Both the major Korean smartphone makers reported encouraging quarterly results despite disasters in their handset businesses. In Samsung’s case, most of the smartphone woes came from a single cause, the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, and in other respects there are signs that the firm is fighting back against low cost competitors, Apple resurgence and the strength of Huawei. But for LG, all these factors are weighing far more heavily on its performance and it shows few signs of a strategy for handset turnaround. For the quarter that ended on December 31, LG reported healthy overall revenues of $12.79bn, up 1.5% year-on-year. But the weakness of its Mobile Communications division drove it to a loss of just over $30m, reversing last…