the company has been showing off rollable display technology for even longer. While it’s possible that
Another image shared by @FrontTron (the first image in this article) seems to give us our first real-world look at the phone, although with the display turned off and no animation, it’s hard to really gauge what the phone/tablet hybrid would have looked like in real life. But we do have two pretty good clues.
First, LG gave a brief preview during its Consumer Electronics Show keynote in January.
And second, while LG may not be bringing a smartphone with a rollable display to market now that it’s closing down its entire mobile phone business, LG isn’t the only company to have this idea. Earlier this year Chinese phone maker Oppo unveiled the Oppo X 2021Â with a rollable display that allows a single device to work as a phone or a tablet.
So when the history of smartphones are written, LG may go down yet again as the first company to introduce a new feature… but not as the company that was most successful at actually selling phones with that feature.
I like the rollable display concept. Seems less bulky than the foldables out so far. Although I’m not sure if LG would have executed it well anyway.
They executed their previous phones so badly that we won’t ever find out. The wing, really, did anyone want a phone like that? Well I guess we know the answer don’t we.
I was really looking forward to the V70 release as my old V30 is starting to get a little slow. Unfortunately I’ll likely have to move to a OnePlus 9 or Sony Xperia since I cannot stand Samsung’s UI.