TL;DR
- A phone called Xeta One is in the crowdfunding stage.
- It’s a QWERTY phone that cannibalized the LG Wing, one of LG’s last smartphones.
- You should definitely not back this phone’s crowdfunding campaign, but it’s interesting to look at.
One of the final phones from LG before its unfortunate exit from the smartphone industry was the LG Wing. This innovative Android phone featured a swivel mechanism similar to what we saw on the T-Mobile Sidekick back in the late aughts. When swiveled, the main display would go landscape and reveal another smaller display underneath. Ostensibly, LG produced a lot of those phones before it threw in the towel. What happened to them?
Well, now we know at least some of them have been cannibalized to make a truly bizarre QWERTY phone called Xeta One. Created in South Korea (LG’s home turf), this phone takes the smaller inner display of the Wing, slaps a BlackBerry keyboard on it (complete with optical trackpad, possibly from the BlackBerry Q20), and powers the whole thing with Android.
You can see a one-sheet of specs below or in the video above:
The crowdfunding campaign for the Xeta One is region-locked to South Korea, so most people reading this won’t be able to back it. However, you really shouldn’t back this, regardless, as it seems pretty scammy. The fine print in both the video and the website even says this is “a renovation project” and “not a device sold for mass production purposes.” In other words, this could be a situation in which one tinkerer in South Korea is making these as a hobby and looking for someone to foot the bill.
Either way, though, it is interesting to see LG’s final attempt at shaking up the smartphone world live on. The Wing was a really cool phone, and it’s a shame we never got a sequel. Be sure to check out our original review of the LG Wing if you missed it.
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