Thread: LG optimus Black

What's best about the LG Optimus Black is the fact that it doesn't try to be what it isn't. It's not a super high-end smartie, but it's no slouch either. Dressed in suave black, it uses its minimalistic smooth chassis to exude an aura of elegance. The 4-inch 480x800 screen, dubbed the , and claims a brightness of 700 nits*what it translates to is much better outdoor visibility. Toting a IGHz single-core chip, the Black runs Froyo, alas. Connectivity covers N Wi-Fiand DLNA, but no HDMl.lt even supports direct peer-to-peer Wi-Fi data transfer to compatible devices. However, there aren't many devices that can do this yet.

A special key on the side, labelled 'G: enables you to use gestures and motion to navigate and use certain functions. For example, you can launch the camera without unlocking the phone by pressing the G·key and shaking the phone sideways. Similarly, you can pan web pages, navigate pictures in the gallery, and change music tracks by lilting the phone. It's a bit of a hit and miss, and seems gimmicky.



Otherwise, you get LG's Optimus UI 2.0 skin atop Froyo, with seven home screens, some useful widgets including animated weather, social networking, news, etc. It's not a patch on HTC's Sense UI, but SNS integration is quite decent.
In terms of performance, we found that most features do their Jobs fairly well. From the 5-meg snapper, 720p recording, to DivX playback - nothing is too crappy or outstanding either. The phone isn't as zippy as compared to the dual-core monsters out there, but manages day-to-day tasks - although it does get the jitters sometimes. At this price, it's a reasonable smartie to consider.