The LG Optimus 4X HD can brag to be the first Smartphone announced with a quad-core chipset, although the HTC One X beat it as first to market. LG has loaded the full month with it - a quad-core processor, large “True HD” display fit in a fairly compact for it body, and the latest Android version out of the box.
As if top of the line specs were not enough, it also addresses some complaints we have with some new flagships, namely their closed nature. LG's finest has a removable battery, microSD card slot and a plain regular SIM card slot - that combination you can’t find in any of this season’s flagships.
The Optimus 4X HD is almost entirely made of plastic, which is the logical choice considering the size of the phone and the number of antennas inside. Just like the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III, the LG 4X HD does well to fit a massive HD screen in an ultra-slim body and keeps the weight within perfectly reasonable limits.
It is in fact small touches and design choices that set the three Android flagships apart. The LG smartphone easily stands out with its assertive, angular styling. What LG call the prism-edged design couldn't have been more different than the subtly curved bodies of both the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III. The 4X HD has a distinctly more solid feel in the hand.
Although it weighs exactly the same as the Galaxy S III, the well-defined edges give an impression of almost tangible extra heft. The sides of the phone have a peculiar dual frame, which looks nice, but in a way compromises the secure grip.
Overall, the LG 4X HD is a strange mix of experiences. It makes the Samsung Galaxy S III, which is the biggest phone of the bunch, feel almost flimsy and slippery to hold. On the other hand, it doesn't even come close to the comfortable and secure feel of the polycarbonate unibody of the HTC One X.
The LG 4X HD flaunts a 4.7" Gorilla Glass-covered screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. LG call it a True-HD display and it essentially uses the same technology as the second-generation IPS LCD of the HTC One X. The 720p resolution equates to around 312 pixels per inch and the images are impressively detailed and crisp. The display of the LG 4X HD is brighter than AMOLED and uses a RGB matrix with a full set of subpixels, as opposed to the PenTile panel in AMOLED.
The True-HD IPS display of the LG 4X HD is a standard-setting LCD unit. Images are pleasingly sharp and even small fonts are crisp and readable. It cannot really match the deep blacks of AMOLED and the resulting contrast, but it's doing quite well in its own division. The colors appear a little less saturated than on the HTC One X but don't look bad by any means.
Yet you can now unlock the phone by dragging anywhere on the display, and the phone will show the underlying homescreen in the meantime. The four shortcuts at the bottom of the lock screen can be customized as well to take you into any app you please after unlocking.
According to LG, the 4X has a 2,150mAh battery. This is actually a smidge larger than the S3's cell -- which performed well in our battery tests. The 4X's battery size is also roomier than the HTC One X's 1,800mAh tank.
LG's official battery stats for the 4X promise up to 14.9 hours of talk time, 9 hours of browsing or 4 hours of video recording on a single charge. You can listen to music on it for as long as 52 hours and standby time -- when you're not using the phone at all -- is up to 527 hours.
In an attempt to see how long the 4X can last when it's being used a lot, I set it playing an HD nyan cat video over Wi-Fi, with the screen at max brightness. In this psychedelic state, the phone took just under 3 hours to exhaust a fully charged battery. In a similar test, the S3's battery had dropped from 100 per cent to around 70 per cent after 3 hours of video streaming -- suggesting the S3 has superior power management skills and/or a more power-efficient chipset.
Of course, you can extend the 4X's battery life by dialling down the screen brightness and using other preservation techniques such as closing open apps you're no longer using and avoiding running power-draining live wallpapers. But if you forget to charge the phone overnight, don't expect to get much joy out of it the next day.
I also did a battery test with the 4X running a graphically taxing 3D game. In this test I set the screen brightness to half. Even so, it took only 1 hour of continuous play for the battery to drop from 100 per cent to 50 per cent. You can probably only expect 2 hours of high-end gaming on a single charge.
The IPS display isn't quite as high-contrast or vivid as the Super LCD on the One X and Evo 4G LTE, but it's still very good, with near-180 degree viewing angles and excellent color reproduction. It's bright enough to be readable in sunlight, and its 312 PPI pixel density is well into "retina" territory — you definitely won't notice individual pixels, a fact also helped by the RGB layout rather than the dreaded PenTile look. Even small text is very readable, and the screen is sharp enough that even the subtle texture on the Contacts icon is noticeable. It's not the best phone display I've seen (that's the One X, and it's not close), but the 4X's screen is as good as you'll find outside HTC's flagship.
The one downside here is more about the handset's production than a problem with the display itself: there's a thick black stripe between the LCD and the bezel, which makes the screen feel like it's set far back into the recesses of the Optimus 4X HD's body. The screen's Gorilla Glass coating is a good addition, but the perceptual distance between your finger and whatever you're touching counteracts some of the immersive powers of such a large display.
• Ships with the latest version of Android
• Camera has trouble staying focused
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review |
LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review: Design
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review |
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review |
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review |
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| LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review |
It is in fact small touches and design choices that set the three Android flagships apart. The LG smartphone easily stands out with its assertive, angular styling. What LG call the prism-edged design couldn't have been more different than the subtly curved bodies of both the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III. The 4X HD has a distinctly more solid feel in the hand.
Although it weighs exactly the same as the Galaxy S III, the well-defined edges give an impression of almost tangible extra heft. The sides of the phone have a peculiar dual frame, which looks nice, but in a way compromises the secure grip.
