LG Optimus 4X HD - Review

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The Optimus 4X HD is LG's first quad-core offering, and joins the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X. With the S III in the clear lead in terms of performance, the LG Optimus 4X HD is closely followed by the HTC One X. It is also cheaper than the One X, holds all the bangs and whistles that the One X offers and comes with expandable storage, which the One X lacks. For Rs. 32,999 (MRP) the device can be considered as your go-to quad-core smartphone.

The HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III have been battling it out as the best quad-core smartphones available in the market. But now these two devices are joined by a third contender, the LG Optimus 4X HD. Does it have what it takes to stand tall with the big guns or are you better of with the tried and tested? Read on to find out!

Design and Build
One look at the LG Optimus 4X HD and the first thing that will come to mind is that the device is huge. It has a large 4.7-inch IPS LCD display which feels a little more rectangular in shape when compared to the HTC One X (read our review) or the Samsung Galaxy S III (read our review).

Just like the plethora of other Android devices in the market, the LG Optimus 4X HD sports three touch sensitive buttons below the display – back, home and menu. Long pressing the home button brings up the multitasking menu and you can close apps from here by simply swiping them out of the way.

The face of the LG Optimus 4X HD is simple and clean with the LG logo resting below the earpiece. To the right of the earpiece is the 1.3MP front facing camera for video chatting.

Android version

Back

Back open

Camera

LED flash

The rear of the LG Optimus 4X HD has a textured finish to it. The rear panel is quite plasticky and houses the 8MP camera with an LED flash. The overall finish and the feel of the device in our hands was a bit better with the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III as they sported a polycarbonate finish. The LG is not bad by any means but the feel of the device in one’s hands could have been better.

Customizable app

Media hub

Swipe in any direction.

Top

Touch buttons

In terms of controls too you have the standard assortment of physical buttons. The power/sleep/wake button rests on the top of the device along with the headphones jack. The top is a more convenient place for the power button as compared to other devices that have it on the right panel. The volume rocker rests on the left of the LG Optimus 4X HD. It is really slim and blends into the left panel. For look and design this is a nice touch but ergonomically, it’s easy to lose the volume rocker. The bottom of the device houses the microUSB port.

All three devices in the quad-core war boast of their own unique identity with their design and build. The HTC One X has quite a bold look, the Samsung Galaxy S III has an elegant look to it and the LG Optimus 4X HD goes for a simple candy bar form factor maintaining elegance and is seemingly very reminiscent of the LG Chocolate BL-40.

Features and SpecificationsOn the specifications front, the LG Optimus 4X HD boasts of the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz, 1GB of RAM,16GB built-in storage (12GB user available), expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. The HTC One X gives up on expandable storage by offering 32GB internal storage (26GB user available), however Dropbox storage is available. The Samsung Galaxy S III is the king here offering 16/32/64 GB internal storage (only 16GB variant available in India) and users can add another whopping 64GB via a microSD card – it also features Dropbox storage.

The display on the device is a 4.7-inch True HD-IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1280x720. The display on the device is truly gorgeous. Whether you are reading text, watching videos or playing games and running apps, you will fall in love with the vivid nature of the LG Optimus 4X HD’s display and the fantastic viewing angles.

The device runs on Android OS 4.0.3 ICS, same as the HTC One X. While reviewing the LG Optimus 4X HD we did check for software update there weren’t any available. The S III ran on ICS version 4.0.4.

One thing we were afraid of was the skin overlaying the OS on the LG Optimus 4X HD. Samsung and HTC have passed the test of time and their skins, TouchWiz and Sense UI have been accepted and there is hot debate on which is better. We are pleased to say that the skin on the LG Optimus 4X HD isn’t as bad as we have found on some other LG smartphones. It isn’t TouchWiz or Sense but its good nonetheless.

The LG Optimus 4X HD has a very simple interface to it. A big lock in the center of the screen can be dragged in any direction to unlock it. You have a set of optional unlocks for the home screen such as swipe (mentioned above), Face Unlock, pattern, PIN and password. All these work pretty well but swipe is what is set as default on the device.

