LG Optimus 4X HD P880

The Good: The LG Optimus 4X HD has great looks with slim form factor. It has a powerful Quad-Core processor and offers great display, great video playback and good battery life.

The Bad: Lackluster camera it needs more work on autofocus, uncomfortable for single hand use, average sound quality and hard to find physical buttons.

The Bottom Line: The LG Optimus 4X HD is the company’s first Quad-Core processor smartphone. It is a wonderful, powerful phone for an appropriate price of around Rs.33,000. However we can't recommend it over devices like the HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S3. LG needs to pull something out of the box if it wants dominate the arena where Samsung, HTC, Sony and Motorola are ruling.

Design: The handset weighs 133 grams and features a plastic body, but thanks to its clever design manages to look expensive, while a textured back panel provides a good grip. At the left it has a volume rocker, a power button and headphone jack on top and the charging port down below.

LG has done something special with brushed hard plastic feel which really feel as premium device. On front it spots 4.7 inch True HD-IPS LCD screen, but there is a slight problem with it. There is a huge gap between the screen and the glass; you can see the gab when device held at an angle. This means that some of the amazing clarity is lost.

Processor and Operating System: The Optimus 4X HD is powered with latest and powerful 1.5 GHz Quad-Core Cortex-A9 processor with Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset along with ULP GeForce graphic processor unit. The Quad-Core processor is paired with 1 GB of RAM to offer better and faster performance.

The device comes with Google’s Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system onboard. Along with this it has LG’s Optimus 3.0 user interface for easy and better operation.

Screen: The Optimus 4X HD comes with a 4.7 inch True HD-IPS LCD touchscreen display with 1280x720 pixels of resolution. The display is excellent but not surprising for high end devices. The display produces excellent color reproduction, enough bright in sunlight to read the content on screen and up to 180 degree viewing angle. The screen also comes with Gorilla Glass coating which is a good addition.

Camera: There is an 8 MP camera at the rare and a 1.3 MP camera at the front for video calls and chats. The rear camera is impressive, provides solid color but the photos are soft in bright lighting not sharper and sometimes unfocused. The camera can also record 1080p videos.

Storage and Connectivity: It comes with 16 GB internal memory in which 12 GB is available for users and also has a memory card slot where you can expand memory up to 32 GB using microSD card.

As far as connectivity is concerned the high-end smartphone comes with connectivity options such as GPRS, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS and also supports Adobe Flash.

Battery: This smartphone packs a 2,150 mAh Li-Ion battery which is slightly bigger than the 2,100mAh battery of Samsung Galaxy S3. As company quoted it offers up to 730 hours of stand-by time in 2G, up to 686 hours of stand-by time in 3G. For talk time it offers up to 9 hours and 20 minutes on 2G and 3G as well.

Wrap-UP: LG has finally come up with something good which can compete with other leading smartphone like Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X in the market. The Optimus 4X speed is excellent, improved design but not the best in its class. It disappoints with the camera function.

It's a good smartphone, if you want a cheap Quad-Core smartphone but there is no special reason to pick over Samsung Galaxy S3 or Sony Xperia S or the HTC One X.