October 18, 2012 at 10:41LG Optimus VU - Wunderwaffe
Among all the Optimus, this is perhaps the most controversial and extraordinary. At first, they simply laughed at the photos of the device on the Internet - and now they laugh at it. See how a fragile Korean girl tries to hold him with one hand:
TTX also raised questions, the first wave of criticism is the screen.
Five inches with an aspect ratio of 4: 3, resolution 1024x768, like the 17-inch CRT monitors, which were popular at the time. They scolded the “Tegra”, for the lack of expandable memory and a non-removable battery, a lot of discontent caused the capacity of the latter - a little more than 2,000 mA * h, with such an immodest size of the “phone” doubts about its ability to “stay the night and hold out the day”. In general, an endless stream of criticism and discontent from couch analysts created a corresponding mood among people.
But what actually turned out to be?
The Optimus Vu screen is based on the latest generation IPS matrix of our own production. Resolution - 1024x768 pixels, "honest" RGB subpixels, diagonal - 5 inches.
There are no problems with applications, everything is perfectly adapted to the screen resolution, but for disappearingly rare cases you can hold down the home button and get a “classic” Android aspect ratio of 16 to 9 with a resolution of 1024x600, which Intel-based smartphones already have.
There is no problem with color rendering, with viewing angles - everything is gorgeous. The brightness margin is also quite large, in the October Moscow sun you can quite comfortably distinguish between text and icons.
Critics immediately condemned the unusual proportions of the screen with such a diagonal, however, 5 inches with a picture width of 768 pixels allow you to use any convenient qwerty-keyboard in the upright position of the smartphone with two hands. Typing speed and convenience are almost the same as on hardware keyboards a la Nokia e72 (and its few form-factor neighbors). Plus, you can always put Swype if the native keyboard doesn’t suit you with something.
“Swapping” itself is also present in the LG keyboard, but many are not satisfied with the location of characters on it and hard-to-reach numbers and punctuation marks.
In the horizontal position, most sites look great, it is convenient to work with documents and mail. Yes, the video has “bands”, nothing can be done about it. On the other hand, how often do you watch movies on your phone? In addition, the usable screen area is the higher, the closer the proportion to the square. Well, since it would be inconvenient to use a square smartphone, we have the option closest to it in terms of convenience.
With games, by the way, there are no problems either.
That's something, but the case, lying on the couch and criticizing the new developments, is very difficult to evaluate. The device is made in the L-style of 2012, differs from other devices in the line only in size and capabilities. The back “cover” is made of textured plastic, it does not slip and does not stick to your hands, dust and dirt do not accumulate in the “drawing”, and the surface itself is quite scratch-resistant. Sidewalls - “under the metal”, the front panel is closed with a protective glass.
Simka is delivered through a special slot in the side of the device. The slot is closed by a very reliable and tight plug. Set and forget, as they say. In the upper part there is a microUSB port locked by a slider-valve, a lock button and a QuickMemo instant note button.
The stiffening ribs are designed perfectly, the device is monolithic: no squeaks, no punching the screen, no "chatter" of elements. Light falls are not scary for him, but from serious ones, none of the smartphones, with the rare exception of specially protected models, is safe.
The SoC Nvidia Tegra 3, a quad-core processor with an excellent graphics core, is responsible for performance and graphics. Most of the dissatisfied were dealing with really not the most successful solutions in the person of the first two generations - they did not have an expanded set of NEON instructions and did not cope well with multimedia playback.
The third generation is devoid of this drawback and is a modern and energy-efficient solution with a margin of productivity for the year ahead.
The Tegra-Zone is full of toys tailored specifically for this SoC and having improved graphics compared to the “for all” version.
RAM - 1 gigabyte.
The memory for storing personal files, photos, videos and music is not expandable, but fortunately it is 32 gigabytes (of which 26.5 GB are available to the user). This is enough for any applications, games, a couple of HD films, a dozen music albums and an annual photo archive of the smartphone.
For those who do not think such a volume is sufficient, do not forget that LG Cloud will be available for LG Optimus Vu , which offers each user 50gb for free for 6 months when registering, then a small additional charge will be required to use this solution .
