Nobody can be told what Lg Optimus Black is, you have to see it for yourself. It’s black, sleek, elegant, android on board, Darth Vader’s first choice. Yes, it plays on the Dark Side of the force. At least, it’s cool enough for that. Like, you know, Darth Vader meets Angelina Jolie kind of thing. This is Lg Optimus Black on first sight. The display is pretty impressive, it was called NOVA, because in terms of brightness is almost a supernova, one of the best displays on the market.
Let’s see the main selling points of this black beauty:
Key features:
• 9.2 mm slim touchscreen bar
• 4” NOVA display at 700 nits of brightness, 16M-color WVGA capacitive IPS LCD unit
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• Android OS v2.2 Froyo (upgradable to v2.3) with LG Home launcher 2.0 and Gesture UI 2.0
• TI OMAP 3630 1GHz processor
• 512 MB RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, face detection and geotagging
• 720p video recording at 30fps
• 2 MP front-facing camera with video calls
• Wi-Fi b/g/n; Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS, digital compass
• 2GB storage (1GB user available); micro SD slot, 32GB supported (2GB card included)
• Accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• micro USB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Smart dialing, voice dialing
• DivX/XviD video support
• Gesture controls with dedicated button
• Adobe Flash 10.1 support
• Document viewer/editor
With a 1GHZ single core processor and 512MB or RAM, sounds good enough to meet the parents, yet it is not a geek’s first choice, it’s mostly an all rounder than a spaceship.
Anyway, it has Wi-Fi direct technology and a 5Megapixels camera capable of shooting HD videos in 720p, ergo there are some brains under that beautiful sculptural black body.
The smartphone comes in a big box, I was expecting a Korean teenager to pop up and perform a lap dance, unfortunately all I found was the phone, the charger, the micro USB cable, a 2 GB micro SD card and a headset.
The front of the LG Optimus Black spans 122 x 64mm, which is compact for a 4” screen. At just 9.2 mm of thickness and 109 grams of weight, the Black will slip into almost any pocket problem free.
The display is big and bright, on of the best in the industry. Colors are bright and vivid, sunlight legibility is excellent, the viewing angles are ok, and overall, the NOVA display is the main attraction of the show.
In terms of design and construction, if you like the minimalist approach, it’s flawless, the build quality is perfect.
On the front panel you find the traditional set of proximity and ambient light sensors along with a 2MP front-facing camera.
Also, the usual Menu, Home, Back and Search controls all use the capacitive touch technology. The keys are haptic-enabled but that’s not all, upon a press, the backlighting of the key you touched changes color for a second, a very nice feature.
On the top of the smartphone we find the 3.5 mm audio jack, the micro USB port and the power lock key.
The camera lens is located on the back panel, naturally, right next to the LED flash.Removing the back panel, we find the 1500 mAh battery, the SIM and microSD card slots.
Optimus has an excellent design, it has a ligthweight super thin body which sits perfectly in hand, the back has a slight curvature that improves handling and the matt plastic looks and feels great. It’s a big screen phone with anorexia, if you’re into FTV, this is the device for you.
Optimus Black features Android 2.2.2 Froyo, Frodo’s cousin. Of course, it has the LG home custom launcher and the Gesture UI.
All these make the phone fun to handle. In terms of hardware, it packs a 1GHz single-core CPU and 512MB of RAM; it’s no head turner but also, nothing to be ashamed of.
In terms of telephony, it’s all nice and dandy, you have everything you need, good signal reception and in-call quality, smart dialer is available too, the loudspeaker sounds like a trumpet, everything is fine, let’s move along.
LG Optimus Black can handle all common types of messages with ease - SMS, MMS and email. Email support is excellent with support for Exchange out of the box. The LG Optimus Black features a virtual QWERTY keyboard, which feature both portrait and landscape typing.
The music player looks stylish, it can do the usual like filtering by album or artist, unfortunately the audio quality doesn’t shine. You also get an FM radio with RDS.
The video player is simple and efficient, the interface is minimalist and it can play almost anything, from the usual 3GP and MP4 stuff along with WMV and AVIs using DivX and XviD. 1080p videos are a no go, due to the single-core processor. Still 720p videos work just fine.
LG Optimus Black comes with a 5 megapixel camera, capable of capturing 2592 x 1944 resolution images, it has geotagging and touch focus, also digital image stabilization, in terms of quality is nothing to write home about.
Video capture is HD, 720p, the videos have a fluid frame rate and the colors seem natural and vivid.
Connectivity is top notch, it has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global roaming and three-band HSDPA with 7.2 Mbps of download and 5.76 Mbps of upload speeds (hypothetical ones). There’s also Wi-Fi b/g/n support, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and Hotspot capabilities.
The android web browser is excellent, with the help of that beautiful NOVA display; web browsing is very pleasant experience. The user interface is completely minimalistic, the browser is Flash-enabled and everything ran very smoothly.
The LG Optimus Black features great SNS integration. Both Facebook and Twitter contacts can be added to the phonebook and you can link those to existing phone contacts.
For extra apps, you can go to the Android Market where you can find almost anything you ever imagined and beyond.
Optimus has a GPS receiver and it features Google Maps with 3d views and Google Street View.
Final words, Optimus Black is not a geek’s dream, not even the brightest of the bunch, but it has all the features you need from an android and a breath taking design, in my opinion of course. The NOVA display is one of the best on the market today, the phone is elegant, slim and light, it has a classy look, even if it’s not a high end device, it certainly looks like one.
You can get your own here, on a monthly contract deal.
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