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The Black Beast has just being unleashed! Don’t worry people; it’s just the LG Optimus Black P970 that is released to the market this month. Featuring what the manufacturers would call it the NOVA display technology competing with Apple iPhone’s retina display and also the Super AMOLED Plus display from Samsung. Slim and lightweight at the same time makes this phone so sexy and attractive.
Design
The first impression users would notice is how slim the phone would be and its only 122 x 64 x 9.2 mm. Not only that, its light at only 109 g. The front is a 4 inch display with NOVA display technology but more about that later. 4 capacitive (Menu, Home, Return and Search) buttons located at the bottom of the screen. There is a 2 Mp front facing camera for video call just beside the headpiece. Not much at the right and bottom side of the phone. At the left side there is a volume rocker and also a dedicated gesture “G” button much like the previous LG Optimus 2X. On top there is 3.5 mm phone jack, a dedicated mic for noise cancellation purpose, a microUSB jack with sliding lid and also the power/lock button. The 5 Mp camera, single LED flash and speaker is located at the back of the phone. The back cover is made from plastic with matt finish and popping out the cover reveals the SIM slot, microSD memory card (supported up to 32 GB), and also the 1500 mAh battery.
Features
The LG Optimus Black is one of the high end phones currently in the market. The phone comes with Android 2.2.2 Froyo and is said to be upgraded to Gingerbread in the future. User interface is much like the Optimus 2X running on Gesture UI 2.0 and Optimus UI 2.0. TI OMAP 3630 1 GHz processor for speed and energy efficient chipset but it’s not dual-core even though it’s a high end phone. PowerVR SGX 530 GPU is installed for running all sorts of 3D games. Built in 521 MB RAM and also 2 GB for storage but only 1 GB is available so it’s better to have an extra memory card as this phone can support up to 32 GB. With so many video and music, 1 GB is bound to be full in a short time.
LG boast about the new NOVA display technology used in this phones IPS LCD. Furthermore, its 50% more energy efficient enabling a longer usage time for the phone plus the contras is brighter than the iPhone 4’s Retina Display and also on par with Super AMOLED Plus display from Samsung. Under sunny condition the phone does lit up bright enough so that the display won’t be affected by glare from the sun. Picture is bright and colorful thanks to 16 M-Color from the NOVA display.
The gesture control is same like the Optimus 2X. By pressing the button while tilting the phone would switch the home screen one by one. Also there are many uses for the gesture button including SMS or activating the camera without unlocking the phone. Options for turning on and off the Gesture feature are allowed so it’s not a must to use it.
For connection, the phone supports the latest Flash 10.1 download speed on 3G is 7.2 Mbps and upload speed is 5.76 Mbps so it’s an average speed. Watching flash videos online is mostly fine unless for FullHD videos it’s not suitable because the processor is only single core and unable to render it. Bluetooth v2.1 comes with this phone and it’s not the latest but soon to be leading the future of Bluetooth is the Wi-Fi Direct available in this phone. By transferring data trough Wi-Fi Direct certified devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II is even much faster than Bluetooth.
Another feature about this phone is that it comes with 5 MP camera and a single LED flash with auto focus, manual/touch focus and also image stabilizer while there is also a front facing 2 MP camera. There is no camera dedicated button but using Gesture control the cameras function is much easier to be executed. Picture quality is above average but recording video is only limited to HD 720p only due to single core processor only.
Lastly there are also many basic functions like, A-GPS, Organizer, and Voice command. Social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is included. SMS function is well performed in landscape or in portrait mode given the large screen size. The response is good and messages can be sent quite fast. There is also music player available for the phone and separated to different categories (Album, Artist, Playlist, and Songs). Tilting the phone to landscape mode turns the music player into 3D view is an interesting feature too. Calling quality is excellent thanks to the active noise cancellation dedicated mic.
Pros and Cons
Design wise is a plus point. This phone is more of a looker because of the slim and light design and also display from the Nova technology is very good. Basic usage of the phone is impressive with good and fluid response. Calling quality is good with the aid of dedicated mic.
The weak point of this phone is not all apps are supported due to the phone is running on a single core processor only. This would affect video rendering FullHD video as well all because of hardware issue, other than that this phone is near perfect.
Conclusion
If you would like a slim and light phone then this is the phone for you. If for a performance wise phone then you should consider the LG Optimus 2X or the Samsung Galaxy S II as they run on dual cores. |
