We knew it as the LG Star originally, and we waited impatiently for a chance to really put it through its paces. Now, the world's first Tegra 2 smartphone, the LG Optimus 2X, has arrived for our delectation, sporting Android 2.2.
Mobile World Congress has brought us news of more dual-core smartphones to come, including the Samsung Galaxy S2, but it's not the same as having one in your pocket.
So what's a dual-core processor good for? Why video, of course! That'll be why LG has outfitted the Optimus 2X with 1080p video recording on the eight-megapixel camera, 1080p playback over a mini-HDMI port (cable included) and DLNA media streaming.
Of course, we're also looking for it to make Android sing, showing what Google's OS is capable of on the Optimus 2X's four-inch WVGA touchscreen.
There's also a 1.3MP front-facing camera, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, microSD card slot to compliment the 8GB of built-in memory.
The LG Optimus 2X should be on sale for around £500 SIM-free.
Our colleagues at T3.com grabbed some LG Optimus 2X video footage which you can watch below.
Design and handling
From the front, the LG Optimus 2X is a big black pane of glass, which will surprise absolutely no one who's seen a smartphone in the last few years.
It brings to mind HTC phones such as the Desire HD and HTC HD 7 with its all-black visage and four touch-sensitive Android buttons for Menu, Home, Back and Search at the bottom.
Unusually, the glass rounds off slightly at the left and right edges of the front fascia. It's a hard edge at the top and the bottom, but the softer edges at the sides to help the phone to feel comfortable when you're reaching across the four-inch screen with your thumb.
That screen is is the now-standard WVGA 480 x 800 that we expect to see on Android devices on this size. While inevitably not quite as sharp as the iPhone 4's Retina display, we'd go out on a limb and say it'll do for most people.
The screen is bright, and colours stand out nicely when viewed straight on. It loses its vibrancy quite quickly when you stray from that viewing angle, and gains a noticable colour cast. We were hoping for better from a high-end phone, to honest.
The screen generally isn't a match for the Super AMOLED used in the Samsung Galaxy S, and certainly not the even more advanced panel in the Galaxy S2, but it's fine when viewed correctly.
Above the screen is a small earspeaker, an LG logo and the front-facing camera.
Moving away from the glass screen of the Optimus 2X, a kind of gunmetal grey is the outfit of choice. The right side of the phone features two buttons for volume control, while the bottom has speaker grilles and the micro-USB port.
On the Optimus 2X's top edge the 3.5mm headphone jack, the Sleep/Wake button (pulling double duty to turn the phone on and off) and a covered mini-HDMI port to connect to your HDTV.
It seems a little odd that this port is covered while the almost identically sized USB port is open, but maybe it's so LG can write 'HDMI' on the cover to gloat.
The back of the phone features a long shiny strip etched with Google's logo that leads up to the LED flash and eight-megapixel camera's lens. The metal strip was quite scratched up on our review unit when we received it, indicating that you can probably expect the same from your Optimus 2X.
The backplate pops off if you slip a nail under a notch down by the USB port. It's plastic, and so just pops off with a bit of a bend. It feels high quality and solid when it's on the phone, but is quite thin and flexible once removed.
Underneath is a capacious 1500mAh battery along with slots for the SIM card and microSD card.
Design and handling
From the front, the LG Optimus 2X is a big black pane of glass, which will surprise absolutely no one who's seen a smartphone in the last few years.
It brings to mind HTC phones such as the Desire HD and HTC HD 7 with its all-black visage and four touch-sensitive Android buttons for Menu, Home, Back and Search at the bottom.
Unusually, the glass rounds off slightly at the left and right edges of the front fascia. It's a hard edge at the top and the bottom, but the softer edges at the sides to help the phone to feel comfortable when you're reaching across the four-inch screen with your thumb.
That screen is is the now-standard WVGA 480 x 800 that we expect to see on Android devices on this size. While inevitably not quite as sharp as the iPhone 4's Retina display, we'd go out on a limb and say it'll do for most people.
The screen is bright, and colours stand out nicely when viewed straight on. It loses its vibrancy quite quickly when you stray from that viewing angle, and gains a noticable colour cast. We were hoping for better from a high-end phone, to honest.
The screen generally isn't a match for the Super AMOLED used in the Samsung Galaxy S, and certainly not the even more advanced panel in the Galaxy S2, but it's fine when viewed correctly.
