5 things you probably don't know about LG

1. What does LG’s name mean?

If you’ve had an LG smartphone in recent years, you may find that the annoying default ring brings some meaning to the logo: “Life’s Good!” is the name of the melody. But that’s not where the name “LG” comes from, it’s just a slogan.

The true meaning of the acronym LG is Lucky Goldstar. That's a typical Asian name, right? LG thought that Life’s Good would sound better to the rest of the world, and so they made this their slogan.

Before it became just LG, it sold some home goods under the name Lucky, and electronics were sold under the name Goldstar. Today, it’s all LG.

2. A fierce rivalry with Samsung

In the US this isn’t always clear, since in several sectors Samsung is well ahead and doesn’t present a threat, but in South Korea, home of the two companies, the competition between the two brands is fierce.

This has already resulted in various lawsuits, the theft of industrial secrets, espionage and everything else you can imagine in the corporate world. The rivalry is so intense that employees of the two companies avoid meeting one another.

And this is all after Samsung’s founder, Lee Byung-chul and LG’s founder, Koo In-hwoi, were in-laws who respected each other (and even attended the same school and opened a TV network together) until Byung-chul founded an electronics company that competed with LG and turned everything into an all out war. This led to a monstrous evolution for both companies at the time.

3. LG started as a cosmetics company

The story that Nokia was a paper company is famous, but few know that LG started out as a cosmetics company.  One of LG’s early strengths was in the chemical industry, and the company started producing facial creams in 1947.

A year later, LG officially opened up a cosmetics company. To date, the company’s three major highlights are electronics, telecommunications and chemicals.

4. One of its best-selling phones was the LG Chocolate

In 2005, LG arrived in the United States with the LG Chocolate smartphone, which was very well known at the time. The launch was great and was very successful, with more than 15 million units sold. That’s nothing close to the 250 million units of the Nokia 1110 sold in the same year, but that’s still a huge number.

The LG Chocolate had a TFT screen (176x220 pixels), 128MB of internal memory, a 1.3MP camera with LED flash, Bluetooth 1.2, USB and navigation with support for WAP 2.0 and xHTML. The battery can handle up to 6 hours of calls and 200 hours of standby time, and the device used LG's own system.

5. LG was the first in the world to launch a smartphone with a flexible screen

Today this is commonplace and bolder models implement it with rounded gadgets and folding screens. However, LG was the first to market a smartphone with a flexible screen, even if wasn’t a huge success.

The LG G Flex is a milestone in the history of smartphones, and it used this screen technology through its curved design. You couldn’t bend the device, but it was elegantly curved, and it was also highlighted by the material on the back, which helped against slight scratches.

Like almost every pioneer in the smartphone world, the G Flex was not one of the company’s best products. The screen still had problems, and didn’t provide great image quality, with grainy look and burn-in issues. A second generation of the device was released, and I found it particularly stunning.

What do you think of these facts about LG? Does the company still have its best days ahead?