[LG Optimus 4X HD] UIQrules:
I suppose people actually describing what their problems are, in detail, would be helpful.

And I don't see why we should try to help LG market their own products. (Even if I know how these companies tend to work - "Aah, we have 50 complaints about the 4x and the tegra3 from people on the internet, but our Snapdragon product for a limited market with a contract that you need to be braindead to sign up for gets loads of praise! Cancel the tegra stuff now, because l33tr000tclock thinks tegra3 lags!!1elevenseses!").

But yeah, the OP is right. Definitely very good value for the money. The best value for the money, even. Still surprised by how thick and plastic the competing phones are, for example.. Or the praise for the Sony screens - love that one. "It's a bravia screen, so it's good and expensive".. no, it's a backlit led/superled2 screen made in China, like all the rest. Which Sony deemed was sufficient for production units.

And manufacturers make a lot of bad choices like that from a consumer perspective. LG has made several "business-choices" like that earlier as well. So no complaining isn't really going to help, to put it like that. People who make informed purchases tend to be happier customers, after all.

Still - yes, you'd think LG would advertise this phone a bit better, if they knew what was good for them, right? That they'd say: look, here's an expensive screen we made, that has the touch matrix integrated in the screen layer, fantastic colours, very stable, no backlight bleeding in the picture, etc. This is the forerunner to what we imagine will be even slimmer and lighter phones in the future - perhaps one day we can integrate the circuits into the transparent layers? (<-note: actually technically possible). And the tegra3 array is the best performing kit, that also has the best battery life during load. Enjoy! Also, custom bootloader and open source! Wohoo!

You know, you'd think they would do that. But inside the industry HQs, the arguments go like this: "We need a more streamlined and cheaper design that uses the same components as everyone else, that maintains the market, so we can use the razor blade model infinitely, and get people to buy the same €400 phone year after year! So don't go making a phone that actually has the latest tech if you don't need to, for crying out loud, what are you trying to do, bankrupt us!?".

So when aberrations like the 4x turns up, that actually is a good phone (sadly, doesn't use lithium polymer battery, and didn't ditch the thick antenna module and so on - could have saved a few mm there. But outside of that, all contact points, mainboard solder, frame, construction is high above par), it won't be thought of as a product that the company should sell to earn money. It's thought of as a product that might impress enthusiasts, but which will be unsuited for sales in the general market. Even if that actually proves to not be true, and the price ends up in a very comfortable area.

Basically, you have the phone now costing less than a two-three year old htc. Loads and loads of dual-core phones that also cost more, that don't have expansion slots or a battery slot. So what will very likely be argued is that the 4x is essentially cannibalizing the market downwards. Even if the support LG has come up with for the phone, with the upcoming jellybean and open loader (for dual linux/alternate/android boots?) is very promising.

But trust me on this one - even if the entire gawker site started to cover the 4x and the linux spins, in the way they seem to want to have sex with their iphones, that still wouldn't be sufficient to change the thinking about how an "enthusiast device" can't be sold to the general consumer market, without cutting the legs off it.

Obviously that's not true - when android and alt. loaders, extra equipment, installing apps, etc., is as easy as it is -- then any reasonable person will see that we don't really have enthusiast devices any more, in any sense. Instead they average user-devices just become easier/possible to use. But that thinking persists anyway. And honestly I don't think we or "media" sites really can do much to change that.

Because when your strategy folks pull in people to test devices, they don't know anything about the hardware or the construction, right? They won't compare and say "this iron edge on the bottom of the phone is inconvenient! Get rid of it!". Instead they say: "I like this iron edge a bit better than the other one!"..