Above the screen is a small earspeaker, an LG logo and the front-facing camera.
Moving away from the glass screen of the Optimus 2X, a kind of gunmetal grey is the outfit of choice. The right side of the phone features two buttons for volume control, while the bottom has speaker grilles and the micro-USB port.
On the Optimus 2X's top edge the 3.5mm headphone jack, the Sleep/Wake button (pulling double duty to turn the phone on and off) and a covered mini-HDMI port to connect to your HDTV.
It seems a little odd that this port is covered while the almost identically sized USB port is open, but maybe it's so LG can write 'HDMI' on the cover to gloat.
The back of the phone features a long shiny strip etched with Google's logo that leads up to the LED flash and eight-megapixel camera's lens. The metal strip was quite scratched up on our review unit when we received it, indicating that you can probably expect the same from your Optimus 2X.
The backplate pops off if you slip a nail under a notch down by the USB port. It's plastic, and so just pops off with a bit of a bend. It feels high quality and solid when it's on the phone, but is quite thin and flexible once removed.
Underneath is a capacious 1500mAh battery along with slots for the SIM card and microSD card.
Interface
This being Android (and Android 2.2 Froyo at that), Home screens are the order of the day. There are seven provided in the LG Optimus 2X, and it's pretty clear that the LG team are fans of HTC, with several clear nods to the fan-favourite Sense UI used on phones such as the HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z.
There's a clock and weather widgets on the first Home screen, which even has a flip clock like HTC's overlay.
LG's actually provided a whole range of widgets in their own menu when you go the 'Add' option in the Home screen menu.
There's a range of other clocks and alarm clocks, including analogue and digital, bookmarks, calendar, FM radio control, social feeds and more.
The social feeds app is a large widget with a tab for Facebook and a tab for Twitter, both of which tie into the LG-specific apps for these two social networks that come pre-loaded on the phone.
HTC's Leap View, which graced phones such as the HTC Desire when introduced is replicated here. Pinch in on a Home screen to bring up all seven in miniature, at which point you can choose one to zoom in on.
Navigating around the Home screen is quick enough, thanks to that Tegra 2 dual-core processing ticking over inside. Pinching and zooming out on all the home screens tends to drop a few frames, but we suspect that's due to lack of optimisation rather than the processor struggling.
Hit the Applications icon and you'll be taken through to the full System Applications list. There's a lot of stuff in here right from the off, thanks to whole bunch of pre-loaded apps, including Facebook for LG and Twitter for LG.
These two apps really show off the speed off the phone – there's absolutely no waiting around in them. Tap something and a new screen slides in immediately, not missing a step. Very smooth.
The apps menu on the whole really demonstrates that touchscreen interaction isn't the strongest part of the LG Optimus 2X. It's just not quite as responsive as a lot of phones out there.
We're not talking about it being like using a resistive screen or anything, but it is noticeable when compared to impeccable touch credentials of the iPhone 4 or HTC Desire.
This also comes across if you swipe left or right accidentally in the apps menu. There's nothing to swipe to, but instead of ignoring your input the Optimus 2X will just open the app you started your swipe on. It's the kind of thing we expect modern smartphone to be able to sensibly ignore.
The interface is unsurprisingly slick on the whole, considering the power behind it. The things is, we weren't really blown away by it, because it's not really any faster in the animations and transitions and a top-of-the-range Snapdragon or Hummingbird phone, because Android was already running optimised on those.
LG has used some fancy 3D interfaces in the past, and were expecting something like that in the backs of our minds, just to show off.
But LG's made the right decision. Android's popular for a reason, and LG hasn't tinkered with that formula too much.
We did have a few crashes in our time with the Optimus 2X that didn't seem to be related to anything in particular. Once the browser crashed and wouldn't reopen, another time the Messaging app gave up the ghost on us.
These were sorted with a restart of the phone, and this is very likely a result of the pre-release software our unit had, so we won't criticise too harshly unless the final version is crashing as often as this one did.
Messaging
The LG Optimus 2X comes loaded with lots of messaging goodies. Aside from the expected SMS and email options, there are the pre-loaded Twitter for LG and Facebook for LG apps for social networkers. There's also a MySpace for LG app, in case you're planning to send the phone back in time five years.
Text messages are read in the Messaging app (there's also a Messaging widget, for quickly seeing your most recently received text). In the main inbox, you can see your conversations arranged by recipient.
