New Delhi: After getting a lot of flak in India for the off-the-wall shape of its mammoth Optimus Vu, LG launched its new smartphone in India named Optimus G - in an attempt to gain a foothold in the Indian smartphone market where rivals such as Samsung, Sony and HTC are growing.
In the price sensitive India market, the price tag plays a key role in determining the fate of a device, and fortunately for LG the device is competitively priced. While the company has priced it at Rs 34,500, but the smartphone is easily available online for approximately Rs 31,000. In fact, a retailer quoted me a price of Rs 29,800 for the LG Optimus G.
Having reviewed the device, I can vouch that the device is worth its price. Neatly-tailored, the phone looks classy. It has an edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass in the front, which make the screen scratch-resistant, and a glass at the back. Under the back glass is a patterned body which gives it a premium look. Though the back panel looks handsome, but it is a finger-print magnet. But you won't mind smudges on the rear. The phone is slightly heavier than the Galaxy S III, but is passably light in weight. The rectangular phone with rounded edges is comfortable to hold.
Inserting a SIM card is annoying, even though this is usually a one time affair. You have to insert the micro-USIM ejection tool that comes with the phone into the eject button aperture and push firmly, but gently, until the tray pops out. Fit the card snugly into the tray and carefully reposition the tray in the slot and push it gently back into the phone. Phew!
The phone has a 4.7-inch WXGA LCD, True HD IPS plus display (1280x768) at 320 ppi. The phone produces rich colours and one can easily discover even small details on the phone's display. The text can be easily read and it looks sharp. Its touch responsiveness is better than any other phone in this price bracket. It won't be wrong to say that the phone has one of the best touchscreens - in terms of smoothness, accuracy and speed. Its touchscreen outdoes that of the Galaxy S III. Swiping left and right on the phone is incredibly fast. At full brightness, one can easily read content on the phone's display under direct sunlight. The phone offers good viewing angles and it does not hamper your viewing experience - no matter how you are holding the device.
The Camera is also one of the key features in determining the fate of a smartphone. The LG Optimus G comes with a good quality camera. The phone has a 13 megapixel auto focus rear camera with flash and a 1.3 megapixel front camera. The rear camera captures quality photos even in low-light conditions. It snaps detailed images. The rear camera lets you record videos in different modes - 1920x1080 (Full HD), 1280x720 (HD), 720x480 (TV), 640x480 (VGA), 320x240 (MMS), 176x144 (MMS). Even the front camera is apt for video calling. Its Time Catch shot feature captures the missing moment before presssing the shutter. The phone has a voice activated shutter which lets you capture images by saying one of these word - Cheese, Smile, Kimchi, LG, Whisky. The phone offers a slew of options to customise images including scene mode and colour effect.
The LG optimus G does not run stock Android; in fact the company has combined the Android 4.1 OS with its own Optimus UI30. The user interface is intuitive, but not appealing. LG needs to work on its UI and the company could have designed the user interface in a slightly better way. Its 'Task Manager' is interesting and it lets you see number of apps running, RAM used, free RAM and RAM used by each app. The notification try has toggles for major settings, and long pressing a toggle takes you to the settings page of a particular option. The notification tray is better than that of the Sony Xperia Z where long press a toggle either enables or disables an option. The Xperia Z has a settings icon next to toggles to go the settings page. Another thing that I have not liked in the LG Optimus G is the absence of the Google Play app icon on the top right of the apps screen, which is a standard on many Android phones. Other useful features include flip phone to pause video and flip phone to silence incoming calls.
The phone is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz and 2GB RAM. The phone did not dawdle while launching any app or performing any task. I could run scores of apps simultaneously without any lag. Playing high graphic games on this phone was a good experience as the phone performed smoothly and did not linger even once. The phone supports 1080p video playback and recording. The benchmarking app Quadrant Standard ranks the phone as number one.
Its Q Slide function is very impressive, and it betters your multitasking experience. LG's senior research engineer, Sebastian Hochan Song, explains, "The Q slide function is a picture in picture mode which essentially shows different screens simulatenously on one display. In this way, users can complete two tasks concurrently such as sending a text message while watching a downloaded video." There are specific Q Slide apps - videos, internet, memo, calendar and calculator - located just below the notification tray. Users can change the transparency of a Q slide app to be able to see the background clearly while multitasking.
With juice flowing from a 2,100 mAh Li-ion Polymer battery, the phone has a fairly good battery. On normal usage, the phone can easily last for a day. The phone has quality speakers which produce loud, yet clear voice. Though the phone has a huge internal memory, what still disappoints is the non-expandable memory. The phone comes with 32GB of internal memory (of which 25 GB is user accessible), but its memory is not expandable. This is where Samsung has an advantage over LG. The 32 GB memory should suffice for an average user, but it is not going to be sufficient for a heavy user, who always seeks extra storage space.
The phone is competitively priced and makes it to our recommendation list.
Pros
- Elegant design
- Highly responsive touchscreen
- Competitively priced
- Powerful processor
Cons
- Non-expandable memory
- Sightly unappealing user interface
Ratings: 4/5
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