Rest in Pieces LG Optimus G aka e970

Short Story

Back in 2012 I bought an LG Optimus G, aka e970. I had it for 2 months and then broke the screen while moving from DFW to SF. Lesson learned: Don’t lift a 50 LBs toolbox and rest it on your leg where your new phone is. Oops. A nice friend had a Nexus S lying around and loaned it to me for my move across the country until I could replace my screen.

I had never broken a phone before this.

Then came a Nexus 4, bought and sold in favor of a Nexus 5 that I later lost on a motorcycle ride. Lesson learned: always zip your motorcycle jacket pockets. After that I returned to the e970 and hoped for a Nexus 5 replacement to upgrade to. Instead the Nexus 6 came with a monster form factor and price, I passed since the e970 was still chugging along.

The e970 kept me afloat. Cyanogenmod 11 and the open source community supporting the device breathed new life in to it and limped along.

My e970 is on it’s third screen and finally died last night. Kernel complains of IO error to mmcblk0 and I assume the eMMC chip has died (as I’ve seen far too often in my professional career) or a solder joint that finally thermal cycled itself and failed. It’s time is up.

It died 12 hours after ordering a new Nexus 5X that will take 3+ weeks to ship. So close, yet so far.

Once again, another friend, and another Nexus S is coming to the rescue to bridge the gap.

Takeaway

• Open source devices allow both the LG Optimus G and Nexus S to live beyond their expected lifetime.
• Hardware serviceability prolonged the Optimus G when my attempts to kill it failed.