Choose one of these and you'll see a threaded message view, with nice clear text in colour coded bubbles. It's easily readable, but on the whole is nothing unusual. Android users, iPhone users, Windows Phone 7 users and HP webOS users will all find it comfortingly familiar.
To reply to a text, just press in the 'Type to compose' box at the bottom of the screen (or hit the 'New Message' button if you're on the Messaging app's first screen). The software keyboard will pop up, along with a Send button and button to attach multimedia for MMS, and you can see the last message in your conversation above it.
Well, that's all true if you're in portrait. In landscape, you get that generic Android text entry box you get in just about every app, with no button to attach things, no view of your messages, and no context in general.
Typing in landscape is generally preferable, so you'll have to switch back and forth if you do want to send a picture or anything. It's irritating – especially considering the 'World' key on the keyboard isn't used by anyone, and could easily be swapped for the attach key.
The same goes for the emoticon menu key. Do we really need help with this in exchange for losing other, more useful buttons?
It's only an annoyance, though, and certainly not an insurmountable problem.
Writing on the keyboard is generally fine, but the screen's slight lack of responsiveness crops up again. It seems to be more pronounced near the edges, and results in your often having to tap the key to get you to the symbols list more than once.
There are two email apps on the Optimus 2X – the Gmail app and the Email app. Once you've got Android tied into your Google account, the Gmail app will automatically start bringing in your emails.
It's easy to set yourself on the Email app, too. You choose between Microsoft Exchange or Other, and just put in the necessary details.
The two apps work slightly differently. The Gmail app fits more onto one screen and features threaded viewing of messages.
However, it doesn't feature the ability to sort your emails by anything other than date in an easy way, which is offered by the Email app (are you keeping up?). The Email app also has dividing lines between days, so you can easily see where you are in your email timeline of sorts.
The Email app can also offer a combined inbox for several different accounts from different sources or individual inboxes.
Both these apps have their good points, but we came to prefer the Email app. The Gmail interface looks slightly more cluttered to us, with options not as clearly laid out.
The apps are very similar in terms of writing emails. The Gmail app offers a slightly neater interface for writing, but the options again aren't as clearly laid out as the Email app. In the case of both, switching to landscape will bring up the generic writing view again, just as it did in the Messaging app.
Clicking on links in emails will bring up the browser in a fraction of a second thanks to the powerful processor, though going and back and forth between the two isn't as slick as it is on the Palm Pre 2 using HP webOS and its Stacks feature.
Internet
With 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity and 3G on-board, we were looking for the LG Optimus 2X to impress us with its speed here, and we weren't disappointed.
The phone maintained a nice and fast connection to our Wi-Fi network, and we were particularly impressed with its speed over 3G. A strong ability to retain signal is converted into great mobile internet speeds.
Of course, the browser itself is equally impressive. Pages appear in a flash, and panning and zooming has no problem keeping up with the speed of your fingers.
Double tapping to zoom can drop a few frames when it's also reflowing text, but it doesn't actually slow down, so you won't mind. Here again, the touchscreen's responsiveness can be a little lacking when it doesn't recognise your double-tap.
Pages render brilliantly, and you miss nothing as a result of being on a mobile. The four-inch screen can fit a good amount of detail into its 800 x 480 resolution, and it's no problem to zoom in a little further and have the text reflow again if you need to.
You can add bookmarks, and there are tabs (or rather windows), though there's no fancy graphical view for these, as there is on the iPhone 4 and even the BlackBerry Bold 9780 now, which is a shame considering you'd have to say the phone could handle it.
There's also Google's voice search built in, of course, and it delivers accurate and responses.
This is all on par with the competition, though. What we were really looking forward to was seeing how Flash performed with all this extra processing power behind.
So far, we've been fairly unconvinced that Adobe's plug-in has made itself essential on mobile yet, with spotty performance on many phones, including Android devices and the HP webOS-powered Palm Pre 2.
Clearly, it's just needed Tegra 2 behind it.
Video is almost always buttery smooth. Playing standard web-embedded size videos generally caused us no problems whatsoever. Well, that was true for a while.
We didn't have a bad thing to say about Flash technically, until one video totally crippled the browser. It caused a bug in the Windows tab viewer that erased whatever site was top in the list, and then meant we couldn't load any web pages at all.
