Socially adept
The Optimus 7 is available exclusively with Vodafone for now, so there’s also a link to Vodafone’s 360 My Web service. Once you’re there you can back up your contacts, pull together your social networking feeds and access Vodafone-only apps, should you feel the need.
Not exactly outstanding, but certainly very capable
Syncing your music and films on your PC is easy using Microsoft’s Zune software – either with USB or wirelessly using your home network. Films render well on the screen, however, there’s no option to stretch letterboxed movies to fit the screen dimensions. There’s an FM radio which worked fine albeit very basic and the limited support for RDS doesn’t extend to displaying station names in the preset menu.
WinPho 7 doesn’t support memory cards yet, but thankfully the Optimus 7 has a bit more memory on board than most, with 16GB of storage available. The 1,500mAh battery seemed to hold up fairly well, delivering a good day and a half of fairly heavy use.
Verdict
There’s not a huge amount of difference between the current array of WinPho 7 handsets but LG’s Optimus 7 distinguishes itself by being Vodafone only and offering a few unique apps, notably its DLNA networking feature. These aren’t enough to put it head or even shoulders above the pack but it’s a strong, well-spec’d device that’s definitely worth a look. ®
More Smartphone Reviews… |
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 BlackBerry
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LG Optimus 7 smartphone
COMMENTS
@Monty Burns
...not sure about that, but it's not like MS only wrote one set of drivers - OEMs can obviously still select the size of the screen, camera type & quality (e.g. the Mozart has a xenon flash at 8mp, whereas others have an LED flash and 5mp), amount of on-board memory (up to 32Gb is doable, apparently) presence of a physical keyboard (or not) etc. as well as non-driver related things like the style & quality of the phone's case.
AFAIK, Just about the only thing I think the OEMs don't choose (at the moment) is the processor, which has to be a Snapdragon (though it seems future releases will support a broader range of processors).
The real shame is that the OEMs didn't go all-out, though their lack of faith in WP7 at this stage is sorta understandable.
@AC
"Severly scarred by operator customisations"... I know what you mean, but have you actually used one? I have a WP7 on Orange (though it's a Mozart rather than an Optimus) and any Orange apps I don't like get booted off the "Start" screen in a jiffy (they'll stay in the list of apps in case I ever need them - it turns out the Orange Wednesdays app is actually kinda nifty). Similarly, you can change the Orange default colour scheme (though the Orange apps will remain their original colour).
... the bottom line is, WP7 was designed so that any network operator or OEM add-ons (e.g. the HTC hub) can be retained by the user if they're useful, but can't "force" themselves onto the user's Start screen if he doesn't want them there. Hence "scar" is probably the wrong word. "Creased" is mre like it.
Is this the same Apple...
... whose "fully rounded product" wasn't correctly designed for the human hand?
LG may have fallen short of perfection here, but at least when trying to design a wonderful, stylish phone they realised that the "phone" part was the most important.
Buttons
The buttons on this phone were the reason that I opted for the HTC trophy.
DLNA
Not sure DLNA is a particular selling point, as Android does DNLA - at least my HTC Desire does (Menu > Select Player in Music, and I can push straight to a Sonos device for example)
