No idea. I just went through the lgstockroms website… over 1,220 models listed across 52 pages. This one is not fucking there.

What the hell? I just don’t get it. This isn’t the first time some weird arbitrary-seeming absence has occurred in tech that I’ve seen.

Years ago I bought a business class Netgear wireless router that offered everything that was at the top of the line at the time. It wasn’t for me it was for a family member. The thing operated flawlessly, performance was absolutely perfect, the management interface was clean, intuitive and sensibly designed.

It was a little strange because it wasn’t advertised on the business class products listings in my distributor’s catalog, nor in the consumer listings either. I somehow stumbled upon it by accident and ordered it. Price was good and specs were good. Also never had seen it in a store anywhere ever.

Like a year later I wanted to get this same product for someone who needed that kind of solution. Could not find it anywhere. Could also not find a single trace of its existence. No reference on their website or anything. Like it never existed!

I called Netgear at the time I was a reseller directly with them, and I had to go through several people to find anyone who’d even heard of it. I explained everything I have written here, and asked why it was like it never existed? This guy says to me “You say it was perfect?” I’m like “Yes!” He says “And it operates with no trouble whatsoever, and it handles everything well, and no need for anything else, and it’s easy to use and doesn’t fail, and has no defects or design flaws, and the software has no bugs?” I was like “Yes yes yes and yes! Why are there none of these around and why is it impossible to find???”

He responded “Haven’t you already answered your own question?”

I don’t know much about this LG phone because I acquired it second-hand and rooted it. Then after tinkering for a bit I made a change in the root privileges that it should elevate superuser immediately upon booting. This was apparently a problem and it is now in this unusable state. But I gotta say the little I used it, it seemed fantastic! Performed smoothly, easily rooted, ran really nicely given its humble specs. Maybe this is one of those cases where they really don’t want it on the market because it was too reliable and lacked nothing. I imagine the files I’ve been looking for have been gone for a long time already. This kind of thing happens more than most people know. A brand puts out a product that’s just awesome and nobody would want any alternative for that class of product, and would not need to replace it soon either. That’s not good for business the way business works these days. They rely on their products being just good enough to make it sell, but plenty of hidden awfulness to make sure you’ll need something new soon enough. That’s what makes billions not millions.

So maybe this is one such item.