LG gives up on G ThinQ flagships in favor of slider phone revival

LG is giving up on its flagship G ThinQ series of Android smartphones, having reportedly opted to scrap it in favor of attempting to revive – slider phones. Sources from the Far East claim the company’s next handset will be something akin to the original Chocolate phone, the K800. The device is purported to have 5G capabilities and dual screens, with the main takeaway here being that a foldable design is on the cards.

Another radical shake-up for LG

In other words, the G9 ThinQ won’t be happening – now or ever. It’s currently unclear what that means for the company’s only remaining high-end lineup refreshed this February with the V60 ThinQ. As for the unexpected Chocolate-like device, it’s said to be a mid-range offering utilizing one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 700-series chips. Quadruple rear cameras should be part of the package as well, together with a 4,000mAh battery, as per the same report. The LG New Chocolate (BL40) from 2009 is another device said to be similar to the upcoming Android smartphone.

To say that LG’ moves in the modern smartphone space have been misguided would constitute quite a severe case of understating the absolutely ludicrous recent history of its mobile business. Virtually everyone in the game, including LG itself, agrees the company peaked way back in 2014 with the G3 series. Ever since then, LG has been chaining one failure after another. The South Korean manufacturer progressively got so much worse at making smartphones that it ended up on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit – which it lost; eventually paying out millions to owners of its bootlooping smartphones, of which there were many.

A turn toward the mid-range segment hence isn’t the most surprising move for LG to make, all things considered. It may also signal the Korean firm as at least preparing to exit the smartphone industry altogether as a mobile company without a flagship is also one that can’t exactly hope for high profit margins, regardless of how well its most expensive products are(n’t) doing.