LG Optimus One Review

The Optimus One is LG’s shot at the budget market, creating different models and shapes all based on the same specs for carriers across the globe. Frankly, it’s worked out quite well indeed for them (they sold over a million in their first 40 days). Now, that’s all well and good for the bank balances of those sitting in LG’s headquarters, but what about for your pocket? Is the Optimus the budget phone of your most fevered dreams? Read on to find out.

Hardware:

The LG Optimus one is quite a neat little package, its HVGA 3.2 inch dominates the majority of the face of the phone, with 4 small hardware buttons along the bottom of the phone for (from left to right) Menu, Home, Back and Search. Along the right hand side sits a discreet volume rocker, leading to the top which holds the standard 3.5mm headphone jack and on/off switch and that’s about it except the micro USB charger port at the bottom.

As for the screen, it’s a capacitive affair and frankly, it’s a little bit rubbish. The HVGA resolution won’t compete with your Droids/Milestones or iPhone 4′s and the brightness leaves a little something to be desired, but for general everyday use it’s perfectly acceptable and on a budget phone such as this having something as responsive as this is a pleasant suprise.

It’s kept chugging along by a 600MHz processor, which while being far from the most powerful of mobile processors keeps the 2.2 powered phone moving at a reasonable pace with only a little lag keeping you from mobile bliss (more on this during the software portion of the review). In terms of general feel, it’s surprisingly well put together, no creaks or wobbles and the plastics feel reasonably high quality, belying the price of the unit and it’s tapered edges mean the phone feels good in the palm of your hand.

It’s 3.2 megapixel camera behaved as expected, nothing spectacular about its performance but your eyes will likely not bleed at the results unless you decide to blow them up to unreasonable sizes, video on the other hand is so ugly that you’re only going to want to use it if pigs have somehow learnt to fly.

Software:

The phone runs a very lightly skinned version of Google’s now ubiquitous (and awesome) Android operating system, it’s on 2.2 which has been recently superseded by 2.3, which comes with numerous speed boosts and increased gaming capabilities. LG has promised that all of its Optimus One phones will receive this but for the moment 2.2 is blazing fast and leaps and bounds ahead of older versions.

The skin, if you can call it that is basically a new dock, which serperates pre-installed applications and those you buy from recommended downloads from LG (which is sort of cheap) and a series of short cuts in line with the application launcher. The drop down notification shade gets quick settings shortcuts along the top and a bunch of applications get bright, slightly cartoonish shortcuts. Powered by the 600MHz processor, 2.2 seems to have no problem running a series of aplications, flipping between them causes the phone no trouble and overall it’s a perfectly addiquate experience.

So how about simple things, making calls and sending texts, how are they? Incoming calls sounded clear but people at the other end sometimes had trouble hearing us in high background noise situations but it wasn’t uncomfortable for them in any way. Writing texts on the screen using Androids stock keyboard was easy enough, if not cramped. Although the beauty of Android is it’s ability to let you change ANYTHING about it, so if they keyboard doesn’t take your fancy, just download a new one until you’re comfortable.

Conclusion:

The Optimus One is a budget phone, and in some respects it behaves exactly as such. But in others it belies it’s price and feels great to use, it’s the perfect balancing act between cost and quality and for the price you’re going to struggle to find such a generally capable little handset.

7/10

With thanks to the three blog: http://blog.three.co.uk/