Landing on the runway Microsoft has cleared with the Surface Duo[1], the LG Wing has flown into the smartphone scene with excellent timing. But the landing may be a bit bumpy. On one hand, LG has already dabbled in dual-screen phones. It well understands the benefits of two side-by-side full-screen apps even if it has not pursued spanning -- running one app across two screens -- in its previous models as aggressively as Microsoft. On the other hand, the Wing outright rejects spanning and mostly avoids the side-by-side model in the Surface Duo ideal, bringing some differentiation to a fledgling class of "display plus" devices that are themselves focused on differentiation from the dominant slates of the past 13 years.
The Wing consists of two layered displays, the top one of which swivels 90 degrees to create a T-like design, leaving the bottom display with a squarish area for supplemental information or controls such as, for example, playback controls while the top rotated display plays unencumbered video.
LG has focused so strongly on removing obstructions and distractions from that top display that it has resisted adding a notch or punch hole camera. Were the Wing to see a second generation, that may include an under-screen camera, which would be a particularly good fit for the smartphone as it could be placed in the center of the screen and thus be equally handy in portrait and landscape mode. For now, though, it uses a popup camera that retracts in the event of a fall -- similar to the one that was highly touted by OnePlus for the OnePlus 7[2]. OnePlus soon abandoned that approach, but it makes more sense in the Wing given the device's unique screen orientation dynamics.
Like the Duo and LG's