It’s no secret that LG had been struggling to make a mark in the smartphone space. Despite being one of the first ones to launch a dual-core and a 3D phone last year, LG’s offerings failed to create an impact in the minds of the consumers. But are things looking different this year with the launch of Optimus 4X HD? We take a thorough look.
Design and Build Quality:
Compared to last year, smartphones have gotten bigger. Optimus 4X HD is no exception. The phone is undoubtedly big, but not huge by “phablet” standards. The phone houses a large 4.7-inch display on the front along with touch-sensitive Android menu buttons, sensors and 1.3MP camera. The sides of the Optimus 4X HD are outlined by chrome band and places volume rocket buttons on the left hand side. The top side of the phone boasts a 3.5 headphone jack, power/lock button and the botton features the microUSB port. The back side of the phone sports faux leather finish that may not ooze a premium look but does not look bad either. Furthermore, the back side of the phone hosts the main camera and a loudspeaker.
As far as build quality goes, LG’s offering is well balanced that does not look as sturdy as HTC’s One X or fragile as Samsung’s Galaxy S III.
Display:
Like most high-end Android smartphones these days, Optimus 4X HD too comes with a large display. To be precise, the phone has a 4.7-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution support of 1280×720 pixels. Needless to say, the high resolution of the display makes the text and pictures look sharp and crisp. The blacks are understandably not deep as Galaxy S III’s AMOLED display but the IPS panel does a good job. The display is legible under sunlight as well.
Performance:
This flagship device from LG is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor. To give you a quick heads up, Tegra 3 is the world’s first SoC (system-on-chip) to have a quad-core CPU along with a companion core. Dubbed as 4-PLUS-1, the four processing cores are left for processing and graphic intensive tasks whereas the companion core is used when the task requires little or no processing power, thus ensuring a better battery life.
Having four cores at disposal, the phone feels pretty fast. The menu transitions, startup of the phone, app execution is a breeze. However, one thing I noticed that the back of the phone gets heated up after a bit of use. Not a deal breaker but should be addressed, if possible.
Software:
LG Optimus 4X HD runs Android 4.0 out of the box and just like other Android manufacturers, have plastered their user interface known as Optimus UI 3.0 to give it a distinctive look.
The user interface has undergone a lot of change and it is visible as soon as you start the phone. The lock screen has a nice visual touch to it and allows four apps to sit on the screen for quick access, which can be modified as per user’s preferences.
The notification area is also a bit different as it allows users to place and edit toggle buttons for their frequently accessed setting. The phone also has a system-wide integration of QuickMemo which is nothing but a way to take handwritten notes, which can be deleted or edited later.
Multimedia:
Optimus 4X HD features a decent music player that handles most of today’s prevalent formats and a FM Radio. The audio output is fairly satisfactory.
On the video front, LG has managed to improvised a lot. Not only the video player is capable of playing almost every file in HD resolution or SD, some little feature additions make video viewing a nice experience. The video player allows to live zoom in or zoom out of the video; a flick from the right will reveal rest of the videos on the phone while playing the current one; video frame preview; and Dolby support.
Camera:
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Sample Shots |
The phone features an 8 megapixel camera and allows users to customise a lot of settings. As far as video recording goes, it is capable of shooting in 1080p resolution. Here are some of the sample shots and video taken from the phone.
Battery Life and Other Features:
2150mAh is the rated capacity of the Optimus 4X HD battery. Although the battery life is totally dependent on the usage, with moderate usage of calling, music, videos and browsing, the Optimus 4X HD easily lasted a day.
Some of the other interesting features include LG Smart Share which is nothing but a DLNA app to stream content amongst other DLNA devices, NFC, Wi-Fi Direct, LG SmartWorld app store and social.
Conclusion:
The release of Optimus 4X HD tells one thing – LG has finally arrived. The phone offers comparable performance to the likes of Galaxy S III and One X and is in fact few thousand rupees cheaper. The only thing to look out for LG will be timely OS updates. I’m sure LG is already working to release Jelly Bean but if they can release it faster than other competitive flagship devices, LG can score some brownie points from consumers.
It sells for Rs. 32,999.
Rating: 
Pros: Performance, Display
Cons: Gets overheated
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