RIP LG smartphones: South Korean company to officially end support for all users next month
LG exited the smartphone market in 2021 but promised three years of support at the time. Now, the company has officially announced that it will end support for its smartphones next month.
Before the rise of Chinese smartphones in the Indian market, brands like LG, Sony, HTC, and Blackberry were dominant players. However, several factors contributed to their decline, including a lack of brand differentiation, ineffective marketing strategies, poor decision-making, the emergence of robust Chinese competitors, and their failure to adapt to the evolving demands of the smartphone industry. If you’re one of the few remaining LG smartphone users, there’s some unfortunate news. LG has announced to officially cease support for its smartphones. The company exited the smartphone market in 2021 but had promised its existing customers updates for eligible models over a three-year period. Now, they are shutting down the servers that provide these software updates.
After this shutdown, LG smartphones will no longer be able to install any new Android OS updates. Furthermore, users won’t be able to download pre-installed applications that were deleted during the initialisation process.
According to a notice on LG's website, the company plans to shut down its smartphone update servers in the next two months. As a result, users will lose access to LG Electronics Mobile Phone Software Upgrade (FOTA), Update Centre, and LG Bridge servers, all terminating on June 30 at midnight KST (8:30 PM IST).
After this date, LG phones won't be able to download or install any Android updates, and all software upgrade services, including those provided at Service Centres, will also be discontinued.
In addition to this, users won’t have access to app-based update services. If any user has removed apps during initialisation, they won’t be able to download them again.
What LG users need to do
LG device owners with pending updates should act quickly. Without updates, LG handset users are likely to miss out on numerous new features, as the latest Android version available to them is already three generations behind Android 15. The absence of security updates could also expose these devices to potential malware threats.