Which certainly sounds like something Flash would do. However, restarting the phone fixed this problem, so it wasn't a massive pain. And we have to say that the playback was so very impressive at other times that we really can't knock it too much for what may have just been a dodgy player on the website's end.
The only real problem with Flash is that the controls are rarely designed for fingers. Most volume controls in particular tend to be too small and fiddly to use in any meaningful way. Sadly, the phone's built-in volume control doesn't really go as loud as we'd like, so this can be a bit of a pain.
Similarly, many videos will pause if you click (tap) on them, so if you're trying to press a tiny 'fullscreen' button, you can end up doing a bit of a stop-start dance.
Hopefully, finger-friendly controls will appear on players, and things will really shine.
When a Flash element is running in a page, general browsing is noticeably impeded, but it only manifests as a bit of lag rather than a total crippling, while the video will start to drop frames if you're dragging the screen around, but will quickly smoothen out once you stop.
Mightily impressive, overall.
Camera
The camera on the LG Optimus 2X looks like it should be one of the phone's strong points judging by the specs. An eight-megapixel sensor sits inside, with a single LED flash to help it.
1080p video recording is included, presumably to make the most of that micro-HDMI port (and the processing power of the Tegra 2 chip). At that highest resolution, it's stated to record at 24 frames per second, while lowering to 720p ups that to 30fps. 720 x 480 widescreen standard-definition recording is also available, as is 640 x 480 VGA and lower.
The stills camera has a load of options for when you're snapping, including quick access to the digital zoom, exposure adjustment and flash settings.
Delve into the full settings and you get access to image size and quality options, focus modes (including Macro and Face Tracking), scene modes (including Landscape, Portrait and Night), ISO settings (up to 800), white balance, colour effects, self timer, shooting modes (including Panorama shot, Smile shot and Continuous), image stabilisation, geolocating and a few more options besides.
With the standard autofocus on, there's no tapping to choose the focus point, as on the iPhone 4, but get your subject in the centre of the viewfinder and hit the button to take a photo and it'll generally focus very quickly.
With all this power behind it then, shouldn't it take great pictures? Ah, if only.
OUTDOORS: Washed out, blurry and lacking any detail and texture
INDOORS: This also looks washed out, with not enough detail across the picture as a whole
PORTRAIT: We used Portrait to ensure that the flowers were the focus of the shot. Once again, colours are dull, and the shot lacks detail and texture
MACRO: Macro images are usually pin-sharp, but even this is dull, with no sense of realism
FLASH: The illumination in an already-lit room isn't bad, but there's no depth to this image, or sense of detail in the oven's metalwork
PITCH BLACK: In a totally dark room, the flash provides an almost overly bright amount of light in the centre. It spreads well, producing little in the way of shadow
Video
The LG Optimus 2X's video options include a lot of the adjustments available to the stills camera, including exposure, white balance and colour effects, including monochrom and sepia.
The maximum video size is 1080p… ish. It's actually 1920 x 1088, but what's eight pixels between friends? 720p is also available, which should save you a bit of space if that's a concern.
Like the stills camera, you might think that with all this power, you could expect some good results. Like the stills camera, you'd be wrong.
Soft is the simplest word to describe this scene. Isn't the point of Full HD recording to add detail to a scene? Here, all you've got is digital artefacts removing any sense of texture or depth, while the whole thing is washed out, with overblown whites.
Movement is generally quite smooth, with flying birds appearing crisply in each frame, with little motion blur (there are, however, huge amounts of artefacting around their flight path, blurring further anything they go near – especially grass).
"Hang on," you might say if you know your video. "Why is the motion so smooth if the specs say it can only manage 24fps?"
The short answer is that this video is 30fps. Why? We don't know. Our software definitely thinks it's 30, so we manually counted the number of frames in each second. It's definitely 30.
Except here, where it isn't. This video is 24fps, but the motion is off. Everything is flickery and, tellingly, too fast. It looks an awful lot like a 30fps video sped up to 24fps.
We don't know what the video software in the Optimus 2X is playing at, but it looks like the sensor is designed to record at 30fps while the software reduces it to 24fps (perhaps to reduce overhead on the processor).
The thing is, it seems to have forgotten to do the reduction to 24fps in the first video, while it hasn't done it properly here.
