Reviews and Articles

The quad-cores have arrived and the first out of the blocks is LG's sequel to its dual-core Optimus 2X. The Korean phone maker has apparently recruited its "best engineers "on this wafer-thin slab of power and it shows; the phone is light and slim. It's taken a detour from the Prada Phone stylings we've seen on the Optimus Vu and L-series, but looks noticeably more mature than last year's efforts, with Android's Ice Cream Sandwich in attendance -- with a few tweaks. We're uploading our hands-on video as we speak -- including some very responsive video manipulation and yet more impressions. Until then, take a 360-degree tour of the device at our gallery below. Developing... LG Optimus 4X hands-on Our eyes were drawn to the HD IPS display found here; impressive viewing angles are coupled with vibrant colors and brightness. It may well be a pentile display beater, but we'll have to see whether it can take the crown away from Sam...

Offering Verizon Wireless subscribers yet another glossy-looking 4G LTE smartphone to choose from, the LG Spectrum is a variant of the  LG Optimus  LTE, also seen in a different form on AT&T as the  LG Nitro HD . The LG Spectrum packs in a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM, which results in generally snappy performance around the menus and while using apps. However, the phone still runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3.5), with an Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) upgrade expected at an undisclosed date. What immediately grabs your attention is the crisp 4.5-inch display, which shines at 1280x720 resolution at 329 ppi, making it one of the sharpest screens on the market. It's protected by Gorilla Glass, which keeps the screen impressively free of scratches. You'll have to look very closely to spot individual pixels, though in regular day-to-day use, the display impresses consistently whether viewing videos or browsing the web. It's a bit prone to fingerpr...

LG and Prada have history. Back in 2007 the pair got together and spawned a mobile phone called, well, the  LG Prada . Two years later, there was a second outing, in the shape of the  LG KF900 Prada . Almost like clockwork - albeit a rather slow clock - two years later and we have a third LG Prada handset, the PRADA Phone by LG 3.0. We know, the name PRADA Phone by LG 3.0 doesn't really trip off the tongue, does it? We're going to call it the LG Prada 3.0 like, we suspect, most will do. Obviously, the LG Prada 3.0 has a lot of emphasis on stylish hardware design. There's also a rather nifty interface skin that's been applied to Android 2.3, and the general specs aren't too shabby either. At first glance, this is a handset that ticks a lot of boxes. Dig deep, and we find there is a little bit of style over substance creeping in. But we'll come to that. The Prada Phone by LG 3.0 is a big, really neatly designed handset. With a 4.3-inch screen and se...

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 phon...