The LG Wing's swiveling display is exactly the kind of weird phone 2020 needs

The Galaxy Z Fold 2 and Surface Duo are very different compared to your typical glass slab. But the LG Wing 5G takes the award for the weirdest phone of 2020 thanks to a number of very bizarre (and interesting) design choices.

Right off the bat, the LG Wing defies conventions with its swiveling display. In Swivel Mode, the main 6.8-inch display slides 90 degrees to form a T-shape, revealing a 3.9-inch secondary screen. It’s a novel way to do dual screens without a hinge and harks back to past LG devices like the VX9400 (VCAST TV in the U.S.).

Swiveling display — Why would you want a smaller second screen? Unlike the Duo, which is designed to run two entire apps at once, the second screen on the LG Wing is meant for showing additional app information/shortcuts or for displaying controls. This is yet another attempt at maximizing mobile productivity.

LG shared a couple of use cases: navigation on the top and music controls on the bottom; video on the top and upcoming calendar events on the bottom; camera viewfinder on the top and recording settings and buttons on the second screen. Apps can also be spread across both screens. For example, the Wing can be inverted with the big screen for displaying a full-width keyboard in landscape and the small screen for showing messages. Video apps could use the swiveled screen for content and the secondary screen for playback controls.

LG says the swiveling mechanism can withstand 200,000 swivels, which works out to 100 swivels a day for five years. That’s on par with the 200,000 folds that the Galaxy Z Flip and Motorola Razr (the one that inexplicably broke within 24 hours) are reportedly tested for.

Two ultra-wide cameras — The Wing’s oddities don’t stop there. There’s a pop-up selfie camera on this phone and instead of the usual triple-camera setup that consists of a main, tele, and ultra-wide, the Wing has a main and two ultra-wides. The first ultra-wide lens is your standard one, but the second ultra-wide is designed for the phone’s special “gimbal mode” which LG says shoots more stabilized video when the device is held in Swivel mode.

Full camera specs:

• 64-megapixel f/1.8 main camera
• 13-megapixel f/1.9 ultra-wide 117-degree FOV camera
• 12-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide 120-degree FOV camera with Hexa Motion sensors
• 32-megapixel pop-up selfie camera

Tech specs — The LG Wing is a mid-range phone if you judge it by its Qualcomm chip. But a chip doesn’t tell the entire story because the rest of the phone’s specs very much count as flagship.

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G 5G
• 8GB of RAM
• 256GB of storage (expandable up to 2TB via microSD card)
• 4,000 mAh battery
• 6.8-inch 20.5:9 FHD+ P-OLED main display (2,460 x 1,080)
• 3.9-inch 1.15:1 G-OLED secondary display (1,240 x 1,080)
• In-display fingerprint reader

Two features that are missing: wireless charging and any kind of water resistance. Not surprising for a mid-range device, especially one that has a swiveling screen for water and dirt to potentially get lodged in.

Verizon first — LG hasn’t announced pricing or a release date for the Wing. It’ll launch on Verizon, followed by AT&T and T-Mobile.

Like LG’s other phones — and especially the ones that support the Dual Screen accessory — the Wing is unlikely to convince many people to dump their iPhones or Galaxies or OnePluses. But the Wing is all sorts of weird and that’s honestly what phones really need these days. It’s time to end the status quo of glass and metal slabs. The Wing looks like such a weird, wild, and wonderful device. It's exactly the kind of freshness Android makers like struggling LG need to differentiate. I can’t wait to get my hands on this strange, swiveling phone. What a weird year. What a weird device.