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  • Chris Velazco/Engadget

    LG G8 ThinQ review: A wasted opportunity

    by 
    Chris Velazco
    Chris Velazco
    04.09.2019

    A few years back, LG for Mobile World Congress showed off one of the wildest devices I had ever seen. With a bit of finagling, you could pop off the bottom of the G5's body and swap it out with a camera controller or a high-quality audio DAC. The idea didn't last long, but it spoke to the kinds of risks the company was willing to take to build (what seemed to it, at least) like a winner. I bring up the G5 now, years later, because it was ambitious and interesting in a way most smartphones weren't back then. With LG's new, $820 G8 ThinQ, that unorthodox thinking is once again on display. Sure, it does basically the same thing as every other pricey smartphone this year -- short of folding in half, that is. But there are a few extra tricks here that you won't find elsewhere, and they're interesting enough on paper that LG's flagship once again earns points for ambition. Ambition without concern for usability, however, is the perfect recipe for disappointment. Is it any surprise that's exactly what the G8 turned out to be?