At this time of year the Korea Herald is chock full of interesting tidbits about our two favourite Korean companies, LG and Samsung. Today their news is surrounding LG’s plans for MWC and it is not a G7.
The Korea Herald is reporting today that instead of the G7 flagship they were expected to announce they will be revealing an upgraded V30. The upgrade V30 will apparently include “new technologies and functions” and be named V30+α (alpha). Last year the LG G6 was the first non-Google phone to launch with Google Assistant onboard and as such is not much of a stretch that they may well be getting something new from Google.
Recent rumours have suggested the G7 was either shelved or delayed while a redesign was completed.
The Korea Herald is also reporting that a public relations official at LG has confirmed the some new features for the V30 will be presented at MWC but declined to comment on which phone will be announced.
The naming scheme seems a stretch but LG have nowhere to go if it is just a small upgrade to the V30. They already have the V30+ so the V30++ was out of the question. Not only do LG need to focus on maintaining their “existing platforms longer” they need to figure out where they are going wrong.
They seem to produce so many iterations of the same phone, each one packed with amazing hardware and yet they still fail. Their software has not improved much if at all over the years and while most other companies are becoming closer to Google’s Android ideal LG seem to be staying their course. It isn’t working for them and they need to face some hard truths why.
A release of small upgrades to the V30+ seem like a stop gap as they feel like they have to come with something. Whether this means that their current V30 models will receive the “new features” is unknown but if they are producing yet another V30 sku just for these features it would suggest not. Not a great way to treat customers who only just bought their V30 and V30+ and not a great way to try to reverse the slide they have seen in recent times.
We will have three sets of boots on the ground at MWC to check out everything LG bring to the party. I hope that they do bring something innovative and actually bring it to their “older” phones.
Meanwhile my LG G6+ is still waiting for Oreo. Real soon now, maybe. A very good phone nonetheless and hard to beat at the now discounted price.
They are going to have to do more than “$200 price drop for two weeks” now – nobody is going to be buying the v30+ until they know what this new hail mary pass is going to be.
They are in complete disarray.