I just wanted to revisit the LG G Flex 2—the smartphone that was officially unveiled at CES 2015 in Vegas about 6 months ago now, a little more than that, where it had a ton of buzz, it won a lot of awards. But the buzz kind of fizzled out over the course of the next few weeks and months. It launched in Korea and eventually made its way to the US. It was available for purchase at AT&T, US Cellular and Sprint. But between when it was announced and right now, it has been more than 6 months. And a lot has changed in that time so let’s just go ahead and see what went right and what went wrong with the LG G Flex 2.

The most notable feature of the LG G Flex 2 is, of course, its flexible curved display. It fits well in the hand as it fits the natural curve of your hand and it’s flexible, like literally to the point where you can push it down flat on a table without it showing any signs of damage. It carried over many of the design elements from last year’s LG G Flex and LG G3 with the rear facing buttons and plastic build construction.

The display has improved from a 6-inch 720p panel to a more manageable 5.5-inch 1080p OLED display. And honestly to this day, it’s still a very vibrant display. While I do prefer the display of the LG G4 of course, the 1080p resolution is still very satisfying and I have no real major problems with it. I love how it doesn’t require as much horsepower to power and can save me some serious battery life with the OLED display technology.

The LG G Flex 2 was also one of the first smartphones to feature the Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor which has certainly received a lot of crap over the past few months, most noticeably for overheating and impacting performance. While it’s not as consistent and zippy as the Exynos 7420 processor from Samsung, I don’t think it deserves quite as much flack as it is receiving. It’s still very quick, yes it gets warm and yes it does lag from time to time, but more of the problems I’ve had with this device in particular were from the software, which I have adjusted to over time. But it took me a while not to hate the LG skin on top of Android Lollipop. I think LG learned a lot from the LG G Flex 2 and improved not only the software experience but they played it safe with the hardware of their upcoming flagship, which we now have on the market—the LG G4 as it is equipped with the 808 Snapdragon processor which is a hexa-core processor and doesn’t have all the criticism or performance or overheating issues that the 810 octa-core processor does have.

The LG G Flex 2 does have a 13MP camera sensor but it’s the same sensor found on the G3, which is not a bad thing at all but it’s not the improvement a lot of people were looking for. And the battery life, while decent, is nowhere near as impressive as the original LG G Flex which featured a 3500mAh battery. By comparison, the LG G Flex 2 features a 3000mAh battery which is considerably smaller but it does make sense since the device (as a whole) is smaller. But you do have to charge your device every single night whereas with the original G Flex, you could go a couple of days without having to charge the device.

So overall, I think a lot of you would agree with me in that the LG G Flex 2 is kind of like an in between device. So it launched after the Note 4 and Nexus 6 and it had pretty big shoes to fill. The most attractive feature was the Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor but the criticism behind that processor really hindered and hurt its reputation. Pair that with its QHD display, its worsened battery life, plastic build construction and kind of the mediocre camera, it just wasn’t and isn’t that appealing of a device especially considering the fact that you need to be on one of 3 carriers here in the US—AT&T, US Cellular or Sprint to even think about buying this device.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that the LG G Flex 2 launched after the holiday season, when people typically have money to upgrade devices and just spend money on electronics in general. And so, because of this, I think it really hurt its sales.

But is the LG G Flex 2 a bad device? No, it’s not a bad device. Ultimately what hurt sales was just the awkward timing. I think it’s a good device, it needs some improvements here and there of course but it wasn’t a bad device and it isn’t a bad device. But there are better options out there on the market in my opinion.