LG shifts focus to product longevity, sets up Software Upgrade Center to ensure its phones last multiple years

The smartphone industry has hit a bit of a plateau recently. Gone are the days when manufacturers were racing to pack the best specs and overwhelming amounts of arguably useful features in their phones just to attract some attention. No, nowadays, flagship smartphones are usually equal in power and productivity, have comparably good cameras, and sport tons of similar software features, making them harder to differentiate. We've even gotten to the point where midrange handsets can be very, very adequate and rival some of the higher-cost phones, provided the user doesn't demand obscene amounts of power.

Naturally, this means that people are just less inclined to upgrade more often — if you bought a top-tier phone a couple of years ago, chances are it's still doing quite well today. So, market research says that, nowadays, when users are looking for a new phone, they are generally concerned with getting a future-proof handset. One that will get plenty of major updates over time, prolonging the device's usefulness and improving the returns on that initial investment.

As more users demand security and device longevity, LG shifts its objectives

LG understands this and has recently committed to improve the user experience over time by providing timely updates over a long period of time for its new phones, as well as improve its customer support and ability to take customer feedback.

The company has set up a new Software Upgrade Center in South Korea. Its purpose is to work on providing timely and consistent security and software updates over the air. Those will include AI updates, which LG proudly announces is an industry-first. All manufacturers are investing heavily in virtual assistants, deep learning, and AI features on their new phones, so LG wants to make sure it gives its current products a good head start and make sure that they will be able to compete with the newest products even in a year or two.