The 8 MP module with autofocus and flash produces excellent shots, much better than those of previous generations, even the LG Optimus 4X HD. You don’t have to go far for examples of photos, you can refer to any foreign review: www.androidcentral.com/lg-optimus-vu-review
Yes, this is not a flagship photo, but it's hard to find fault with quality - quite at the level of 2012. We will wait for LG Optimus G (and for one Vu II, which has already appeared in Korea), and compare them a bit later.
2080 milliampere-hours, built-in, without the possibility of replacing or installing an extended battery. In medium-severe conditions (the screen is at 50% brightness, with Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth turned on), the smartphone lasts about 12 hours, of which: 6 hours the screen is on, and the Internet connection is active, 1 hour of calls and a half dozen SMS. One forty-minute series of Homeland'a (an excellent series, by the way), sound via a wireless stereo headset. A very decent result.
LG Optimus Vu immediately goes to Android 4.0 with the possibility of further updates. The usability of the OS is at a high level, and the system itself perfectly digests any screen resolution. It may be that the interface lacks “tablet” in settings and some other places, but otherwise the design and work with the smartphone completely repeat the situation with 4X HD - except that the number of posts and lines of icons is slightly different.
The device has NFC on board (and recognizes the default Metro tickets as NFC tags if Yandex.Maps are not installed), supports quick switching of profiles through the NFC trinkets that come with the kit.
In addition to NFC, which you will hardly surprise anyone now, the smartphone has all the necessary wireless interfaces, so everything is ok with the communication capabilities of the software.
If we recall the “description” of appearance, then it mentioned a separate button for Quick Note notes. Work with them has been improved compared to the rest of the 2012 devices, thanks to the large screen diagonal. In addition, all notes fall into a special collection. The smartphone itself is literally focused on use as a diary.
Also, a separate application with notebooks was developed, which has fairly wide capabilities: great customizability of both the “notebooks” themselves and the tools for filling them, convenient cataloging and integration into other OS elements.
In general, the device is interesting for its unusual form factor, large screen and unusually wide functionality. It is perfect for those whose main criteria when buying a smartphone are not toys and social networks, but business goals: conducting business correspondence, using it as a daily planner and planner.
For such people, Vu will be a real secret weapon, because it was created precisely for this.
And in which case - maybe not secret, because the dimensions and weight correspond. ;)
TTX also raised questions, the first wave of criticism is the screen.
Five inches with an aspect ratio of 4: 3, resolution 1024x768, like the 17-inch CRT monitors, which were popular at the time. They scolded the “Tegra”, for the lack of expandable memory and a non-removable battery, a lot of discontent caused the capacity of the latter - a little more than 2,000 mA * h, with such an immodest size of the “phone” doubts about its ability to “stay the night and hold out the day”. In general, an endless stream of criticism and discontent from couch analysts created a corresponding mood among people.
But what actually turned out to be?
Screen and form factor
The Optimus Vu screen is based on the latest generation IPS matrix of our own production. Resolution - 1024x768 pixels, "honest" RGB subpixels, diagonal - 5 inches.
There are no problems with applications, everything is perfectly adapted to the screen resolution, but for disappearingly rare cases you can hold down the home button and get a “classic” Android aspect ratio of 16 to 9 with a resolution of 1024x600, which Intel-based smartphones already have.
There is no problem with color rendering, with viewing angles - everything is gorgeous. The brightness margin is also quite large, in the October Moscow sun you can quite comfortably distinguish between text and icons.
Critics immediately condemned the unusual proportions of the screen with such a diagonal, however, 5 inches with a picture width of 768 pixels allow you to use any convenient qwerty-keyboard in the upright position of the smartphone with two hands. Typing speed and convenience are almost the same as on hardware keyboards a la Nokia e72 (and its few form-factor neighbors). Plus, you can always put Swype if the native keyboard doesn’t suit you with something.
“Swapping” itself is also present in the LG keyboard, but many are not satisfied with the location of characters on it and hard-to-reach numbers and punctuation marks.
In the horizontal position, most sites look great, it is convenient to work with documents and mail. Yes, the video has “bands”, nothing can be done about it. On the other hand, how often do you watch movies on your phone? In addition, the usable screen area is the higher, the closer the proportion to the square. Well, since it would be inconvenient to use a square smartphone, we have the option closest to it in terms of convenience.