In any case, the video is poor quality again. Swans have complex, textured bodies, but that's not evidenced here. The grass is also a vague, artefacted mess, while it's been unable to cope with exposing the white swan against duller ground.
We though we'd compare the 1080p mode to the 720p recording mode, in the hope that might fare slightly better. The first video is 1080p, the second is 720p.
Alas, no. The 720p video is just as washed out and soft as the Full HD version. It's just smaller. Here, the 1080p video is 30fps again.
Media
With the advanced processing chops of Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, LG is really pushing high-quality video as a feature of the Optimus 2X.
Aside from the 1080p video recording, we're also promised Full HD playback. Adding to that is the ability to mirror the Optimus 2X's screen through its HDMI port, so video can be output to your HDTV.
In fact, it's not just video that goes over to the big screen – everything does, meaning that you can also play games on your big flat panel provided you're happy to sit within reach of the cable.
Mirroring to a TV generally didn't affect the performance of the phone, with transitions between Home screens and scrolling in lists both appearing smooth on the TV and phone's screen. Apps seemed to take slightly longer to load than without the mirroring, but we're only talking a second or so.
Since full mirroring is the order of the day, we were able to watch videos using the built-in YouTube app, through the DLNA streaming app or videos just stored on the device. The new iPlayer app crashed everytime we tried to use that on mirroring, so it's possible that could work too, after a little optimisation.
However, we did have some problems with video playback of HD videos we'd loaded onto the device. We loaded two 1080p videos and one 720p, all in H.264 at high quality. The phone wouldn't play either of the 1080p files, while the 720p clip was jerky.
The 720p file's issue made us think the problem was the bitrate of them all, so we reloaded the same files, but with the bitrate (amount of data streaming) halved. The 720p file now played smoothly, albeit with a significant amount of digital artefacting introduced and overall quality lowered.
However, the 1080p files still wouldn't play. There were some videos already loaded onto our review unit that played fine in 1080p with near-identical encoding and high bitrates, so the inconsistency was pretty frustrating.
While the four-inch, 800 x 480 screen is generally nice for videos, it's not a patch on the Samsung Galaxy S or iPhone 4. The main reason for this is the issue with viewing angles. Go just a bit off-centre and you start getting strong colour casts and losing detail.
The screen's quality is only really on a par with the HTC 7 Trophy, but that's a mid-range handset, not a high-end flagship device, so we think LG has really missed a trick here. However, there are certainly worse screens out there, and and video is easy to watch and sharp when you're in the right viewing spot.
Music
The built-in music player is a generally smart little app, though this isn't a great device for audio fans in the end.
You can browse your music by songs, albums, artists or playlists (which can be created on the phone, handily). Strangely, our handset didn't recognise the name of the bands in the music that we put on, which is a bit odd. We've never had the problem with any other phone, and all the other tags were fine, so we hope it's just a pre-release foible.
You get alphabetical lists when you have the Optimus 2X in portrait, which respond smoothly and have an alphabet on the right-hand side so you can jump down the list quickly.
Turn to landscape and you get a Cover Flow-style way to scroll through your albums that's extremely well thought out. The scrolling pane of album covers actually has letters to show you quickly where you are, and there's a scroll bar at the bottom to skip through to a point in the list. Tap an album cover and it grows, with an 3D overlay to tell you what it is and who it's by.
This screen is very slick, and we'd say it actually beats the iPhone's version in terms of UI.
Unfortunately, there's a problem that stops us recommending the Optimus 2X as a music player. It has a tendency to distort and crush dense music when it gets to any significant volume. Songs with lots of instruments (especially crashing cymbals and the like) will lose almost all detail when they really get going.
The same songs through the same earphones on other phones just don't have the same problem. Turning the volume down on the Optimus 2X seemed to help a little, but as soon as you got near traffic, you'd need to turn it up again.
The gallery app for viewing photos and videos (there's also a separate video player) has a slick interface with some subtle 3D effects, though they're really for show than being of any real use. Images and videos appear in piles, much like on the iPad, but if you turn the phone left and right you can see that these are in 3D.
Of course, since the screen has poor viewing angles, this makes it hard to see anything, so it's sort of pointless. But hey, don't say we don't appreciate novelty.
More useful is ability to pinch to preview the photos in a pile, also like the iPad. However, it works slightly differently to Apple's tablet. When you pinch out, you effectively create two piles that follow each of your fingers, and photos move from one to the other in a steady stream, so you can see them all in order.
