LG’s Show at MWC 2012

LG was the third company coming after HTC and Nokia, which made a huge stir around at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Like the aforementioned manufacturers this smartphone vendor had really something to introduce to its consumers. It refers to the newly announced L-Style handsets, the LG Optimus Vu with its unusual 4:3 aspect ratio and the LG Optimus 4X HD. These devices are worth being discussed separately, so let’s not lose time and look closer.

The L series devices are similar to HTC’s One line handsets in the meaning that LG unveiled one high-end smartphone in face of the Optimus L7, one mid-range phone in face of the Optimus L5 and one low-end handset designed for people with low incomes, dubbed the Optimus L3. The most powerful handset from this line, the L7 sports a 4.3-inch touchscreen, a dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor clocked at 1GHz, a 5MP rear-facing camera with autofocus and LED flash, a VGA frontal camera for video calls and 1GB of RAM. Its junior brother is powered with weaker features and comes with a 4-inch touchscreen, an 800 MHz processor, a 5MP camera on the back and a VGA snapper on the front, microSD card slot to expand the memory up to 32GB and so on. The last Mohicans from L line is the Optimus L3, which doesn’t offer much to boast of. Its specs list includes a 3.2-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 240×320 pixels, an 800MHz processor with 384MB of RAM, 1GB of internal memory, a 3.2MP camera and microSD card support. As for the software, the L7 will be an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-powered device, while the other two handsets will run lower versions of Android. For example, the L3 will come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread on board. The L5’s OS version is not determined yet.

The LG Optimus Vu is known for its 5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels and an unusual 4:3 aspect ratio. Moreover, the phone comes with a special stylus. But this doesn’t mean the rest of the features are not worth being mentioned, vice versa; the phone is equipped with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP rear camera with 1080p video recording, a 1.3MP front-facing camera, 32GB of internal memory and MicroSD card support. As for the dimensions, the Vu has only 8.5mm thickness, but at the same time it’s 90mm wide. Though many users with small hands will complain of inconvenience when holding the phone, users with normal hands and “ambitious” wishes will welcome it. The phone is already launched in its homeland, Korea, though the price tag can’t be considered affordable — 999,900 won (about $895 or €677). The price is in no way attractive. However, we hope as the phone is launched in other countries and is offered on contract its pricing will be made more favorable.

Finally, we reached the best handset introduced by LG at the event, the Optimus 4X HD. It’s the same LG Optimus 3X renamed to the Optimus 4X HD to correspond to its features. The device sports a quad-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz and a 4.7-inch HD-IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the resolution of 720×1280 pixels. It also comes with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory, an 8MP rear camera, a 1.3MP frontal camera, a monster Li-Ion 2140mAh battery and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. When it comes to pricing, our excitement considerably goes down because, say in the UK the SIM-free variant of the phone is offered for £456 (inc. VAT).

Well, all these phones will find their owners, undoubtedly, so which one will you shelter?