LG Wing hands-on: A new kind of dual-screen (Video!)

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a slew of devices with weird and wonderful new form factors. We’ve seen more traditional foldable devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, a new dual-screen experiment in the form of the Microsoft Surface Duo, and now, LG is getting in the game with a phone that physically swivels to reveal a second display.

This is the LG Wing.

Wait, swivel how?

The LG Wing can physically rotate its display 90 degrees, resulting in a landscape-oriented display up top with a smaller square-shaped display underneath. The top display is much thinner than the back half of the phone which holds all the components, leaving just enough room for the curved panel. The top panel is a 6.8-inch OLED with a resolution of 2,460 x 1,080, and the bottom display is a 3.9-inch OLED with a resolution of 1,240 x 1,080.

LG created a special interface to handle the two displays when the phone is swiveled open. When you flip the main screen out, it turns into a carousel of apps that you can select from. You’re able to change which apps appear on this display and which appear on the bottom, and you can open apps on each display individually. LG also included an option to launch two apps at once, with one app on the bottom display and one on the top display. Because of the form factor of these displays, only about half of the apps I downloaded work on the bottom display. That being said, this is still non-final software and more apps may work in the production version of the phone

In the examples above, I set the phone to launch both YouTube and Chrome at once, as well as Spotify and Google Maps. This works similarly to how the Surface Duo handles two apps, where apps retain positioning if you close the phone and then reopen it.

If you’re a rideshare driver or delivery driver, I could see the LG Wing being exceedingly useful for long driving sessions. I’ve seen plenty of Uber drivers who have separate apps for navigation and music or phone calls, and the LG Wing can do both at once. Pretty nifty.

Some apps like YouTube also have special navigation interfaces when watching

content with the display in landscape. This allows you to stay immersed in the primary content and make adjustments like brightness or track positioning without interrupting the main display. It’s not life-changing, but it’s a cool feature that makes it a bit more interesting to use. It also shows LG put a lot of thought into how people will use the device.