Sitting alongside the LG Optimus 2X, the LG Optimus Black is a top-end smartphone, slipping in at just over £400, attempting to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Apple iPhone 4 for the smartphone crown, but with considerably fewer features and less processing power than its LG stablemate.
First things first – the LG Optimus Black is light. Weighing a featherweight 109g, it even reaches a skinny 6mm side edge curvature, and 9.2mm thickness at its deepest point, besting the Apple iPhone 4 by a millimetre. Some may feel the lightness cheapens the feel of this handset somewhat, but our jeans pockets were thankful and it was nice to tote around something that didn't weigh us down.
The slightly metallic back cover is smooth, and the phone's few soft keys are well-blended into the chassis, giving it a minimalist aesthetic. We have to say, however, that a few of the edges felt a little too rough, detracting from the overall feel of the phone.
Yet where it's light and thin and joyous, it's also somewhat long. This makes the LG Optimus Black a little uncomfortable for small hands to hold it portrait, although curved corners help it sit nicely in the paws in landscape orientation.
Those with bigger hands will likely feel it sits in the hands just fine either way. But, given the Android UI is designed to be used mainly in portrait mode, those with small hands will find it difficult to use one-handed. Despite its impressive lightness, the length makes it feel a much bigger phone than it is.
The LG Optimus Black's 4-inch capacitive NOVA display screen is as bright as an AMOLED – reaching up to 700cd/m2 – but with increased battery efficiency, thanks to "luminance reduction technology". The 480 x 800p display is indeed beautifully bright and clear, perfectly fine indoors or out, even in the most direct sunlight we came across while testing.
Looking much like the LG Optimus 2X, it packs less power, with a 1GHz processor running Android 2.2. The Optimus Black boasts the usual Android touchscreen buttons, and the three external buttons – a slim volume rocker, power/lock button and the gesture key, part of the LG Gesture UI designed to aid using the phone with one hand (more on that later).
As with most minimalist handsets the ports – micro USB slot and 3.5mm headphone jack – sit at one end, alongside the lock and power button.
At the bottom end of the LG Optimus Black is an irritatingly tiny slot for removing the battery cover. Good luck opening the thing if you're devoid of long fingernails. In fact, even if you have got long claws, prying off the back cover is a difficult task. Once you get underneath the hood, you'll find the SIM holder, microSD slot and, of course, the battery.
This is a sleek handset which packs an impressive 2MP front-facing camera plus a 5MP auto-focus-tons-of-toggling-fun camera with LED flash on the back.
The LG Optimus Black runs on Android 2.2 Froyo with the Optimus 2.0 UI overlay.
There are seven home screens on this sweet machine, and the 1GHz single core processor is more than capable of happily sliding through them all with ease, and running any apps you might wish to pull up.
There's little to no juddering and some nice widgets – the weather one especially calls to mind the HTC equivalent.
The pull-down notifications screen looks nice and spiffy, with an update that now includes music player, volume and connectivity setting controls.
A long-tap to the screen brings up the home screen edit mode for customising. And a pinch displays all seven home screens at once.
Apps are easily managed by tapping into 'Manage app' and moving them into desired categories in a list or page view.
So far, so usual. But the most interesting thing about the LG Optimus Black interface has to be the Gesture UI. Fun and useful, the idea is to make it easier to use the phone and flip through functions with one hand. And, if you have big enough hands to make it work, it's great.
The G Key doubles as the camera button in that it opens the app from the lockscreen (although you can't use it to actually take the snap, which is disappointing). Simply press the key, on the side of the phone, and shake. Press and tilt to slide through the seven home screens, press and tap the side of the phone to move the cursor left and right when texting and press and shake to answer or hang up on a phone call.
It's a particularly nice addition if you're not a fan of touchscreens without soft buttons. If you're not a fan of shaking your phone about like a loon in public, these additional features can be tweaked in the settings menu.
There are tiny details that are counter-intuitive on the LG Optimus Black, such as sliding up to unlock but then immediately having to slide down to pull down the notifications tab, and it's not as easy to use one-handed as you might like. Overall, though, there are no grumbles from us – it's mainly swift to respond and easy to pick up.
Contacts, easily accessed on the LG Optimus Black from a dedicated shortcut widget on the home screen or the phone widget, are nicely integrated with the two main social networks (Facebook and Twitter), as well as Gmail and Myspace.
Syncing them with contacts is as simple as a simple thing, requiring you to check the 'Auto-sync' box to see your contacts magically become populated with images, updates and statuses.
The contacts list will display the most recent status update, along with the network logo to tell you where it was posted.
A nice touch is tapping the profile picture of your contact to bring up a shortcut menu to take you straight to SMS, MMS, phone calling or the contact's social networks.
While there is the possibility of duplicate contacts being shown, this is easily remedied by importing SIM contacts to the Optimus Black and knocking off the 'Display SIM contacts' option in the display settings. Or, if you want to manually change just a couple, editing the contact and clicking 'Join' will enable you to edit single contacts.
Dipping into a contact itself displays four tabs: Info, History, Photo and Agenda.
The Info tab collects all possible ways of contacting a person on the same page. The History tab draws together messages and call logs between yourself and the contact.
The Agenda tab displays any events you might have with the contact, synced from the LG Optimus Black calendar.
The dialler supports smart dialling, finding both corresponding names from the numerical pad and matching digits in phone numbers.
Individual shortcut contact widgets can be added to a home screen, displaying the contact's image (if available) and providing a handy way to tap straight to texting/ dialling said person.
Calling on the LG Optimus Black isn't a particularly fun experience, mainly due to the uncomfortable rim close to the speaker.
Holding it to your ear for even vaguely long periods of time makes it feel as though the top of your ear is slowly being sliced off with a blunt instrument. Not very pleasant. The speaker is nice and loud, if you're in a private place to use it, but if not you might have to become that guy with a headset.
That said, its ability to find a signal is impressive, which also aids greatly in browser speeds, and it's clear and easy to hear in loud surroundings.
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