LG Optimus 3D review
The LG line of Optimus smartphone’s began some time ago with the cheap and cheerful Optimus One (we reviewed and liked it, it’s still a great budget smartphone). Now 11 months on LG has seen fit to grow that brand into something much bigger just like Samsung with their Galaxy line, and with with various smartphone’s from LG to fit different price points and needs, their 3D toting Optimus 3D certainly stands out in the crowd. So is that extra dimension worth your spare cash? And are the D capabilities of this phone worh having? Read on.
Design
The LG Optimus 3D is home to some not inconsiderate dimensions, that’s not to say it’s gigantic but with a 4.3 inch screen and dual cameras on the back it comes in at a reasonably porky 128.8 x 68 x 11.9 mm. To hold it’s a little cumbersome, it’s weight clocking in at 168g, but not so much that it’s cramp inducing or impossible to use.
As far as actual design goes, the 3D is a reasonably attractive chap. It’s front dominated by that large screen, save for some brushed metal at the top and bottom along with some touch activated buttons along the bottom. The back is made from a lovely charcoal coloured soft touch plastic back (which feels reasonably high quality) with one long strip of metal, emblazoned with the words “3D STEREOSCOPIC” and dual 5mp cameras as well as a flash.
The buttons on the LG Optimus 3D are all well placed and easy to reach for all hand sizes despite the 4.3″ display, whilst the device itself sports both a micro USB port as well as a mini-HDMI for playing back all that delicious 3D footage on your 3DTV (those without one are out of luck).
Overall the design of this smartphone doesn’t exactly boggle minds, however the extra thickness of the handset can be put down to the added features this smartphone currently packs over the competition.
Screen/power/software
Usually, I’d split these up into separate sections but for this review I’m going to roll up all the non 3D aspects of the phone into one easy to handle section. In it’s regular 2D mode, the screen on the Optimus is more than acceptable, colours pop with nice vibrancy and images never failed to look quite lovely on it. As is to be expected from most screens, viewing angles don’t hold out all the way to the extremes but for everyday use they should be fine. Touch accuracy is superb, light glances and touches are all registered with aplomb, I even loaded up a multitouch visualizer and managed to get the phone to register 11(!) points of contact before I ran out of fingers/noses.
According to our friends at GSMareana, the phone is packing a Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, TI OMAP4430 chipset. To most, that’s a slightly useless bit of information. So how about some real world performance? Well, the phone is fast, really past. Although stuck with Android 2.2 at the moment (rather than the faster 2.3) it loads websites, games, applications and everything else with the kind of keen performance you’d demand from your high end mobile. In terms of benchmarks, that works out at an average of 2162 on Quadrant (a benchmarking tool which doesn’t work great with dual core phones) and a score of 71.137 on Linpack (multi-thread).
The software, as I mentioned, is currently based on Android 2.2. It’s also not what you’d call a looker. It seems to be based on a roughly similar design ethic to that of Samsung’s painfully ugly Touchwiz layer, with a persistent row of 4 apps along the bottom of the home screen and brightly coloured icons for every bundled app. Frankly, it makes your very expensive phone feel a bit like a very expensive toy. Thankfully, it’s quick and generally gets out of your way without many bugs. Even better perhaps, you could simply download an alternative launcher and never have to see it again (I recommend ADW Launcher & LauncherPro). LG have seen fit to bundle quite a few apps, these are: Asphalt 6 3D, Gulliver’s Travels 3D, Let’s Golf 2 3D, Nova 3D, Application Manager, Finance, LG World, News, Polaris Office, Remote Call, Richnote, Smartshare, Twitter, What’s New & LG App Advisor. Yes, there are quite a few and no, you can’t remove them.
3D
And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the time you’ve all been waiting for… 3D! As I’ve used the word 3D 16 times now in this article, and the fact that the name 3D is in the name of the phone, you’d rightfully assume that the phone was indeed packing that extra D into it’s body. The screen itself is actually the autostereoscopic kind (exactly like the type found in the 3DS) which when held at the right distance suceeds in sending one image to one eye and the other to your remaining peeper, thus creating a 3D effect. This works well once you find the sweet spot and pictures, videos, games and media all pop off the screen with a decent amount of clarity. The novelty of snapping a picture and then looking back on it in 3D really is quite impressive but for most people the effect is headache inducing after 5 minutes or so.
LG as I mentioned included a fair few 3D games as well as an application for the 3D camera (the front facing snapper is not 3D) in which you can take either 2D or 3D images and video clips. The software works well and pictures come out looking great in 3D or pretty acceptable in 2D (the cameras aren’t the highest quality, they do struggle in low light but for everyday snapping they’re alright).
The downside to all this extra D is that it truly does destroy the battery life of your phone, meaning you have to watch just how much of it you use. Without that use, the 1500mAh battery will get you through a full day before you need to get to a charger, not that it’s some sort of endurance machine. I’m convinced that the autostereoscopic screen does indeed damage the viewing angles on the phone aswell.
Wrap up
There are bonus’ to being an early adopter, you get reasonably futuristic technology to show off and if it all pulls together you’re sort of set for a while. On the other hand, there are plenty of perils, just think of all the money people blew on HD-DVD’s before they all went belly up and became nothing more than useless disks. 3D has become a massive gimmick, one that’s being put in as many things as possible. Is it cool? Yeah, sure, sort of of. Is it useful? Not at all. You’ve got to ask yourself, is your desire for depth in images large enough to overcome the shortcomings it brings?
My advice if you’re desperate for 3D would be to wait a generation, this kind of technology improves rapidly and this time next year if the gimmick is still popular, viewing angles will be better, power consumption will be lower and there will be smaller, better built phones using the technology. Of course, if you’re really hungry for 3D the Optimus is a more than good phone. The choice is yours. Now, if you don’t mind I need to look at my friends face poking out of the screen at me.
Rating: 
7/10