You can also customize the widgets and shortcuts on the lock screen of the LG Optimus 4X HD. There are four shortcut icons at the bottom of the lock screen – phone, message, email and camera (for example). To access any one of these tap and drag the icon. It's a lot like dragging the icons into the circle in HTC Sense UI.

The rest of the LG Optimus 4X HD’s UI is simple and that is a good thing. You have 7 home screens that you can flood with shortcuts and widgets. Hit the apps icon at the bottom of the display and you are greeted with three main pages – Apps, Downloads and Widgets. You can move the apps around in the listing page and easily delete apps from the app page itself. It's a nice touch. The only complaint that we have with the skin is that some of its icons are downright childish. The message, calendar and alarm for example look as though they have been taken straight from an Archie’s comic book

Samsung may have S-voice to take on Siri but LG doesn't have any of that. The LG Optimus 4X HD has the simple voice recognition that comes built into the Google OS and it works well. Indian names and places may be a problem but for most of the things it works well with the Indian accent.

Another nice addition in the features of the UI is the Media Hub. It clubs all your photos, videos and music under one roof and accessing it is very easy. Overall, the features of the device are good and stand tall in front of the competition. In terms of its specifications, below is a quick glance at where the LG Optimus 4X HD stands.

Performance
The quad-core era is bringing with it mammoth performers and all the devices in this category do not disappoint. Benchmarks are run on these devices to test their raw processing, gaming and overall capabilities. All the three devices – the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III and the LG Optimus 4X HD have performed quite well, but it is without a doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S III is the leader here followed by the 4X HD and the One X. Take a look at the scores compared in the graphs below.The 4.7-inch HD-IPS LCD display is really good and one of the best we’ve seen on a smartphone. It is at par with the competition if not better. The display is very crisp, text look rich and colours vibrant. The texts look rich. Since the size of the LG Optimus 4X HD’s display is large, browsing the web too is a good experience.The specifications of the HTC One X and the LG Optimus 4X HD are at par, but still, in most of the tests, the LG surpassed the HTC, which was a bit surprising. The difference wasn't startling though.

Videos look fantastic on the LG Optimus 4X HD’s display. We played some MOV, MKV and MP4 files on the device and they all ran very smoothly on the device. Navigating on the timeline of the video too was smooth. The viewing angles are very good as well. Two other people were watching videos with me on the device and all of us could see the picture perfectly. Now that's saying a lot.

The audio from the LG Optimus 4X HD however is a bit underwhelming. The speakers are loud and clear but lack the punch we found on the S III.

Typing on the device too was smooth. Be it replying to text messages, mails or simply Googling, the keyboard is very good if not excellent. It works well and the shortcuts to punctuations are as good as the ones found on the HTC One X.

Irrespective of the lighting conditions, the LG Optimus 4X HD’s camera is capable of taking some really good images. The camera has an 8MP shooter that also records video in 1080p @ 30fps and the output is quite good. The camera also has the usual array of modes such as panorama, HDR, scene modes and more. The absence of a dedicated camera button is missed and considering the size of the device, it would have been an added advantage.

Apart from the supercomputer capabilities, the LG Optimus 4X HD needs to be able to do the basic functions of a phone – make calls. Thanks to the size of the device, the dialer is big with large numbers. The call quality from the speaker and the earpiece too is good. The phone may be a little large for some but it isn’t as bad as holding the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 to your ear.

Another feature that we appreciate about the LG Optimus 4X HD is that it has the ability to house a full sized SIM rather than a microSIM which other high end phone are opting for. The advantage here is that if you need to insert your SIM in another device, you will not need the microSIM to full-SIM adaptor.

The LG Optimus 4X HD has a 2150 mAh battery, slighlty larger than the 2100 mAh battery found on the Samsung Galaxy S III, and the 1,750 mAh battery on the HTC One X. In this case, battery life truly is a function of battery size, where the 4X HD retains charge longer than the S III, and the One X, which comes in third. The battery life is excellent - on a full charge we ran some apps, played a bit of video, did some social networking, used Wi-Fi indoors and 3G connectivity outdoors and the device lasted us for over a day and a half, nearly two days. That's really good considering the phone is a quad-core device and has a large and vibrant display.