I was digging through my junk bins yesterday evening, looking for a cable, and came across one of the best and worst phones ever built: the LG V10.
There have been a few Android phones I really liked. Phones like the Nexus One, HTC 10, and the Nexus 4 were some of my favorites. But the phone I loved more than any other was the LG V10. Maybe that's why it went into my junk bin instead of a recycling center.
It's never going to work again because phones need a battery and it doesn't have one that works. Even if it did power up, there's a good chance most of the software will just toss out errors because it's so old and Android has moved on. LG isn't around to fix it even if the company wanted to update an ancient phone. Still, I'm going to keep it around.
I said it was both the best and worst phone ever, and I meant just that. The software on LG phones was horrendous, and that's being generous. The company made some of the best phones you could buy as long as you never turned them on.
I loved it anyway, and there are three reasons why: it was built like a tank with a steel and rubber body, and you could pop off the back and change the battery. It not only had a headphone jack but audio hardware inside that rivaled an expensive personal audio player. I've been told I'm an odd duck but those are the types of things I loved having when it came time to buy a phone.
I got a lot of use out of it, too. Once I had moved on to another phone I carried it in my bag as a hi-res music player for a few more years, where it lived without a SIM card. It also got bent because I wanted to try a "bend test" on the toughest phone available and apparently ate my spinach that day. But it performed beautifully right up until the end.
I could sit here and reminisce about something that will never be, but that's not very productive. Instead, I'm going to say the quiet part out loud: a company needs to remake some of these "classic" Android phones with new guts and modern software.
Imagine a company like OnePlus releasing a line of classics that were clones of phones like the V10. There wouldn't be a huge market — not a lot of people bought them in the first place — but it would be fun and newsworthy.
Features like a headphone jack, a big removable battery, or a phone built like a weapon instead of made from glass are never coming back to the mainstream. People like me may want them to do it, but phone makers have decided we only get thin glass models with sealed batteries and a reason to buy Bluetooth earbuds.
No company will remake yesterday's phones, but if one did, would you buy it? I would.
