#ThrowbackThursday: When LG thought a 4:3 phablet was a good idea

Almost exactly five years ago to the date, we heard the first rumors about LG’s would-be Galaxy Note competitor. A few weeks later, just ahead of MWC, the LG Optimus Vu would officially be announced.

During these days, the Note series was still very much in its infancy and ‘phablets’ were just starting to gain momentum. Somehow LG thought it could one up Samsung by doing something very different. While it offered a stylus similar (though much less capable) to the Note, the Vu’s big selling point was supposed to be its unique 4:3 ratio. The end result was a very brick-ish square device that didn’t fit so wonderfully in your pocket. This is speaking from personal experience, as I actually had the opportunity to give this thing a test run for a few weeks back in the day.

(This video was the first time the Vu was ever formally seen.)

On the spec front, the Vu wasn’t half bad, running a dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S3 processor with 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, and packing a huge-for-the-time 5-inch display with a resolution of 768×1024. On the battery front was a 2080mAh non-removable battery, which considering the specs wasn’t half bad. The device would launch in multiple markets around March and would even make its way to the states via Verizon — though that model would differ slightly and would debut under the name LG Intuition.

But whatever happened to the Vu series? After multiple attempts at successors, many of which ended up shipping only in select markets like South Korea, LG would soon realize what the rest of the world already knew back in early 2012: the Vu’s brick shape just wasn’t appealing. That wouldn’t stop LG from attempting to crack the “phablet” formula though, with several later attempts including the Optimus G Pro series, and most recently (and much better received) the LG V series.

Did you own or ever use the LG Optimus Vu? Were you among those that liked it? Or, like myself, were you less of a fan? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments.