What happened to LG phones?

[Admin]

I bought an LG G4 at launch 2015 and i am still using it to this day, i never felt a need to "root" the phone, you were allowed to disable apps you didn't like and defaults where good.

Unfortunately every phone since LG G4 has been a downgrade in some way. LG G5 got a battery downgrade (down to 2800 mah from 3000 mah) and the G6 and G7 both lack a replaceable battery. LG G6 and G7 also jumped to the weird aspect ratio bandwagon instead of just sticking with 16:9 which made phones worse for productivity.

The fact that LG disbanded their mobile department does indicate that the changes they made to their phones were not wanted by their costumers but we have no access to the alternative timeline where they kept offering removable batteries.

 

[Admin]

LG V20 review
At paper LG V20 looks like a big upgrade over the LG G4 in pretty much every way but unfortunately that is not really the case.

The 'second screen' they are offering isn't actually a second screen, the phone only has one screen separated by software into two screens. That means you cannot actually turn off the second screen area which is distracting when you watch a video (there is a lot of backlight bleed due to the LCD screen).

The home is also downgraded by not actually letting use 3 home screens and the app-drawer, instead the left home-screen is replaced by some idiotic smart feed nobody asked for and of course you cannot remove that. It does not come with a home-screen as good as the default LG G4 home screen and i found no way to really fix that.

The phone is also bigger than ideal even if you have big hands. It would have been better if they had skipped the selfie-camare and the second screen area to make the phone less tall.

The build-quality is a big upgrade over the G4 of course but it's still not that comfortable to actually hold.

The mechanism for removing the battery is different from G4, not sure if it's more convenient but it does allow them to use removeable metal cover which is good for the feel of the phone.

 

[Admin]

How to unlock the bootloader and root your LG V20 (nightmare)
LG does aide you in unlocking the bootloader for a few (2 i think) models of the V20 until the end of this year but since i got the korean F800L that didn't help me.

I ended up having to downgrade the firmware and then rooting it via the dirty santa method

I did follow their instructions which resulted in my phone getting a horrible "static" where you can hardly see anything (display hardly working at all, mostly grey/black/white noise) after doing step5. I was able to get rid of that static by covering the cameras with my hand but the second issue was that i was no longer able to boot into TWRP.

Instead i decided to stop after i had flashed TWRP and then install lineage OS recovery instead (which replaced TWRP making it pointless to have installed TWRP in the first place). Since there was no rom for my F800L i ended up flashing the vs995 recovery and the vs995 rom instead, later i was able to install lighthouse instead of lineage OS but it wasn't much better.

Dirtysanta guide (windows)
V20root.zip which replaced v20-root.zip and TWRP (optional) in the original guide and also contains ADB and fastboot.
Terminal Emulator
Stock LS997 rom. for Sprint users only. (Fix's numerous problems)

Pre-requisites:
Install LG drivers for phones (such as 4.2.0)

Terminal Emulator installed onto the phone.

Enable "adb" and "oem unlock" in developer options.

Having downgraded your phone firmware if you do not already have a phone with "security patch" no newer than 2016.

1) unzip V20root.zip and go inside that folder.

2) If you currently don't have Terminal Emulator then go and download and install now.

3) Plug your device into the computer and verify ADB is working. Then;

On Windows, double-click "RUNMEFIRST.bat, DO NOT CLOSE THE LOG WINDOW THAT OPENS, then double-click "Step1.bat"

In the "step1" window (cmd) wait for the script to finish so you get "elsa:" and then write (or copy):

run-as con
chmod 0777 /storage/emulated/0/*

4) Open Up Terminal Emulator (your phone)

id

If "Untrusted_app" is displayed, Continue:

Type into Terminal Emulator:

applypatch /system/bin/atd /storage/emulated/0/dirtysanta

wait for this to finish and then double-click on step2.bat

Once step 2 is completed, you'll be in bootloader, this will allow you to use the fastboot command to flash a new "recovery". From here you can follow the guide for lineage OS instead (you do not actually have to install liniage os in particular, you can download some other rom and install that instead (after installing the lineage os recovery).

