With the screen off, it looked as if the black of the display reached the top of the device. The glass of the screen actually curved downwards towards the top.
Sadly, my LG G5 bit the dust. It was a good phone in terms of repairability and longevity. The bootloader could be unlocked via LG's website, which has unfortunately closed since. LineageOS support was good while it lasted. But most importantly, it had a user-removeable battery, microSD card slot and was generally easy to disassemble. As time goes on, smartphones are gradually getting worse in each of these aspects. I'll miss the G5 as a relic of times when smartphones were better.
It was so nice to have a decently fast phone with a microSD slot and removeable battery. The design work done for this phone was really excellent. The slide-out battery was a really innovative design for a removeable battery. It even had a shock absorber ! You can see it on the ifixit teardown. It's as thin and lighter than the oneplus 6 [wikipedia page].
With the screen off, it looked as if the black of the display reached
the top of the device. The glass of the screen actually curved downwards
towards the top.
I even once wrecked the screen by dropping it on concrete. To change the screen you only needed to remove the battery and unscrew two screws. Just look at the great design that went into this: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+G5+Screen+Replacement/71915. Replacement parts were cheap. The screen was under 50$ I think.
The power button and fingerprint reader was on the back, where your index
finger naturally rests when holding the phone. This design was even better
on earlier phones in the LG G series, where the volume buttons were also on the
back. The volume buttons of the G5 moved to the side.
The slide-out battery actually hid some modularity by having a module at the end which could be replaced. There were some accessories which never really caught on. This included was a camera-controller add-on, which added some heft, extra camera buttons and a battery, and also a DAC add-on. See Benny's blog.
I remember having some issues with the pogo pins and got a donor motherboard for real cheap, around 20-30$. Desoldering the tiny surface-mounted pins from the donor motherboard and resoldering them was good practice.
In an unfortunate accident, I got it drenched in water. This spelt the end. I hesitated to try and use the donor motherboard to rescue it. But LG had exited the smartphone business and closed down their bootloader unlocking site.
This meant I had a prefectly functional motherboard but couldn't unlock the bootloader to install LineageOS on it. Why this is something a company is allowed to do in any way is completely beyond me (thank you DRM and late-stage capitalism, amongst others). By turning off their website they literally turned a whole bunch of phones into ewaste. At least they could have shared the bootloader unlock keys. Given that they were exiting the smartphone business they had no more financial interest to lock down devices people bought with their own cash moneezzz.
At the time I also happened ordered a refurb one from aliexpress, but only received it after LG's bootloader unlock website closed.
Stock homescreen of the refurb unit. Unfortunately the bootloader
couldn't be unlocked due to LG taking down it's bootloader unlock website.
I also got a refurb z5 compact, which was unfortunately japanese, couldn't be unlocked and so couldn't have lineageOS put on it. But you got this little goat on the homescreen which was impossible to get rid of, so at least there's that ? Seems this is a modification done for resale by the japanese telco Docomo.
Weird goat-like character on the homescreen of the docomo z5 compact.
Unfortunately this phone is also basically ewaste, as the docomo version
(a japanese version) couldn't be unlocked.
Nice yellow colour of the back of the z5 compact. Why can't we have cute
little phones with happy colours like this anymore ?
Android has been a sinking ship for a while now. It's a useable smartphone OS, which can be used in a relatively freedom-respecting way if you jump through a whole lot of hoops. But with google trying to strongarm developer verification even for apps distributed outside the play store and the development of AOSP no longer being public its days are numbered. GrapheneOS, LineageOS and some others are still continuing and I truly hope they will be able to keep going in the future.
The long term solution is likely a project which better serves the users. There are many exciting projects, but most are still for enthusiasts, tweakers and early adopters. postmarketOS, droidian and ubuntu touch are all community-oriented mobile OSes that serve the users' interests. Maybe as these gain traction we can imagine a day where we also get back good hardware design in smartphones ?