With games, by the way, there are no problems either.
Body
That's something, but the case, lying on the couch and criticizing the new developments, is very difficult to evaluate. The device is made in the L-style of 2012, differs from other devices in the line only in size and capabilities. The back “cover” is made of textured plastic, it does not slip and does not stick to your hands, dust and dirt do not accumulate in the “drawing”, and the surface itself is quite scratch-resistant. Sidewalls - “under the metal”, the front panel is closed with a protective glass.
Simka is delivered through a special slot in the side of the device. The slot is closed by a very reliable and tight plug. Set and forget, as they say. In the upper part there is a microUSB port locked by a slider-valve, a lock button and a QuickMemo instant note button.
The stiffening ribs are designed perfectly, the device is monolithic: no squeaks, no punching the screen, no "chatter" of elements. Light falls are not scary for him, but from serious ones, none of the smartphones, with the rare exception of specially protected models, is safe.
Filling
The SoC Nvidia Tegra 3, a quad-core processor with an excellent graphics core, is responsible for performance and graphics. Most of the dissatisfied were dealing with really not the most successful solutions in the person of the first two generations - they did not have an expanded set of NEON instructions and did not cope well with multimedia playback.
The third generation is devoid of this drawback and is a modern and energy-efficient solution with a margin of productivity for the year ahead.
The Tegra-Zone is full of toys tailored specifically for this SoC and having improved graphics compared to the “for all” version.
RAM - 1 gigabyte.
The memory for storing personal files, photos, videos and music is not expandable, but fortunately it is 32 gigabytes (of which 26.5 GB are available to the user). This is enough for any applications, games, a couple of HD films, a dozen music albums and an annual photo archive of the smartphone.
For those who do not think such a volume is sufficient, do not forget that LG Cloud will be available for LG Optimus Vu , which offers each user 50gb for free for 6 months when registering, then a small additional charge will be required to use this solution .
Camera
The 8 MP module with autofocus and flash produces excellent shots, much better than those of previous generations, even the LG Optimus 4X HD. You don’t have to go far for examples of photos, you can refer to any foreign review: www.androidcentral.com/lg-optimus-vu-review
Yes, this is not a flagship photo, but it's hard to find fault with quality - quite at the level of 2012. We will wait for LG Optimus G (and for one Vu II, which has already appeared in Korea), and compare them a bit later.
Battery
2080 milliampere-hours, built-in, without the possibility of replacing or installing an extended battery. In medium-severe conditions (the screen is at 50% brightness, with Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth turned on), the smartphone lasts about 12 hours, of which: 6 hours the screen is on, and the Internet connection is active, 1 hour of calls and a half dozen SMS. One forty-minute series of Homeland'a (an excellent series, by the way), sound via a wireless stereo headset. A very decent result.
Software
LG Optimus Vu immediately goes to Android 4.0 with the possibility of further updates. The usability of the OS is at a high level, and the system itself perfectly digests any screen resolution. It may be that the interface lacks “tablet” in settings and some other places, but otherwise the design and work with the smartphone completely repeat the situation with 4X HD - except that the number of posts and lines of icons is slightly different.
The device has NFC on board (and recognizes the default Metro tickets as NFC tags if Yandex.Maps are not installed), supports quick switching of profiles through the NFC trinkets that come with the kit.
In addition to NFC, which you will hardly surprise anyone now, the smartphone has all the necessary wireless interfaces, so everything is ok with the communication capabilities of the software.
If we recall the “description” of appearance, then it mentioned a separate button for Quick Note notes. Work with them has been improved compared to the rest of the 2012 devices, thanks to the large screen diagonal. In addition, all notes fall into a special collection. The smartphone itself is literally focused on use as a diary.
Also, a separate application with notebooks was developed, which has fairly wide capabilities: great customizability of both the “notebooks” themselves and the tools for filling them, convenient cataloging and integration into other OS elements.
In general, the device is interesting for its unusual form factor, large screen and unusually wide functionality. It is perfect for those whose main criteria when buying a smartphone are not toys and social networks, but business goals: conducting business correspondence, using it as a daily planner and planner.
For such people, Vu will be a real secret weapon, because it was created precisely for this.
And in which case - maybe not secret, because the dimensions and weight correspond. ;)