MWC 2011 – LG. The magnificent four three and a clone
I will briefly tell you about the press conference, for the starters, and then I will get down to the new hardware. Reader, please bear with my hasty narration style – I am trying to cover all the other stands and MWC 2011, despite the critique, does offer a terrible lot.
The press conference was held in a separate room: there were several speakers that speculated upon LG's vision of the future of mobile devices and the place of the company in it. Apparently, judging by the three ready Android flagships LG expects a cozy habitat.
First of all the company's representatives shared their view on the promising technologies for this year: dual core processors, next gen screens and 3D.
The slide that spoke for itself was quite justified.
Then they showed a few infernal (you will understand when you see it) videos about the 3D technology in LG Optimus 3D smartphone and the way it is going to save the world and the universe.
Now let's get down to the smartphone and its features.
LG Optimus 3D
The company calls this phone the first "tri-dual". This is how they put it: World's 1st "Tri-Dual" Architecture. The phone features a 1GHz dual core processor and 2x2GB DDR2 memory nodules that, apparently, operates in dual channel mode. An impressively spicy mixture – the only question is what for?
LG says all this power is needed for 3D. The phone features a capacitive 4.3" touch screen with the resolution of 480x800 capable of displaying 3D graphics.
Naturally, not all the interface is in 3D. The application menu, home screen and many applications are displayed on LG Optimus 3D just like on any other screen. But certain games and applications specially developed for the smartphone can be viewed in 3D.
Moreover, you may watch 3D video on the smartphone that you have recorded yourself. The phone features two 5MP cameras for 3D shooting.
You may upload your videos on YouTube which has promptly created YouTube 3D channel and announced the partnership with LG.
Now, about 3D: it looks interesting, unusual but, in my opinion, it is not the 3D a user will expect judging by 3D movies. You watch the 3D picture on Optimus 3D without any special glasses with just your naked eye. Certainly, the picture is quite different from a regular picture – you can actually see in stereo but I was not impressed by the 3D screen – it has rather raised many issues. Probably because I naively expected something like I see in 3D movies.
About the phone itself: it is a huge plastic brick with a significant weight and no traces of design. But I like it better. If I were to choose between Samsung Galaxy S II and LG Optimus 3D with my tactile senses I would go for the LG phone. Because Galaxy S II is weightless, as if you are holding a replica and its looks are borrowed from iPhone 4. While Optimus 3D is big and heavy and it is not a big deal that has no design and reminds of a button prototype, I still like it better.
The big sensor buttons under the screen are very convenient due to the size, the quality of the screen picture is high, the smartphone is very fast. For now it is everything I can tell about Optimus 3D. For sure this device will cost a lot, but I still would like to thank the company, and not because they will extensevely promote this phone and 3D technology, but simply because LG dared to release such an ambiguous product. It is purely an experiment with unpredictable results even if Optimus 3D turns out to be perfect both in terms of software and hardware. Simply because 3D technology today is still something strange and alien.
LG Optimus Pad
One could also say that this device is a one of the flagships and that would make the four of them. Bu I cannot do that for two reasons. Firstly, because it is a tablet – a different from smartphones category of gadgets. Secondly, the entire LG Optimus Pad presentation was based on one idea – comparison to other tablets, you know to what tablet in particular, and praising Optimus Pad against their background. Not to mention that it is unethical and inappropriate it also tells us that if a company from the start promotes a product in comparison to the competitors' drawbacks it means that the true value of such a product is not really high.
The tablet operates using Android 3.0 and you can already test the new "robot" version on the stands. I do not really understand why Google allowed the manufacturers (LG in particular) to demonstrate Android 3.0 devices because the LG Optimus Pad OS is very crude and unstable. It only feature the home screen, a book reader, Gmail and a few other services and even they are always crashing and viewed with artifacts. So I cannot really make the right impression about Android 3.0 as of the current Optimus Pad version.
The size of the tablet is smaller that of iPad. It looks nice: it's rear panel features mat soft touch plastic.
As well as LG Optimus 3D it features two cameras so you can shoot 3D videos. The screen size is 8.9" -the company humbly claims it to be perfectly sized. The hardware features 1GHz dual core processor based on Nvidia Tegra 2.
There is no info on the price as well as on the release date. It is hard to present my impressions about LG Optimus Pad since Android 3.0 is still raw – the user experience will be based on it – the hardware simply makes it run smoothly.
After the LG stand I went to the Samsung stand just across, and besides the daring experiments with 3D I would also like to thank the guys from LG for not using «SUPER-DUPER AMOLED PLUS !!1111» screens in their smartphones. It is really a relief for me and my eyes.
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