Android 11, yes, Android 11 starts rolling out to Verizon's defunct LG Wing 5G
It's almost 2022, and even though Android 12 has been out in its stable form for roughly two months now and LG announced its smartphone market retirement all the way back in April, our headline here includes exactly zero typos and factual errors.
The September 2020-released Android 11 update has finally kicked off its over-the-air rollout for the October 2020-released LG Wing 5G handset on America's largest mobile network earlier this week, according to Verizon's own support webpage.
While it's certainly nice to see a company whose mobile business is dead and buried for all intents and purposes remain committed from a software support standpoint to a device that never really caught on, it's hard to imagine any Wing users will be delighted by this horribly late OS promotion.
To put things into perspective, we should point out that Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, which saw daylight at around the same time as the LG Wing, started receiving this identical upgrade almost a whole year ago.
Even the 5G-enabled LG Velvet mid-ranger left Android 10 behind many months back, and the V60 ThinQ closely followed suit, including stateside. For what it's worth, LG did reportedly get the Android 11 ball rolling for the dual-screen Wing 5G in South Korea more than a month ago, while Verizon appears to be beating both T-Mobile and AT&T to the punch as we speak.
The quirky dual-screen form factor is probably the main reason why this update took such an excruciatingly long time to be optimized and stabilized, which obviously begs the question of whether or not the LG Wing will ever be promoted to Android 12.
Although the company was pretty clear in its "three year pledge" for "premium smartphones in use" as of April 2021, we're starting to seriously doubt the likes of the Wing and even the Velvet and V60 ThinQ 5G will ever receive Android 13 goodies. Android 12 could definitely still roll out... in a year or so, but there are naturally no guarantees as far as US carriers are concerned.
In short, it's all a big mess, but at least conversation bubbles, expanded quick settings, and various other Android 11-specific features and enhancements are reaching LG Wing 5G owners on Verizon at long last.
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