It also doesn't open the folder (or pile, or whatever you want to call it) when you pinch out fully, so if you found what you wanted, you'd have to stop pinching, and then tap the pile and find it again.
The larger photos (such as the phone's own eight-megapixel snaps) can take a few seconds to go from fuzzy placeholder to full-quality once selected. It's a bit slower than we were expecting from this dual-core marvel, but no worse than a lot of other phones.
Apps
Predictably, the LG Optimus 2X comes packed with apps already on the device. There's a range of them, including anti-malware scanners, Google's apps and the social networking apps.
Facebook for LG really feels like its been optimised for the phone. Tapping any options will bring in a new screen in a fraction of a second, with a perfectly smooth animation. The only limit is your internet connection – rest assured the phone will be well ahead of you.
When you open the app, it will show your News Feed. It's not immediately obvious how to get to some of the other options from here. In fact, you need to hit the Back button, which will bring up a menu offering you the choice of News Feed, My Profile, Friends List, Inbox, Photos and Favorites. It's a bit counter-intuitive to hit Back to get here, but it's fine once you get used to it.
From the News Feed screen, you can also get to your profile, your messages, friend requests and there's a button to instantly upload a photo.
Most importantly, there's a text box for instantly updating your status.
The Twitter for LG app has an almost identical layout. You start off in your Twitter feed, and can hit Back for more menu options. There's a text box at the top for new updates, and a button in the same place for posting pictures.
We said earlier there a widget for these two functions, which works well enough but there's one big omission: dual posting. Of course, there are apps that can solve this, but it seems like it should have been an obvious addition to LG's offering.
Speaking of the Android Market, we've got the new version with the carousel at the top to keep us amused. Navigating the Market is fast and slick, making it easier to get to grips with sifting through everything that's on offer.
Discoverability is a known issue on both the Android Market and Apple's App Store, so LG has included App Advisor, which will show you 10 hot apps of the moment. It being February when we wrote this, they were all romance-themed.
It's the kind of thing that could make itself useful every so often unearthing a gem, but we doubt you'll be referring to it all the time.
Most apps we downloaded seemed to be able to take advantage of the Optimus 2X's powerful processor. The official Twitter app was just as fast as LG's, while Angry Birds was as smooth as we've ever seen it.
Neither of these is the biggest test of the Tegra 2's chops, but that's the point – older, non-optimised software needs to run well on these new dual-core phones, not just the new Unreal Engine-powered games.
We went on to try the more demanding stylised top-down 3D shooter Gun Bros, which also ran like a dream.
As far as organiser apps, you've got the Calendar application, which ties into your Google calendar if you enable your Google account with the phone. This has an accompanying widget for one of the Home screens.
There's also Memo, Alarm/Clock and Calculator, which all serve obvious uses. The Car Home app is also available, which offers a larger, more obvious UI for when you're driving (though we'd say it's still a little subtle, with too much transparency).
Google Maps is included, though it's one of the apps that seems to struggle most with the new processor. Of course, that's a relative term – it's still extremely fast, and tracks your fingers well when panning and zooming most of the time. But it does slow down a bit here and there and drop more frames than other apps.
Google Navigation is also here, as is usual. It looks good on the four-inch screen, but the phone's speakers don't stand out very well over traffic noise, so it may be more useful for those with a Bluetooth-enabled stereo in their car.
Battery life and connectivity
We weren't really sure what to expect from the Optimus 2X in terms of battery life. You might think that a more powerful processor would mean more power consumption, but Nvidia suggests that a dual-core chip should actually be lighter on the battery.
In practice, the Optimus 2X turns out to be pretty average for a modern smartphone. The large LCD screen is always going to be a big power draw, for example, and the Tegra chip isn't going to change that.
We also had Flash on during almost all of our browsing sessions while we were testings, and were playing videos frequently. With this kind of use, you can guarantee that you'll need to charge the Optimus 2X every night (if you even make it to the end of the night if you're 3G-ing too).
However, we think you could get a couple of days out of it with Flash switched off, and by leaving Facebook alone for a bit.
Incidentally, it looks to us as though the Optimus 2X is using proportionally more of its battery when playing back Flash video than the iPhone does when playing back embedded H.264.
