LG G4 malfunctions

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The LG G4 phone was discovered to have defects, which caused it to become unstable or inoperable. Despite the widespread problems in the phone, LG did not issue a recall when millions of customers were affected.^{[citation needed]}

This issue in the phone was caused by heat which would detach the soldering, with the most common result being a bootloop issue where the device would be stuck in a cycle of booting but never post.[1] This would result in all user data being lost, and the device being unusable.^{[citation needed]}

Other problems included touchscreen issues, where the screen would stop responding permanently (or until restart for some users), charging port death, speaker function damage, and double tap features no longer functioning, which was an early precursor to the touchscreen issues. When abnormally high failure rates were reported in the first few months,^{[citation needed]} LG hid the issue and refused warranties. When public outcry became too much of a wave for them to deny, they told outlets it was a very small subset they would look into, all the while having confirmed many months before that it was a universal issue.

The issue was exasperated by the device's Snapdragon 808 processor, which famously had overheating issues (along with the 810), but it was LG's devices (including the G Flex) that suffered these desoldering issues en masse.

LG did not recall the devices, as the G4 was its best-selling phone to date. LG instead continued to marketing the device (the G4 was marketed for over two years at bus stations in Canada, well after the release of the G5).^{[citation needed]} The company later launched a replacement scheme with US carriers,^{[citation needed]} which did not address the phone's systemic problem of breaking down and losing all user data.

Users who had their phone replaced reported it dying a second or third time because the heating issue was never fixed.  All data is lost upon bootlooping and LG still continued selling it for over a year after finding out.^{[citation needed]}

The phone received Android 5.0 roughly two months after release, and was expected to get two major updates. This was even confirmed through a LG spokesperson in South Korea (twice) that the device would be receiving Android 6.0 Marshmallow,^{[citation needed]} but the update was never globally released, despite LG's promise for months that the phone would receive updates. At the time Android updates were not yet segmented (link to video on this topic), so updates took much longer to develop, and the decision to do so would have been made well in advance. The device was still being advertised for over 6 months after Android 6.0 was slated for release. The update was eventually released, but only in South Korea.

LG only ended up settling one class-action lawsuit on the issue exclusively in the USA.^{[citation needed]} They avoided a recall that executives knew would be needed months after release (source on LG knowing the bootloop issue existed 3 months after release). LG left the phone market in 2021.