Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This is all YOUR fault.”.
About a month ago, I made two very bad decisions back toback. First, I went swimming with my cell phone and then second, I tasked you guys with picking the replacement for me right out of the gate. The winter was clear and I got to work migrating. My life to the ferone five, which hey oh Reddit, what did you do? The LG Wing you got me guys, but For Better or For Worse, I’m a man of my word. So I really have been daily driving this thing for the last month and there are a lot of things I hate about it, you absolute trolls. However, unexpectedly, there were some things I genuinely liked, even if none of them had to do with the unique screen layout or to do with our sponsor. Just like that, oh it’s wrong again, don’t be a dentist.
Build Redux offers all kinds of pre-built PCS that’ll fit your needs pick your top three games and your budget, the pre-built PC, will be shipped to right to your door check out, build Redux at the link below. Where do even begin. With this thing, have you ever found yourself wishing that you had a selfie stick that was about 3 in long and permanently attached to your phone? Well, congratulations! You just invented the LG Wing. I think it’s fair to say that calling the secondary screen kind of useless would be an act of generosity on par with declaring jibbo to be the invention of the year for real. The best thing that I can say about the swivel screen feature is that it was relatively easy to, or at least it would have, if the phone it was attached to wasn’t so all around bad, but we’ll get back to that in a bit because things actually Started out pretty okay, the first legit use I found for the wing form factor, was watching TV on the top screen, while scrolling the news on the bottom, a real world, 50 % increase in usable screen real estate. Unfortunately, that only kept me entertained for about 10 15 minutes before I realized wait.
I don’t like reading in Old, CRT TV form factor. I want to go back to Portrait and just use picture and picture like I always have. One thing I didn’t get sick of, though, was using the wing to show my phone to other people. This is objectively much easier than this, or at least it is until you want to try to change the volume back here.
Really, oh another good thing, though it fits nicely in a cup holder, okay, but seriously, though I was surprised by how much thought l clearly put into developing, not just the hardware, but even the software that could take advantage of it. Like look at this, the first time you deploy the screen you’ll be greeted with a tutorial that explains all the different cool ways that you can use it bookmarking your favorite landscape, apps to the swivel menu configuring them to utilize. The second screen in a variety of ways, including opening two apps at the same time, more on that later or even expanding individual apps to the second screen, which is objective, ly super cool or I don’t know at least it would be if the experience wasn’t comically Bad just about every time I tried to use it to be clear. Lg’S own apps can be an okay experience. The camera app, for example, has this gimbal mode that mimics the experience of using a camera on a motorized stabilizer Mount pretty neat right. I mean in practice the resulting videos, pretty low resolution, since LG is using digital Zoom to enable their software stabilization, but it definitely achieves a different look and feel compared to a typical phone camera and it’s got a built-in handle. The problem is that third party apps, even some of the ones that were included in the swivel menu by default struggle to make use of the Wings unique screen layout YouTube, for instance, is obviously designed to run in portrait. I mean look at all this Blank Space, while you’re browsing content in landscape and no effort has been made to move secondary elements like comments, for example, to the B bottom screen and that’s far from the worst of it check out.
What happens when I try to go back from a full screen, video with my swipe in from the side, navigation, gesture, um, hello, absolutely hilarious Maps is fine, though at least until you go to search for a destination ergonomic, and it gets even worse after struggling to Think of any other app that might benefit from launching in landscape mode. All the time I settled on Team Viewer only to quickly realize that LG’s warning about unpredictable behavior on nonoptimized apps, and, if you remember that’s all of them, was well Justified. My fingerprint wouldn’t read more on that later and I couldn’t find any way to get the pin pad to open, locking me out of the app completely but lonus.
What about the two separate apps, though? Actually, this one felt a lot more practical. To me I mean who can hate having extra screen real estate now, obviously, it’s not the same as a foldable, where you can just seamlessly expand your working space, but there were times that I was extremely grateful to have the inner screen like okay. You know how it’s gone out of fashion to let you copy part of the text in a messaging app well with the wing.
If someone sent me a phone number or a street address, for example, I could just throw their message up on one screen and then transcribe it directly into my maps app on the other. Unfortunately, that’s about it or okay, not quite there’s. This bottom screen trackpad mode. You can have a mouse cursor on the top, that’s pretty cool, coming back to a remote desktop, but I’d say any Improvement in productivity from that is probably offset by the fact that the keyboard doesn’t automatically open on the bottom screen.
But rather opens like this. Giving you a teeny tiny little space to work with speaking of automatically uh Android auto didn’t work at all. For me, the prompt to connect would come up, but then the wing would just sit there and Buzz ineffectually until it got bored, and I tried everything: rebooting, the phone rebooting, the car, a different cable uh, forcing the uninstallation of the updates and then reapplying them. I finally gave up and then 3 days later it randomly popped up a message when I plugged it into my car just to charge and it’s worked flawlessly ever since I have no explanation for that other than I don’t know. Maybe it got an update, but for real though I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wing is not only running Android 13 but is still getting pretty regular patches. I got two while I was using it now.
You might remember that LG got out of the phone game way back in 2021, but they promised Wing owners at least three OS upgrades plus patches, and they seem to be keeping their word. The OS was generally pretty responsive and I didn’t encounter any unexpected compatibility issues. Even when using apps on the wing display, if it works in landscape, it works on the wing, they also took a really cool approach to carrier and manufacturer bloatware. As part of the setup process.
You just opt out of anything that you don’t want. Instead of having to go, hunt them down and neutralize them in the app tray later – and this is approach – I would love to see adopted by phone makers that still exist, raising the question. If they can ship up toate software, why don’t they still exist? Well see, the thing is updated, software doesn’t mean good software. There wasn’t a quick access icon in the shade for the hotspot feature, so you got to dig through the menu like a pleb. If you want to share your connection, the phone app is super overzealous and turns the screen off the instant. You start a call, regardless of the state of the proximity sensor.
