As far as smartphone makers go, LG is an oddball. It takes a certain degree of chutzpah to design, build and market devices that completely defy convention. And this company has been responsible for more than a few of those over the years. The modular G5 springs to mind. So does this year's G8 ThinQ, which offered a gesture-based control scheme that seemed silly until it didn't. And now there's the G8X, which ditches some of the gimmicks that made the original G8 so divisive and embraces a few of its own.

See, rather than build a proper foldable that would be inherently compromised, LG decided there was a better way to make smartphones more flexible: cases with secondary screens built into them. The V50 ThinQ was the company's first phone to get one of these cases, but now the G8X is going on sale around the world with one of these nutso accessories in tow.

I have a deep, abiding respect for companies willing to embrace weirdness, but I'll be clear up front: LG's vision doesn't work. It's not because the underlying idea is bad; it's because LG hasn't figured out how to use this bizarre, dual-screen setup to its fullest.