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Review: LG Optimus 2X hardware, display and software

Product: LG Optimus 2X

Look:

Technology:

Performance:

Value for money:

Good: First dual core processor smartphone, HDMI mirroring, nice LCD screen
Bad: Laggard UI, software has lot of bugs
Recommend: Yes

Review By:

Name:	Ankit Sinha
Member Level:	Gold
Review Date:	15 Feb 2011
Points for Review:	50 (Rs: 35)
Read 38 reviews by Ankit Sinha

LG Optimus 2X Review

After the dual core processors in the PCs the geeks and much of other mobile lovers dreamt of a smartphone having the same technology processors. And as someone said ‘the first step for a great invention is a great dream’, the superb engineers of LG and NVIDIA too dreamt of this idea or maybe heard the wish of the world and did the engineering for which they are paid the loads of cash. So here is the first multicore mobile architecture mobile with the dual core processor, the Optimus 2X.

For LG and the tech world this is a landmark handset in a number of ways. Not only it is the first mobile with a dual core processor but also marks the entry of LG in the big leagues of high end Android smartphone manufacturers. LG has previously delivered two very good smartphones for Android platform with the Optimus S and T but the fell into mid range categories. Now with 2X LG has entered the big league of competition with Samsung, HTC and Motorola. But is it really a competition? Read on to find out!!

Hardware of LG Optimus 2X

Optimus 2X was showcased sometime before too under the code name Star. The whole front is an uninterrupted glass slate except a small slit at the top for the earpiece grille. The touchscreen has four capacitive touch buttons and a camera just right to the LG logo beneath it. It is a too simple yet sophisticated design which gives an impression that LG has spent its time and money on what goes beneath rather than on the body. The glass at the sides is curved and finishes beneath the metallic frame from the sides. The finishing here is good and you won’t feel where the glass ends and the metal starts. The back is a flexible matte plastic cover which fits very nicely into place and efficiently sealing of the back but even then it is very easily removed as placed back when you want to. The austere black color I got to review (there are brown and white versions too) has a silver column running through its middle with a slogan “with Google” ending with a slight bump near the top to make space for the 8 Mega Pixel camera which is protected but a glass cover.

All put together the look and nice is really of a high end smartphone. The body is mostly rigid and unyielding and though the material is the most commonly used but the way it has been put is appreciable. Time and attention has been given to design the body and that is evident from the only two buttons on the whole body, the perfectly sized power buttons and the volume keys. Though many may prefer the two or three buttons like of menu and call button to be non-capacitive for convenience we is have to accept what is part of the overall package.

Display of LG Optimus 2X

The screen is a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) LCD screen. Though it might be a bit standard spec but the panel on Optimus 2X is a notch above standard. The display is bright, has good saturation and gives good color fidelity even at oblique angles. Of course there are better screens in the market like the IPS screens on Apple’s iPhone 4 and Sharps IS03 but these are some standards which have very few competitors in the market. Without such a high end display or even the jazzed AMOLED screen of Samsung the screen of LG Optimus 2X is the next best thing in the market.

LG purposely designs touchscreen with some less sensitivity so as to avoid unintended inputs. It was first feature in Optimus 7 and now we have the same less sensitivity in Optimus 2X. It is not something that can be exactly termed as good or bad because once you get used to use a little hard presses on the screen you won’t notice it and it is actually a bit of pro of the screen only, though if you have been using a sensitive touchscreen phone then it might irritate you in the start a bit (or might even make you happy because of less unintended inputs).

Software in LG Optimus 2X

With such a processor one would expect lag on 2X to be in fractions compared to a Hummingbird handset (Samsung variants) but what you get in this little tweaked Android device is quite worse than what one can actually get in a Hummingbird device. Response of UI of 2X is extremely bad which is very surprising considering the extremely powerful processor. Point to be noted that the lag is not in the loading of softwares, in fact that is faster than most other phones but the navigation is where this problem comes out. Clearly this is a problem in the coding of the OS, specifically in the small tweaks that LG carried out and not in the programming by Google.

This problem is not only limited to navigation but is also present in the system resources. After installing a software named the Advanced Task Killer for Android phones which is similar to the Task Manager of Windows I stopped most of the task which were not required for OS stability and even then only 210MB of the 512MB could be cleared out which means that the OS itself took 300MB for running which is quite large considering the fact that it was not long ago when most of the smartphones used a 256MB RAM.

One of its reasons is the music app which is integrated in the Androids window shade slide down menu due to which this app cannot be closed down. This might not be too wrong an idea but definitely comes at the cost of performance of the phone. The messaging has the option of preview of unread messages phonebooks is clean and logically working and social networking options has a multiple status updater feature which can update your status in Facebook, Twitter and Myspace at once. This app is good but app of LG for Facebook and Twitter are not.

This type of problem is more common in Motoblur handset and some smart guys have designed a solution to it and that is the Launcher Pro. If anyone has used it then he will know about the remedial effects of this small skin on the phone. Written by Federico Carnale this skin can be downloaded from the market and after installing all problems of lagging vanish away. When I installed it, any problems with the mediocre responsiveness vanished away and all that was left was a snappy UI.

Except for these there were also instances while using the apps that the application crashed for example when I went from the Clock application to the Gallery and clicked the back button the application crashed. These might vary from set to set so not much can be said if other models in the market will also suffer from this problem.

Wrap Up

LG was earlier not counted much in the market of high end phones but LG Optimus 2X might be considered as the entry of the Korean giant in this market for high end devices. The success or failure of this phone will pave the future plans of the development of this company and its results in market thus, will matter a lot.

For review on LG Optimus 2X Performance, Camera and Audio click here.

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