LG Optimus Black

LG Optimus Black

MRP: Rs 22,500
Street Price: 19,600 (Letsbuy.com; Flipkart.com)

Here it is: the latest addition to LG's popular Optimus series, dubbed the Optimus Black. It is the very first phone to sport what LG calls the NOVA display. According to the manufacturer, it delivers twice the brightness of other smartphones. Moreover, it has quite a sleek profile.

Similar to the Optimus 2X, the Black ships with Android 2.2 (Froyo). As of publishing this review, there is noGingerbread update available for this device. If that wasn't bad enough, the updater has a horrible interface and crashes very often. Let's hope LG will address these issues.

The update is available...

...No, it's not.


Design And Build Quality
We received a big package from LG, which looked as if it contained a tablet and not a phone. Surprisingly, the box revealed a book, pencil, diary, phone, and other accessories.

The useful accessories include earphones, a charger with detachable micro-USB cable, and a 2 GB memory card with an SD card adaptor. Sorry guys, this package is only for reviewers. However, I found out that the retail pack ships with all the accessories except for the book, pencil, and diary. You aren't missing much though, because the said extras are utterly useless.

The device measures 4.8" (l) x 2.5" (w) x 0.4" (d), and weighs in at 109 grammes. From the front, it looks almost like its older sibling Optimus 2X. The only noticeable difference is in the design of its earpiece.

Below the 4" screen are present the four standard Android keys. These capacitive touch keys momentarily turn blue from white when clicked. This looks neat and goes to show LG's attention to detail. The Black's chassis is matte plastic, with a curved back panel that feels good to hold.

Due to the extensive use of plastic, the device is light and feels comfortable in the pocket. However, I'm concerned about its durability, as our review piece was delivered with a piece chipped off from the side. For all we know, an overzealous reviewer may have bitten off a chunk, a la Mike Tyson. Jokes apart, LG should have made the body stronger.

The device's left side is clean, while the right side sports an indistinguishable volume rocker and a practically useless G (Gesture) button.

Top view.

Under the hood, the Black harbours a 1 GHz Cortex-A8 CPU coupled with a PowerVR SGX530 GPU. Other specs include a 5 megapixel primary and 2 megapixel front camera, 1 GB inbuilt memory, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, and proximity sensor.

The 4" screen has pixel dimensions of 480x800. The display is brilliant and does justice to the hype surrounding it. The contrast is impressive as well. Thanks to IPS technology, viewing angles are good. Finally, here's something from LG that is as good as the competition.


UI And Applications
As mentioned earlier, the Black runs on Froyo. The whole UI, starting from the unlock slider, is exactly similar to whatwe've seen on the Optimus 2X.

You get seven home screens and a thumbnail view to arrange them. Then you have the option to edit home screens and a main menu - all of which has been covered in the 2X's review. The side-tapping gesture found in the gallery still isn't reliable, so you are better off swiping instead.

The 1 GHz CPU is enough to run most apps, and handles multitasking reasonably well. However, task switching isn't instantaneous and the whole UI feels jittery. Even while swiping across home screens, the phone starts framing after the second or third screen. This is unfortunate for a phone with a Gigahertz under the hood.

For maps and navigation, the phone comes with Google Maps 5.9. The GPS receiver works well, and takes less than 5 minutes to lock onto satellites with A-GPS (Assisted GPS) turned on.

The web browser is ordinary and struggles to play 480p videos in YouTube. Its page rendering is not very fast, and you are better off with the Opera or Dolphin browsers.

The device barely runs the old Gangstar game. Needless to say, newer games such as Brothers in Arms 2 andGangstar: Miami Vindication are out of the question.

Fruit Ninja is how far gaming goes on this device.

Multimedia
The music player features some Cover Flow-like effects in landscape mode. Apart from that, an alphabet scroll can be used to quickly find the desired song.

The player has a number of equalizer presets, including Dolby Mobile. Sadly, it doesn't add much to the sound quality. The audio output of the device is average. The loudspeaker is inadequete, while the earphone output could have been better. On the bright side, FM radio is present and has a great interface.

The video player sports a minimalistic interface that doesn't block much of your view. Surprisingly, the player fails to run many 720p MP4, DivX, and XviD videos, which otherwise work well on the 2X. Moreover, it does not play 720p WMV videos at all. Of course, you can get third-party players from the Android Market to fix this.


Camera
The 5 MP camera has an LED flash to keep it company. The interface is clean and simple. More importantly, its image quality is good. The camera captures a decent amount of detail, while keeping noise levels low.

The phone is capable of recording video clips at 720p. The resulting clips capture colours pretty accurately, but produce an unacceptable amount of artefacts in low light. Worse, video clips can only be saved in the 3GP format, which is not ideal for 720p videos.


Telephony And Messaging
The Black has no issues with network reception, while the in-call quality is good. However, LG should have made the earpiece a little louder. On the bright side though, the phonebook features full social networking integration. Messages get displayed in threaded fashion. The onscreen keyboard is good, but the sluggish UI sometimes slows down your texting speed. This is especially true when you have an app or two running in the background.

The generic email client can handle multiple email accounts. Moreover, the app offers several filters to help manage your emails.


Battery
The phone's battery performance is better than the 2X. This is due to the lack of an extra CPU core. The 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery managed to keep the device running for 3 hours and 30 minutes under heavy use, and lasted for almost 7 hours under moderate use. All in all, the battery life is pretty good as per Android standards.


Verdict
The LG Optimus Black is available for Rs 19,600 in the market. It offers a sleek and elegant design, along with a spectacular screen. However, its shortcomings far outweigh its strengths. It ships with Froyo, when everyone else has moved onto Gingerbread. Its 1 GHz CPU struggles to keep up with the brilliant display, and spoils the Android experience with framing and lag. And let's not forget the lacklustre multimedia performance.

If you are looking for a stylish smartphone with no emphasis on features or performance, the Black is for you. Otherwise, buying the old Samsung Galaxy S (Rs 19,800) makes more sense.

Source via:Techtree

Posted in: Latest mobiles