THE GAME CHANGER

When Samsung, Motorola, HTC and Sony Ericsson seemed content with the single-core processors in smartphones, LG surprised everyone by harnessing the power of a dual-core processor. The Optimus 2x stands tall in the high-end smartphone market and takes the credit for starting the ‘super smartphone’ revolution.

LOOKS: Some believe that a powerful smartphone should look like one. With a 4-inch super bright and clear display, the Optimus 2x has a persona of its own. The capacitive display is accompanied by four touch keys, a power key at the top and volume controls on the right panel. The charging jack lies at the bottom. A 3.5 mm jack along with HDMI port are neatly placed on the top on the metallic bezel. Even though the back panel is made of plastic, it is smooth to hold.

SOFTWARE & APPS: While we were excited about the Tegra 2 processor, its coming with Android v2.2 (upgrade awaited) was disappointing. The divided homescreen can be brought together with a pinch. On the apps front, the Optimus 2x smartly handles emails and social networking clients. For downloading applications, Android Market is aided by the LG App Advisor. The pre-installed set of apps includes Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

BATTERY: With the dual core processor at work and not many applications optimised for this, we were concerned about the battery performance. To our surprise, the Optimus 2x manages to last a full day on a single charge with push notifications on for Gmail, Twitter and Facebook and regular calling, browsing and some camera usage. It gives 12-15 hours of backup on 3G network.

CAMERA: Along with an energetic performance, the 2x’s forte is its great 8 MP camera. The photography options include an LED flash, auto focus and various modes like face detection, macro mode and image stabilisation. The lack of a dedicated camera key means everything has to be operate on the screen itself. The images were rich and looked real—colours did not seem washed out nor artificial. Yet another strength of the Optimus 2x is the addition of Full HD video capture. Full HD videos can be captured at 24 frames per second, but there is also the option of recording videos at 720p at 30 fps. And then, watching videos on the Gorilla glass display is a pleasure.

SPEED: As the Optimus 2x operates on the 1 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it is super fast in comparison to phones fitted with singlecore engines. From accessing windows on the homepage to application launcher, there was a noticeable difference. It even handled multitasking smartly and launched applications within fractions of a second. We test the performance on various benchmark tests and the Optimus 2x scored 2624 on the Quadrant test, leaving behind single cores, which usually score less than 2000. Occasionally, it did slow down but required not rebooting.

BAG IT OR JUNK IT?

It is fast and powerful, but will face heat from Samsung’s Galaxy S II.