We didn't conduct any scientific tests because the software is still pre-release, but watching shows of a similar length on iPlayer on both devices caused a larger dent in the Optimus 2X's battery indicator.
The release version could have better battery life with better optimised software, but we doubt it would be a major difference.
Connectivity
The LG Optimus 2X is no slouch when it comes to connections. In terms of cabling, there's micro-USB for connecting to your PC and that mini-HDMI port. The 8GB of built-in storage can be expanded by up to 32GB with the addition of a microSD card.
Wirelessly, you've got Wi-Fi covering b, g and n protocols, so you can make the most of a fast connection. HSDPA 3G connectivity means super-fast mobile broadband if you've a good signal.
Bluetooth is here, but only in its 2.1 form. No speedy 3.0 version, which is a bit of a shame. However, A2DP music streaming is enabled.
There's the obilgatory A-GPS chip for location tracking, and there's even an FM radio, in case you get bored of all the modern technology
Comparison
Well, it's hard to put the LG Optimus 2X in the same bracket as anything currently on the market when it comes to the internals. The Samsung Galaxy S2 and Motorola Atrix will catch up with it, but it's unique so far.
However, from a design and software point of view, the Optimus 2X isn't a million miles from lots of phones on the market.
LG's own Optimus One actually isn't the closest around, because the square shape and touch-sensitive buttons of the Optimus 2X bring to mind the HTC Desire HD more than anything.
Android fans looking for sharp performance would do well to check out the Google Nexus S and the improvements Android 2.3 brings. Its brother, the Samsung Galaxy S, would also be worth checking out, if you can't wait for the next version to arrive.
If it's sheer slickness and speed in the operating system you're after, the iPhone 4 has to be a contender, as do Windows Phone 7 devices, such as the HTC HD7 and the Samsung Omnia 7, which sports a stunning AMOLED screen. LG also has a WP7 device in the shape of the Optimus 7 if it's the brand you're after.
Hands-on gallery
Official gallery
Early verdict
If the LG Optimus 2X was supposed to blow us away with its dual-core processing prowess, it hasn't really succeeded, but maybe that was inevitable. Android runs so smoothly on phones such as the HTC Desire and Desire HD on a single-core processor that more power was never going to make that much of a difference.
Where it should be useful is the video recording and playback, and while the HDMI mirroring does make use of Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, the HD video recording is really let down by a below-average camera sensor.
There is a clear use for dual-core processors and powerful system-on-a-chip silicon in phones, particularly with games such as Infinity Blade on the iPhone and Dungeon Defenders on Android capable of taking advantage of fancy graphical features.
But this more future-proofing than it is bringing a revolution to us now.
We liked
The phone is certainly snappy – you'll get no argument from us about that. Slowdown was almost non-existant and that the Optimus 2X can keep it that smooth while mirroring to an HDTV is also impressive.
Some of the pre-loaded apps are quite useful, while the LG social networking apps are nice in the way they share a design, making it intuitive to go from one to the other.
It's not light, but the phone is reasonably thin, and sits comfortable in the pocket, despite its four-inch screen. It's good that those who want the processing power won't be struggling with a hulking great smartphone.
We disliked
The music player's quality disappointed us, despite its nice UI, while the 1080p video recording proved to be a total damp squib. In fact, the camera's performance in general was pretty disapponting, when it really should have been a feature to make the Optimus 2X stand out even more.
The screen is also a big let-down. LG really should have been looking to make a flagship product here, one to take charge of the constant stream of Android devices, but when the touchscreen is slightly unresponsive and the viewing angles are poor, the phone inevitable make a dodgy first impression.
Similarly, the fact that the speakers are of such average quality, making it a pain to make phone calls in a busy area, is a big negative.
Verdict
Though its geek cred as the first Tegra 2 phone is undeniable, the Optimus 2X doesn't make all that strong a case for itself. Despite its power, its only actually as slick as an HTC Desire, because you can't ask an OS's interface to run any faster than at full speed.
It's more expensive than phones that have come before without bettering them significantly, and it's specs look likely to be eclipsed by what's on the horizon, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 and its Super AMOLED+ screen. It's a milestone, but not one that we'll remember.
However, it's crucial to remember this is not final release software, and would be harsh to judge the phone properly before we get our hands on that. It's highly feasible most, if not all, of the issues raised here will be fixed in a few new software builds, so keep checking back for our straightforward and definitive LG Optimus 2X review
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