Hands On With LG's MWC 2012 Smartphones

BARCELONA—LG is delivering something for everyone here at Mobile World Congress—that is, if you're an Android fan. The company unleashed six new global phones today, including three affordable but good-looking handsets, a new 3D phone, a quad-core smartphone, and a phablet (read: big phone), the LG Optimus Vu. And I got to spend some time with all of them.

LG's several announcements at this show are just the stats, Daniel Hernandez, LG Mobile Product Marketing Director said. "In 2012 we're going to be providing the next breakthrough in LTE speed with a full lineup of revolutionary LTE products," he said. Since only one of the phones LG is showing at the show, the Optimus Vu, is an LTE handset, that means there are a whole lot more to come.

"Later on in 2012 we'll be showing you more of these exciting new LTE devices," Hernandez said.

LG Optimus 4X HD
The new quad-core LG Optimus 4X HD is the best of LG's new bunch. Then we'll get to some decent entry-level phones, and then the silly season begins.

The Optimus 4X HD will likely be the first Nvidia Tegra 3 phone to his the U.S. market. It's packing a quad-core processor running at 1.5GHz, with Android 4.0, and a large 2150mAh battery. There's an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front. NFC is on board as well.

The 4X HD has a 4.7-inch, 1280-by-720 IPS screen that looks super sharp. Its 313 pixels per inch is slightly less than the Apple iPhone 4's 326, but you still can't see the individual pixels. It's narrow for a huge phone, so I found it more usable one-handed and less immediately offensive than wider examples of the genre. The unit I was playing with had all of the Tegra 3 sample games on it, so I played the puzzle game Sprinkle and the racing game Riptide GP. They were both as smooth and gorgeous, with as beautiful atmospheric effects, as I've seen on the Tegra 3-powered Asus Transformer Prime tablet.

LG didn't announce a release date or carriers for the Optimus 4X HD, although the company didn't headline it as an LTE device. Considering that LG's Optimus 2X came to T-Mobile as the G2X, I'll guess this phone is destined for T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network.

LG L-Style
LG's Optimus One line was a huge seller in 2011, bringing entry level Android phones to millions of people who never had smartphones before. LG's L-Style line is an attempt to deliver low-end Android phones that are good-looking, or at least that don't look exactly like everyone else's.

You're not going to be impressed by the specs of the Optimus L5, for instance. Its 4-inch, 320-by-480 screen looks downright grainy. Its HSDPA 3.6 modem isn't super-fast, and its 800MHz single-core processor doesn't zip along the way you expect from some of the fancier devices. But it has NFC for mobile wallets and a 5-megapixel camera with HDR for good photos in varying light conditions, and it's interestingly rectangular rather than rounded, with a textured back that's nice to touch.

The Optimus L7 brings things up a notch: Now you get a 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 screen and a 1GHz processor. It has 1GB of storage plus a memory card slot, and runs Android 4.0. It's still a rectangular box made of plastic, and the one I played with had an interesting pinstripe pattern on the back. I can see this phone doing well as a lower-cost device from most U.S. carriers. An LG rep said they'd build L-Style phones for whatever networks their carrier customers wanted.

The Optimus L3 is the truly entry-level model; I'm not even sure if it'll hit the US. It's a handsome black plastic rectangle with a positively awful 320-by-240, 3.2-inch screen and an 800MHz processor, like the Optimus L5. It runs Android Gingerbread. While it's adorable, the thing is tiny and that low screen resolution will be pretty frustrating for most.