LG Optimus Black
No, not a new Harry Potter villain...
Review LG distinguished itself recently by releasing the UK’s first smartphone with a dual-core processor. But while the Optimus 2X grabbed all the headlines, LG also delivered another high-end handset - single-core, this time - the Optimus Black.
Optimus Black: are LG bosses JK Rowling wannabes?
The name Black hardly distinguishes it, since it’s a colour it shares with 90 per cent of its rivals. The entire front is covered by a single sheet of glass, with a touch-sensitive strip beneath the screen for the four standard Android buttons.
On the sides are a volume rocker and gesture button - more on that later - with a power/sleep button, micro USB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The back is made of lightly rubberised plastic that curves sharply at the sides and is home to a 5Mp camera, LED flash and a loudspeaker. There are none of the metallic flourishes you’ll find on the most expensive handsets these days, but it still looks and feels like a classy device. It’s impressively thin and light too: 9.2mm and 111g. LG has been making a lot of noise about its Nova screen technology, and so it should. This 4in panel is startlingly bright - the snaps really don't do it justice - though fortunately you can turn it down to save the battery and your burning eyes.
The 5Mp camera may not be top spec, but it takes a decent snap
The brightness comes in handy on sunny days, cutting through reflection and making the screen easy to read. It’s also very sharp and admirably clear, rendering text on web pages especially well. Colours are thrillingly bright and vivid, with an almost Technicolor intensity.
Next page: Super Nova
COMMENTS
Slightly better than my £100 Orange San Francisco
Got to be worth the extra £300!
Maybe the Orange Monte Carlo (ZTE Skate) would be a better option?
SanFran too
I totally agree. What's the point in paying £400 for a handset when a £90 San Francisco does almost exactly the same thing. £300 extra for a better camera? Okay what else? The extra processor power is useless unless I want to play games, which is a bit silly on an Android anyway. The screen on my SanFran is an 800x480 oled, already better than 90% of screens out there. So £300 extra for what?
I was going to ask a genuine question about that very thing ...
I have the £99 San Fran, it was a breeze to root and put gingerbread on it, so (here is the genuine question bit) what am I missing? A brighter screen? A better camera? I'm just not prepared to ever pay £400 for a phone (even £99 was a huge extravagance when there was nothing really wrong with my old Nokia Navigator) especially when my San Fran seems to do exactly the same thing as everyone elses massively expensive phones. I'm not a troll - just genuinely interested!
SIP not taken off?
"SIP VoIP ... still waiting to take off."
Hm, I guess if you don't use SIP (or perhaps more likely, don't realise when you or you place of work are using SIP) it may seem appropriate to describe it as still waiting to take off, in the same way that those who don't use Skype might describe it as still waiting to take off...
And if you want a choice of providers, who can provide free incoming POTS numbers, cheap POTS terminated calls, and the option of treating your mobile as just a regular extension on your (virtual) PBX, all using open standards, with open source clients and exchanges, then SIP would appear to be a *much* better option than Skype. The SIP client in Andriod 2.3. is quite nicely integrated with the dialler, and uses less battery than the Skype client. (My only grumble is that it does not currently play well with ekiga.net due to a difference in expectation about how to do NAT traversal, but sipdroid works fine.)
