Surveying the mobile landscape: LG

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	Home / Cell phones / Multimedia smartphones

	Surveying the mobile landscape: LG	By Philip Berne, 23 December 2007

LG has had some huge hits this year in the Chocolate and the LG Voyager. Will open networking remove the manufacturer's carrier crutch, or will they thrive in the new environment?

Of all the top handset manufacturers, the most underrated is certainly LG. Without building a significant fan base, LG has managed some fascinating milestones in the past year. The Chocolate phone rivals the iPhone in sales, and the new update to the popular slider improved some of the older phone’s flaws. The LG Voyager is one of the most talked-about phones of the year, and is certainly the best multimedia phone on Verizon Wireless. LG has significant, interesting phones on almost every major network, and the company has made strides while refraining from rocking the boat with the carriers.

This is why we were so pleased to see LG on board with the Google Android project. Of all the manufacturers, LG does the most to adapt the “walled garden” menu structures of the carriers, especially Verizon Wireless. The LG Shine, for instance, featured a brushed metal interface theme to match the hardware, and the LG Voyager broke the V Cast mold entirely. We’d like to see what happens when the reigns come off completely. Perhaps the company works best within a carrier structure, like a poet who can only write sonnets. But perhaps the manufacturer that has done the most to bend the carrier’s to their own design has some interesting designs up their sleeve.

LG has been looking at market segmentation extensively this year, so we’ll expect to see a wide variety of devices from the Korean company. We saw a heap of new phones following the touchscreen form this year. The LG Viewty demonstrated the company’s photography chops, with a 5-megapixel camera and touch screen. The LG KS20 brought Windows Mobile to the Prada form. And then, for the U.S. market, there is the Voyager. We expect to see plenty more segments represented, with LG spreading themselves out horizontally. The touchscreen phone is already available for cameraphone customers, business phone customers, and fashionistas. Why not bring a similar design to music phones, television phones, messaging phones (please, don’t), etc.

With Google’s Android, we think LG will have more freedom to open up in the American market. Not only will we see more phones like the unavailable European and Korean models, but we’ll see some interesting interface designs, and phones that take a bit more of a risk than the staid U.S. models, like the LG CU400. Of course, there will be misses as well as hits. We’d like to see the company stay away from too much touch, as a poor implementation is much worse than none at all.