Overall, the LG 4X HD is a strange mix of experiences. It makes the Samsung Galaxy S III, which is the biggest phone of the bunch, feel almost flimsy and slippery to hold. On the other hand, it doesn't even come close to the comfortable and secure feel of the polycarbonate unibody of the HTC One X.
The LG 4X HD flaunts a 4.7" Gorilla Glass-covered screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. LG call it a True-HD display and it essentially uses the same technology as the second-generation IPS LCD of the HTC One X. The 720p resolution equates to around 312 pixels per inch and the images are impressively detailed and crisp. The display of the LG 4X HD is brighter than AMOLED and uses a RGB matrix with a full set of subpixels, as opposed to the PenTile panel in AMOLED.
The True-HD IPS display of the LG 4X HD is a standard-setting LCD unit. Images are pleasingly sharp and even small fonts are crisp and readable. It cannot really match the deep blacks of AMOLED and the resulting contrast, but it's doing quite well in its own division. The colors appear a little less saturated than on the HTC One X but don't look bad by any means.
LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review: Camera
The LG Optimus 4X HD is equipped with a 8 megapixels digital camera, which is moderately better than the average for all Smartphones. This smartphone's camera is also equipped with Autofocus, Front Facing Camera, LED Flash, Rear Facing Camera and Video Recording.LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review: Interface and Functionality
LG Optimus UI is the name of the company’s Android interface overlay, and with Ice Cream Sandwich it comes in its 3.0 iteration. Thankfully, Optimus UI 3.0 hasn’t gutted the simple functionality of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich interface much, just replaced the stock icons with LG iconography to make the UI stand out, and added a few widgets of its own. Speaking of widgets, that Yahoo-branded weather one LG puts by default hasn’t received any design update, and it still as crude and rectangular as ever, taking points off the interface appearance. That’s a minor quibble, though, you can always get a slicker one, or replace the default launcher altogether with something prettier. More annoying is the lack of arrangement settings for the icons in the main menu. If you are used to arrange your icons in a scrollable, instead of paginated view, tough luck. If you want to arrange them alphabetically or by most used, no joy as well, you get to do it manually. The only option present is to condense the icon size so 30 instead of 20 of them fit on one screen. Oh well, you have to hit the Play Store again for a different launcher.Yet you can now unlock the phone by dragging anywhere on the display, and the phone will show the underlying homescreen in the meantime. The four shortcuts at the bottom of the lock screen can be customized as well to take you into any app you please after unlocking.
LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review: Battery
With a quad-core chip and a giant 4.7-inch screen, it's no surprise the 4X's battery life is not something to shout about. If you're using the phone carefully and modestly, you should just be able to eke out a day before having to juice it up. But what's the point of having a big engine if you're too afraid to use it?According to LG, the 4X has a 2,150mAh battery. This is actually a smidge larger than the S3's cell -- which performed well in our battery tests. The 4X's battery size is also roomier than the HTC One X's 1,800mAh tank.
LG's official battery stats for the 4X promise up to 14.9 hours of talk time, 9 hours of browsing or 4 hours of video recording on a single charge. You can listen to music on it for as long as 52 hours and standby time -- when you're not using the phone at all -- is up to 527 hours.
In an attempt to see how long the 4X can last when it's being used a lot, I set it playing an HD nyan cat video over Wi-Fi, with the screen at max brightness. In this psychedelic state, the phone took just under 3 hours to exhaust a fully charged battery. In a similar test, the S3's battery had dropped from 100 per cent to around 70 per cent after 3 hours of video streaming -- suggesting the S3 has superior power management skills and/or a more power-efficient chipset.
Of course, you can extend the 4X's battery life by dialling down the screen brightness and using other preservation techniques such as closing open apps you're no longer using and avoiding running power-draining live wallpapers. But if you forget to charge the phone overnight, don't expect to get much joy out of it the next day.
I also did a battery test with the 4X running a graphically taxing 3D game. In this test I set the screen brightness to half. Even so, it took only 1 hour of continuous play for the battery to drop from 100 per cent to 50 per cent. You can probably only expect 2 hours of high-end gaming on a single charge.
LG Optimus 4X HD Phone Review: Display
The Optimus 4X HD comes with a 4.7-inch, 1280 x 720, IPS display. 720p isn't itself an impressive feat anymore, and that's awesome — screens this large really can't be any lower-res and still be usable. The 4X's display is excellent, but that's not surprising: the Nitro HD and Spectrum both proved that the company knows how to make a good screen, and the fact that LG's been a major TV manufacturer for many years certainly helps.The IPS display isn't quite as high-contrast or vivid as the Super LCD on the One X and Evo 4G LTE, but it's still very good, with near-180 degree viewing angles and excellent color reproduction. It's bright enough to be readable in sunlight, and its 312 PPI pixel density is well into "retina" territory — you definitely won't notice individual pixels, a fact also helped by the RGB layout rather than the dreaded PenTile look. Even small text is very readable, and the screen is sharp enough that even the subtle texture on the Contacts icon is noticeable. It's not the best phone display I've seen (that's the One X, and it's not close), but the 4X's screen is as good as you'll find outside HTC's flagship.
The one downside here is more about the handset's production than a problem with the display itself: there's a thick black stripe between the LCD and the bezel, which makes the screen feel like it's set far back into the recesses of the Optimus 4X HD's body. The screen's Gorilla Glass coating is a good addition, but the perceptual distance between your finger and whatever you're touching counteracts some of the immersive powers of such a large display.
Good
• High-resolution screen• Ships with the latest version of Android
Bad
• Poor battery life• Camera has trouble staying focused
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