A couple of months ago, we railed against LG for waiting so long to bring out the awesome-looking new Optimus G. It’s a 4G-powerhouse that we’ll be waiting until early next year to get our hands on. After putting the handset through its paces yesterday, it’s worth the wait. Read on to find out who is to blame for the delay. Oooh you’ll be right-mad, you will.
The Optimus G is LG deciding that it can do more with its hardware if it added the sum of its parts. By adding a sexy 4.7-inch “True HD IPS Plus” screen, batteries that promise to go the extra mile by doing 800 cycles compared to 500 (and having already been tested in the Holden Volt), and an awesome 13-megapixel camera, LG certainly has pulled out all the stops.
To top it off, the device is outfitted with 2GB of RAM, Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie and a new 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor that actually bundles the LTE antenna onto the chip to reduce lag and battery drain.
Aside from it being really fast, LG have made an effort on the Android 4.2 skin to make it more customisable than ever. You can choose your own folder icons or make your own. You can set words to trigger the camera shutter using your voice. You can draw on it like a Galaxy Note. You can customise your notification window with your own shortcuts and you can even run transparent app windows underneath each other thanks to the fast processor. The best part of that is that you won’t need a third-party launcher to do it. It all works out of the box.
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The only annoying thing is that the design of the Android 4.2 skin LG has employed looks quite dated. Almost like it’s ripped straight from a 2009 pre-paid handset, and that’s disappointing.
The screen is incredible at a resolution of 1280×768 pixels with a ppi of 330 and the device feels great in your hand.
So why do we have to wait for it? Surely such a great handset would sell out here in Australia, so who’s to blame for the wait? In a word? Carriers.
LG says that to get this device with 4G, Android 4.2 and the customisable UI through three networks-worth of testing will take four months. Count ’em: four. Handsets live and die in four months, carriers. This needs to be faster.
Our moaning won’t make a difference, but you should know that the LG Optimus G is one of those handsets that’s probably worth waiting for. If you’re the impatient type, though, there’s always the Nexus 4?