Today we shall be looking at the LG Optimus Vu. This is a pretty powerful phone, as are most of the LG Optimus phones. What this one has differently from the others is that it somehow resembles a Tablet due to the fact that it is pretty wide.
Also, I’ve been wanting to say this for a while. Have you ever noticed that ever since the Galaxy Note was announced more and more phones are coming out looking like a sick and twisted hybrid between a phone and a tablet. No, I’m just kidding. I like the fact that phones tend to get bigger and that processors and components tend to get smaller. What I really want to find out one thing, however : how does wan carry such a big phone around ? Heck, I wear 36 at my jeans and barely have enough room in my pockets for a Galaxy Mini. How, in the unholy name of Satan, is a guy supposed to carry this phone around ? And before anyone saying anything smart, no phone is worth getting a purse only for purpose of carrying around the phone.
- Processor : Dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion
- RAM : 1 GB
- Android OS : 2.3 Gingerbread
- Camera : 8 MP
- Display : 768 x 1024 pixels, 5.0 inches (~256 ppi pixel density)
Well, without further ado let us begin this little review / preview of the LG Optimus Vu. As you can probably tell the hardware specs of this phone are quite decent and the phone itself is quite powerful. Despite the fact that it’s extremely wide, the LG Optimus Vu is also pretty thin. But you’ll see that for yourself in a moment or so.
We shall begin by taking a look at the size of the phone per say. The Dimensions of the LG Optimus Vu are as follows : 139.6 x 90.4 x 8.5 mm big. The phone weighs about 168 grams. I also believe it has touch-sensitive controls since I highly doubt those little things underneath the screen are buttons, but if they are, so be it.
Let us move on now to the sound of the LG Optimus Vu. The Alert Types supported by this phone are : vibration, MP3 and WAV ringtones. The LG Optimus Vu also has a Loudspeaker and a 3.5 mm jack. As opposed to other phones I have recently reviewed, this one has a form of sound enhancement. The LG Optimus Vu has Dolby Mobile Sound Enhancement installed on it. Time was that Dolby used to be one of the most powerful sound producers. If I’m right ( and I always am, even when I’m not ), it still is one of the leading top dogs of our ages. So good for the LG Optimus Vu for having such wonderful sound enhancements.
Now we shall be taking a brief look at the display of the LG Optimus Vu. The screen of this phone is an HD-IPS LCD Capacitive Touchscreen with about 16 million colors. The resolution of the display is about 768 x 1024 pixels and the screen itself is 5.0 inches big. The pixel density reached by the screen of this phone revolves around the nice number of 256 ppi. The LG Optimus Vu also has Multitouch, like every other Android Phone on this planet has.
Moving on to the data connection of this phone. The LG Optimus Vu doesn’t have GPRS or EDGE, who knows why not, nobody can tell. Point being, even without those two, the LG Optimus Vu has a tremendous speed : Rev. A of up to 3.1 MB/s, HSDPA and LTE. That’s the fun part of this phone : it’s a 4G phone ( unlike any phone you’ll ever see from Apple ). The WLAN of this phone is a Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. The LG Optimus Vu also has Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP and HS. Also, this phone has NFC and a USB connection done through MicroUSB v2.0.
The memory of this phone is HUGE. With emphasis on the Huge part. Seriously, this phone has 32 GB of internal storage space. Why on earth would you need all that space on a phone ? As if that weren’t enough, the LG Optimus Vu also has a MicroSD card slot, which by now I expect you to know how it works : anything up to 32 GB goes. So, in total, this phone can have as much as 64 GB. A truly wonderful site to behold upon and something to tell your buddies about. But what practical purpose can so much space fulfill for a phone ? that question is yet to be answered. As far as performance goes, this phone is well endowed on that part as well since the LG Optimus Vu has 1 GB of RAM to act as the cherry on top of the cake.
Now that I’ve managed to blow your mind with the size of the storage space of the LG Optimus Vu, let’s have a closer look at the camera of this phone. The main camera of teh LG Optimus Vu is a powerful 8 MP snapper which can take photographs at resolutions as high as 3264 x 2448 pixels. The main camera also has a lot of features such as : autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, face detection and image stabilization. The main camera’s video recorder is capable of capturing image at 1080p full HD with a steady 30 fps. The video recorder also has some features of its own, such as : LED video light and nothing more. The LG Optimus Vu also has a secondary camera of 1.3 MP. Not that big a deal, but it’s there. You know, taking a look at some of the girls I know, even though they have a frontal camera for their phones, they never use them. And many people don’t use them. Why, I will never understand. I find it more difficult to just hold your phone in an extended arm and hope that you’re aiming it right. But, then again, reality has proven me that logic is dead in some cases.
Now let us take a look at the hardware of the LG Optimus Vu. The processor is a Dual-Core 1.5 GHz Scorpion processor. Since Scorpion processors are always accompanied by Qualcomm chipsets and Adreno GPUs, you can imagine what comes next. The chipset of this phone is a Qualcomm one, as you may have already realized… a Qualcomm MSM8660 Snapdragon to be more precise. The GPU of the LG Optimus Vu is an Adreno 220. See, as I’ve said before, those three go hand in hand… always.
Now let’s take a look at the software installed on this marvelous piece of technology that we call the LG Optimus Vu. The Android OS version that this phone comes with is Android OS v2.3.5 Gingerbread. There isn’t any information on whether or not this phone will get an Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. But my guess is that it won’t be happening too soon considering that the information should have already been out by now.
Now, as we stand at the end, let us take a look at some of the remaining features of this phone. The Messaging of the LG Optimus Vu is done via : SMS ( through threaded view ), MMS, E-Mail and Push Mail, IM and even RSS. The Sensors of this phone are as follows : accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and compass. The Browser of the LG Optimus Vu is quite complex. I’ll admit it has been a while since the last time I’ve seen a phone browser with so many things. The browser supports WAP 2.0 or xHTML, as well as HTML and even Adobe Flash. The GPS of the LG Optimus Vu exists and has full support for A-GPS as well. The downsides of this phone are the facts that it lacks a radio and Java and that it will only come out in a single color : black.
Now, a short list of some of the things this phone is capable of :
- T-DMB TV tuner
- HDMI port
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- SNS applications
- MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV/DviX player
- MP3/WMA/WAV/FLAC/eAAC+/AC3/DTS player
- True HD movie editor
- Document viewer/editor
- Organizer
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
Well, this has been it. This concludes our little review / preview of the LG Optimus Vu. If you feel that anything important has been left out of this review please feel free to leave your suggestions for things we should add to them in the comment section below and I shall be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. Until next time, I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing it.
