LG Optimus 2X P990

Hey people, you should really go ahead with this phone! It's super-fast, battery is decent, camera is amazing too. It's a dual-core processor, so it doesn't freeze up like the other phones. And now that it's launched only for 26k here, I think it's worth the price.. I used it for a day and the experience has been very good so far. You can definitely go for this instead of xperia Arc and Nokia E7, they're not worth it as the configuration is more than 2 years old on those phones! LG Optimus 2x is worth it for 26k.. You won't be disappointed.. Cheers! :)

I have bought this phone on November 4th, 2011. The reason I bought is because the office and otherwise premises were full of samsungs and nokias and what nots. I wanted to have something "exclusive" and, no.. I don’t have an IPhone budget.

One thing I would like to say about Flipkart is , you guys are amazing. You treat customer like a king and he feels that too. Despite being given a wrong phone number ( one which I gave when I bought my old LG P500 from Flipkart ) I received the phone within *2 hour* once I called up the support. That is called some superior effort from Flipkart to strive for customer delight.

About the phone.

First and the best reaction from my colleagues when I opened the parcel and took out the piece was collective gasp..! :-).People who actively discouraged me from buying LG ( Yeah, one has to go with the herd, right?) desperately tried to hide their faces behind their 'sungs and 'kias and 'berries.The included HDMI cable and free 8 GB SD card did not help them either ;-).

First impressions.

Good points

- Boot the phone and the boot animation and sound was decent.

- Love the combo charger. I don't have to carry a separate cable to connect the phone to my computer anymore:-D

- Super clear display. I love the IPS screen.

- Readily the phone recognized my SIM card and showed the 3G connection.

- I have transferred my contacts from old P500 to new P990,over Bluetooth ( you can do this from contacts->press 'menu' key -> Import/Export -> Import from SD card. No problem there either.

- First thing I have done was to check out the camera. The photos taken in 8MP were real life. Nothing added, nothing removed. Images showed as we see them (with auto camera settings).

- Use as a phone ( lol). Call clarity is good. Signal strength (Airtel) did not waver much even when I kept the phone in places where my old LG P500 had difficulty getting the network.

- The supplied headset is pretty good for regular use - decent quality.

- I like the bundled LG calendar, LG Keyboard, on screen phone, camera application, FM radio etc.

- Pre-installed Polaris Office … wow..!

- Downloaded couple of Tegra games and they seems to play amazingly in this phone. ( you need to get the Tegra zone application from market).

- LG made Gingerbread V 20e (Android 2.3, if you like) available in India now. You should give a shot at that to feel the difference.

OK points

- Videos recorded were ok, for a phone - can live with them.

- 1.3 MP front face camera was just sufficient for video chatting and, occasionally to comb your hair. Don't expect much from this either.

- Bundled music player was ok sort. So is the video player.

- Stereo speaker is a slight disappointment, even after enabling the surround and, it was not much loud – especially if you are in a busy / noisy environment.

- Battery life seems to be ok. After 2 hours of phone calls 1 hour of music half an hour 3G browsing and internet usage 2 hours on Wi-Fi, Some SMS 1 hour on game 18 hours on sleep mode, I had 40% battery remaining. This is OK, in my opinion for normal usage. For heavy users, it would be good if they get a higher capacity battery instead of the stock one ( Something like 1900 mAH – anything higher than this might require to us a different back cover and look awkward - IMHO.)

- Cons

- Old Tigra drivers, at the time of writing this review. Can’t use the phone to its full potential if you have Gingerbread and LG does not pressurize nVidia to release new driver for the nVidia chipset. (To quote one of the Android coder “The Optimus 2X (and its TMoUS brother, the G2x) is a Tegra2, and nVidia has, as always, published a total amount of zero useful lines of code; at this point.”)

- Crappy bloatware…! Who needs Bollywoodji and other useless application by default bundled in the default ROM? There is no way to uninstall them either, by default – that is without losing your warranty and if you “don’t know” what you are doing..!

- The supplied PC suit is not very user friendly. I think LG should hire some real English speaking people so that what they said in the software actually must make sense to the rest of the world.

