Full review of the first smart on NVIDIA Tegra 2 - LG Optimus 2x

Frankly, the Optimus 2x is the first LG smartphone that I liked all at once. Not that the others didn’t like them at all, but usually you sit, weigh the pros and cons, and here there’s almost one solid positive — a great look and a whimsy!


')

Design

Optimus has ceased to be a budget tube. Despite the fact that it is completely plastic (a metal strip with a Google sign on the back is not counted), the gadget gives the impression of an expensive and very high-quality thing. Build on five with a plus - no squeaks, even if you try to twist it. The gaps between the parts of the body are minimal. Everything is literally brought down in one whole brick!



The connectors and buttons, in my opinion, are located exactly where needed - nothing interferes with manipulations, and there is no need to reach far too far. Above there is a power and lock button, a 3.5-mm headphone jack and an HDMI output under the cap, which allows you to easily display a picture in 1080p format on a large screen. On the right there was a place for two volume keys. And on the bottom there are two speakers and a microUSB port for connecting to a computer.



To the right above the display, a two-megapixel camera for video calls stands out against the general dark background, and to the left, if you look closely, you can distinguish a set of sensors for controlling the backlight. Under the screen are four touch "android" keys. I will not say that they greatly please me, but in this case their mechanical counterparts here would be completely out of place - the whole concept would have collapsed right away.

Display

The 2x widescreen display is one of the largest on the market - four inches. This, unfortunately, is not AMOLED, but an ordinary TFT, but with a decent resolution - 800 x 480 pixels, and, surprisingly, it is not inferior in quality to the displays on organic light-emitting diodes. Viewing angles, brightness, contrast - all at a high level. The only negative - he will still have higher power consumption.

Iron

But in fact, the coolest thing in this smartphone is not to show either in photos or on video! Optimus 2x is the first smartphone built on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform - the entire system on a single chip. Several cores work for the owner at once: two main cores of ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore with a frequency of 1 gigahertz and quite adult cache (32 KB and 1 MB for L1 and L2, respectively). Plus, several special hardware solutions for three-dimensional graphics (an eight-core ULP GeForce chip), as well as video and audio encoding and decoding.



All this gives a tangible increase in performance both in subjective sensations and in synthetic tests such as Quadrant Standart. The latter appreciated the power of 2x as much as a thousand points higher than HTC Desire HD. Communicators capable, like this Optimus, to score 2467 points, I have not yet met.

With this smart, you probably don’t have to bother with transferring applications and games to the SD card from the main memory, as there is enough of it here. By default, all software is placed on a 2-GB partition of an eight-gigabyte flash array.



But little RAM. For such a beast as Optimus 2x 512 MB - this is not at all serious. However, there is really nothing to complain about here: not even one of the most complex graphics games (including those intended for launch on SE Xperia Play), didn’t slow down Tegra on the second.

Connection

For the rest, nothing unusual was noticed in the hardware stuffing. Naturally, the full stuffing of wireless connections: 3G, Wi-Fi b / g / n with support for DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth, GPS and FM radio. There is, however, I have one complaint - with the loss of communication and further detection of the cellular network, the gadget did not want to connect to the Internet, and sometimes just make calls, so I had to switch to “On the plane” mode and back. But it is clear that this is still a pre-production sample, and a company of the LG level, producing a device of this level, cannot afford to make mistakes. Definitely, by the time the sales start this problem will be solved.

Camera

In general, the new Envidian platform supports cameras up to 12 megapixels, but LG apparently decided that it would be too much and they built an 8-megapixel sensor into the back panel of their gadget, which the LED flash comes to the rescue in difficult lighting conditions.



In general, the photos pleased. On the Optimus 2x, they look very good, but if you open them on the big screen, characteristic noises become noticeable.


Full size photo


Full size photo

This camera can not only take pictures, but also shoot video in 1080p format at 24 frames per second. But if you need 30 fps, you will have to lower the resolution to 720p.

Gj

Now Optimus 2x is running Android 2.2, but soon the developers promise to transfer it to the next version - 2.3. In fact, this is, of course, good, but still not enough, since neither one nor the other software version is sharpened for multi-threaded calculations. In my opinion, it’s pointless to wait for the Honeycomb to appear on it, and something tells me that by the time the tablet and smartphone versions of Android merge together again, there will be no update for this gadget. This is a little sad.

But under the Tegra 2 "optimized" Android Market. There will soon open a special section with advanced games that will be in the teeth for now only this chip.

I would also like to note the useless, but pleasant function called “Gestures”, which by LG was even placed in a separate sub-item of the “Settings” menu. The owners (and not only them) of HTC communicators are familiar with the function of increasing the volume of a call, if the device “thinks” that it is in your pocket, or the function of turning off the call, if the gadget is placed with the display down. But the developers of Optimus 2x went further and, among other things, taught the accelerometer to respond to tapping on the body. While in a gallery or player, you can flip through photos and tracks by double-tapping the corresponding ends of the smartphone. I repeat, it is interesting, but I used this function only once, when I checked how it works :)


You certainly need to talk about such an important thing in your device as an on-screen keyboard. At first I thought that it was not very comfortable in 2x, but over time I got used to it and got involved, and now I miss the panel with frequently used symbols.

Working hours

NVIDIA claims that Tegra 2, with all its power, has reduced power consumption due to the distribution of calculations across the cores and the presence of a special ARM7 core that controls everything else and turns them on and off in time. I am ready to believe it, but only after the software platform begins to match the hardware. Now, a non-optimized Android and a large bright display in 6-7 hours defuse the handset to zero. Well, or if you don’t touch the gadget at all, the 1500 mAh battery can last for 12 hours.

Summary

The LG Optimus 2x is a very cool gadget. One of the most interesting communicators that I have met lately both in terms of design and iron. Let the potential of Tegra 2 not yet used to its fullest, still the presence of this “stone” allows you to forget about the brakes. As for power consumption, the owners of Android devices almost always carry a charger with them. The only thing that stops me from buying it immediately is the malicious price tag, on which there will obviously be a five-digit number starting with a three ...