LG Optimus 4x

A good buy if you want a fast Android phone with the latest bells and whistles

LG is calling this smartphone its best ever. And I can see why. It’s got smart looks, clean lines and a sleek form factor even with a large 4.7 inch screen. It runs on the latest version of Android—Ice Cream Sandwich—and it is fast. Even the 8 megapixel camera is very responsive.

I had the phone for about three weeks and got mixed reactions from the people I showed it to. Some liked it, some did not. But everybody agreed that its picture quality definitely needed to improve. After all, you do expect more from an 8 megapixel sensor. But I soon realised that while the pictures did not look great when seen directly on its screen, they came out really well on Instagram and other social media websites.

The phone runs on a Tegra 3 processor—a 1.5 GHz Quad Core (that’s where the ‘4x’ comes from), which performs well under multi-tasking conditions, and the GPS too locks on quickly. It has 16 GB of memory and you can open the back cover to insert a microSD card of up to 32 GB.

I usually find the back covers of LG phones flimsy. This one appeared no different. But when I tested it, it turned out to be quite sturdy.

The software implementation on this phone is a mixed bag. I was not too happy with the keyboard, so I downloaded Swype. Some of my friends said that the software felt as if it was from a previous generation of Android, and not the latest one. Now why did LG do that?

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