Conclusion.

The phone has real head turner and actually can fly if LG really put their collective mind in it. But what you get by default is very good phone more than sufficient for show off and daily use. Pretty good for making calls, songs, videos , web browsing, planning and games. Since LG has announced that P 990 will get Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), let us cross our finger and wait for that.

PS. Huge thanks to Sarthak Jain. Boss, if you have not mentioned Cyanogenmod, I would have still stuck with the original LG Rom. With the latest CM the phone really flies.

The world's first dual core phone (also India's first) is now the cheapest dual core of them all! With Samsung Galaxy S II priced approx at 38K and HTC Sensation at 36K, it amazes me as how LG could give us this dual core beast for just 27K which is the range for top end single core phones (like the HTC Incredible S and Sony Xperia Arc)! If you are in a budget of within 30K and want to future-proof yourself with a dual core phone, this is a must buy! Else if you are interested in getting the best UI, try the Incredible S (with HTC Sense UI), or try Xperia Arc!

First of all thanks to flipkart for such a fast n safe service ( must say people TRUST flipkart and I'm one of them ) :)

Now about my Optimus 2x
Had researched and read reviews about this phone for almost a month and finally decided to go for it thanks to Flipkart for its amazing prize :
-ordered LG Optimus 2X P990 (Android v2.2 OS) on 16th dec and received it on 19th
To my surprise :-
- It came with Gingerbread OS 2.3.4 :)
- Approx. 2mtrs HDMI cable ( as i have a LED tv w/ HDMI4 and in many countries the phone don't come with a HDMI cable)
- Gesture feature is simply superb , especially TEXT INPUT FIELD

and till date i've used it and was never disappointing that I've placed another order for my sis

if u have read the old reviews other than that of flipkart u might have noticed major comparison b/w 2x & s2 but one thing we have to remember tat
- 2x was 2.2(froyo) & s2 was and still 2.3 for obvious reasons s2 scored better than 2x w.r.t OS but now 2x comes with 2.3.4 gingerbread :)
- coming to the major point BATTERY ; 2x comes with 1500mAh which is fairly sufficient.(s2 comes with 1650 mAh and it has a bigger screen and 1.2 ghz dual core cpu which obviously requires more juice)
- The IPS(not a normal TFT) screen of 2x is a treat to the eyes (*iphones also comes with IPS screens) crystal clear
- Graphics are superb thanks to nVidea tegra 2 chipset ; leaves other phones far behind in terms of 3D graphics benhmarks
- I love the design more than S2.., 2x design is more functional (grippy back cover, loudspeakers at the bottom..)
- Camera is good , 8mp does its job well
- music is good n louder than other android phones ( download "Equalizer" App from market and it sounds much better with bass and still loud (must have app for music lovers))
- Price - for so many cool features its priced under 20k almost a "8-10k" less than galaxy s2 ; Optimus 2x is the best buy and truly a VALUE for MONEY product.. don miss it..

I got my device 2 weeks back and it been so far so good . So here are my list of goods and bads about the P990

Good
1) At 19k it sure looks like a good deal .
2) Good overall performance .Not that laggy when you throw out the LG UI
3) Good LCD display . Sharp and decently bright
4) Overall list of features especially HDMI mirroring is quite useful to have .
5) Games run smooth thanks to Tegra .

Not so good
1) Battery life is about average for a device this class .It does tend to drain when you run apps .But it surprised me once when I left it on standby overnight with only 1% drop ..
2) LG UI is not that great . I switched to GO launcher
3) Slightly low on RAM .But considering the price seems ok for now
4) Display is a fingerprint magnet , easily smudged .You either keep cleaning it OR put some anti-smudge LCD protector.
5) HDMI output seems chopped a bit at the edges , when it is mirroring the screen . Not sure whats the issue .But videos seem fine.
6) At time has issues locking on to GPS satellites . It does disconnect . But after a device reboot it seemed to work well . Again not sure whats the issue

Yes and to answer the proverbial question . The ginger bread update is available and one of the first things I did was to update it to GB , the official one . Might stick in another ROM down the line but seems fine for now .