F800L or VS995 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/vs995/install

H910 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/h910/install
H918 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/h918/install
H990 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/h990/install
LS997 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ls997/install
US996 https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/us996/install

Instead of following their guide for installing ADB you can just use adb and fastboot from the V20root folder. You can open "cmd" (windows) and then use the cd command to go to the V20root directory (paste the link to the directory after "cd").

Or you can double-click on step3 to install TWRP.

Rooting
You should use "magisk" (not superSU). Use your new recovery mode that you have flashed. For me this only worked via the lineage OS recovery (not TWRP) after first installing lighthouse (lineage OS derivative).

You just download the magisk apk file and rename it to .zip and then you reboot into recovery and install it ("install update" in lineage OS recovery).

You will now find out that having root access really isn't that beneficial in practise, you hardly need it for anything useful.

If you are going to use superSU instead you need SuperSU v2.78 SR5 or greater.

 

[Admin]

Lineage OS (including lighthouse) for LG V20 was a disappointment
Settings are rather limited. For example there does not seem to be any way to utilize the second screen area when you use your phone horizontally with screen rotation enabled (even though that would be a great area for software buttons or a notification area).From what i have read flashing a rom will also remove some functionality such as "volte" (voice over LTE).

You have very limited options for the software buttons (you can only have 2 or 3 buttons and with 3 bottons you have only 2 orders to choose from).

So in several ways it's actually a downgrade from the stock LG software. The only real advantage i noticed besides root access (which you could also get with stock) was that it just runs pretty well and doesn't drain battery too much. You also get android 11 (newer than what you can get with LG).

I did compare the CPU temperature between lineage OS and lighthouse and the CPU temperature does seem to be a lot cooler with lighthouse likely due to undervolting they did for the V20.

This is very different from the experience i had rotting my htc desire HD and installing cyanogenmod, that actually felt like a great upgrade and it was also way easier to do.

I initially did the mistake of installing lighthouse with google apps thinking "i could just remove google play later" but i was never actually able to get google play working despite trying all things suggested to fix the "authentication required" issue

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-fix-the-google-play-authentication-is-required-error/

I ended up wiping the phone removing all data to instead install the "vanilla" version. One issue i noticed with the vanilla version is that it doesn't even come with a web-browser or app store (such as F-droid) so you cannot actually install anything more without first connecting to PC and transfer app (browser or your preferred app store) over USB.

You can use Aurora store. It's a middleman for playstore, let you browser and download anymously.

txrtle06422 wrote:

The second display does have its own backlight. And the "second display functionality" from stock isn't actually acting like a second display as Android at the time didn't natively support having a second display. That being said, there is work being done to get it working, but it's still in its infancy stage

 

[Admin]

LG phones had a lot of issues with boot-looping
In the case of the LG G4 this was due to faulty hardware and often this wasn't even fixed when you sent your phone in for upgrade. This was of course a disaster for LG since the G4 was otherwise a very good phone at the time.

Having issues like these for years will be catastrophic for your brand. It's very important to be consistent as a manufacturer. People having trust in your brand is a very important thing.

 

[Admin]

Gimmicks instead of quality and features people actually need
As far as i know they never offered a phone with a 120hz+ screen and they stopped offering removable batteries after G5/V20, instead we got gimmicks nobody asked for:

 

[Admin]

Is LG to blame for the dumb 18+:9 trend?
LG G6 was an early phone with 18:9 in addition to no longer having a removable battery, not much later samsung released an 18.5 to 9 phone.

https://www.gadgetmatch.com/where-did-the-18-9-ratio-come-from/

The G6 was also a flop https://www.androidauthority.com/lg-g6-sales-q2-2017-790147/

This was not really a case of LG leading the way, they just happened to go in the same direction as samsung and then why should you buy an LG phone?