So if you need to punch in an extension or Mash zero trying to get to a human in a phone tree, you need to convince the wing to turn the screen back on and allow your input which, by the way, was a serious problem with the device. The entire time I had it, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to capture this in b-roll, but it felt like a solid 25 % of the time I wanted to wake the device. I had to press the bloody button, two or three times to get it to actually accept a fingerprint input, see yeah it did it this time. Of course it does the second. I turn on the camera. Sorting your apps in the drawer also feels a little broken.
You can just sort them alphabetically like on any other phone, but then anything installed. Afterward is going to be just plunked onto the end out of order until you manually Resort the again genius speaking of apps, while the software that comes on the phone works pretty well on this unique aspect ratio. Anything else that you download is going to be pretty hit or miss some apps, just don’t size well to the smaller screen, and most of them have no native multiscreen support. Uninstalling apps also had its snags, though it’s hard to tell if this is an LG thing or just a not Samsung thing.
When I delete an app from the App Drawer, I just get unceremoniously dumped back to the home screen every single time. I can see how, if you’re, removing just one app – that’s probably fine. But if you’re like me, and you only periodically clean up the unneeded apps from your phone, it can get kind of annoying after the third or fourth time that you’re reopening the app drawer and going back to where it is that you want to be so good Job Samsung, I guess, and do better everyone else, especially LG. My biggest issue with the wings software was the overnight res starts.
It happened about three times during my month that the phone would just randomly reboot in the middle of the night, which shouldn’t be a big deal. I mean lots of phones reboot in the night to install updates and stuff like that, except that on the wing. My notifications would just stop working until I unlocked the phone again in the morning, at which time all my notifications would come flooding in which caused me to miss a couple of morning meetings, but that’s probably enough time spent beating up the software, given that I need Need to save some time to talk the hardware too, like most folding phones, the wing is heavy and I mean I get it. You got to have enough structure in there to keep not one but two screens rigid, but then, with all that work you put into it. How does it end up feeling so loose? I mean seriously guys we went out of our way to get our hands on a brand new device in order to ensure that the hinge wouldn’t just be busted from the previous owner. But after just a month on this thing, typing with the phone closed causes a noticeable rattling under your fingers and even just holding the thing, causes the front screen to shift a little bit under your fingers and not just the way it’s supposed to swing. But the other way too almost makes me want to just get in there with an LTT screwdriver and tighten things up. Ltt, store.com, oh and don’t get me started on the fingerprint sensor. This might be the worst fingerprint sensor that I have ever encountered. It’S working fine right now, because of course it is I’m trying to show you guys something, but your fingers need to be exactly exactly the same level of clean and moisturized that you were when you first set it up and you’ve got to get the location, and I found even the pressure, sometimes just right, like seriously. It worked to unlock this phone, maybe 50 % of the time. For me, and that includes five attempts like I would often have to enter the pin and if you flip out, the wing display well that just ramps the difficulty up to Hard Mode since it especially seemed to struggle when you tried to use it in a different Orientation than your original skan, it also reveals another problem: the design of this phone, even if it was practical, captures a ton of dust on the inner screen here and then on the back of the upper screen, especially here where the earpiece is that crud, then scratches The crap out of these slides around the edges of the upper screen and on the bezels of the lower screen, and even though this phone was new out of box when we got it after just a month.
Not only do we have scratches on there, but even a few that are starting to form right here on the bottom screen that is pretty brutal and while we’ve got it flipped over by the way, now seems like a good time to check out the physical buttons Using these with the screen, open is basically impossible, especially if you have thicker fingers and to top it all off the thing isn’t even fidget friendly. I mean you can open it one-handed, but closing it again. It’S a bit of a challenge, especially if you have smaller hands like look. I can do it, but boy is that ever a risky maneuver, the thing is: if the wing was an otherwise great phone with this gimmick, I wouldn’t even be complaining, but using it.
For this last month has just been a nightmare, it is full of compromises even compared to my older Samsung Note. 9. It’S it’s got a weak mono speaker, no headphone jack. This weird ripple effect on the screen.
That’S especially noticeable on light backgrounds and, while they’ve carved out enough space for three rear-facing cameras, they’re all wide angle. What is up with that? The pop-up front-facing camera is kind of nifty, but it’s also one of the most reported trouble points with the device which feels like an especially unnecessary cell phone when they could have just, I don’t know, kept the front camera behind dis swiveling screen alongside the earpiece speaker, Which, okay, that’s actually not a great solution? Not everyone wants to take a selfie with the screen and Landscape like this, but it does highlight an interesting design compromise that was made to accommodate the sliding screen. Look how thin that front screen is. That is crazy. There is no room to put a camera in there or even a speaker, so what they did was they put the speaker here and then they just stabed abbed a hole in the front screen and did the engineering equivalent of cupping their hand on it. Absolute genius, at least the battery life, was okay, not great, just okay, which I guess is going to have to pass as a high note to leave the video off on I’m honestly just happy the month is over and I can finally move on to my pick.
The fairphone 5 and you guys can finally move on with the segue to our sponsor Dennis where’s your PC, the tournament starting soon. I need more time. What do I do? What do I do? Help me move use build Redux. All you have to do is select the top three games you play and pick your budget they’ll show you the best setup that fits your needs with their mouth-dropping pricing. In a 2-year, warranty save yourself a hassle building a PC there, you go more gaming, less crying build Redux.
If you guys like this, why not check out the 10 reasons that I’m a big fan of foldable phones, even if I’m not a big fan of ones? That fold like this? It’S not really folding. .