LG Optimus Black P970 Review

Jump to page:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The LG Optimus Black is by no means the company’s most advanced high-end Android smartphone, but it contributes to the variety of devices and range of prices for the customer.

LG announced this year the very first dual-core processor based Android smartphone in the world, the LG Optimus 2X, which makes customers wonder why they should buy the P970 instead. The answer is very simple – price. Although the Optimus Black will certainly not be available at a mid-end price point, it should be cheaper than the more advanced alternative, and launch much sooner.

By not being the flagship for the South Korean manufacturer, the phone leaves the competition open for the Samsung Galaxy S II we recently reviewed. Bad for the company and for the customer, as there are less top-end smartphones to choose from.

Now the LG Optimus Black itself, the object of this review, was announced as the handset with the brightest display in the whole world. Whether all that brightness also helps in terms of deep contrasts and vivid colours, the reader will have to read either the hardware section or skip to the conclusion to find out, but the feature itself is an advantage of course.

Looking at the LG Optimus Black specs in our own portal we can see that the screen measures 4″ and has a resolution of 480×800 pixels, the device as a whole weighs 109g and is 9.2mm thin, it brings a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, Wi-Fi with DLNA, Bluetooth, 2GB internal storage and a microSD memory card slot. It runs on Google Android 2.2.2 Froyo (as of our review unit), is powered by a 1GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, aided by a 1500mAh battery.

Owing to the camera’s lower resolution and the limited storage capacity, the handset can certainly be seen as upper mid-end (and not high-end), and that should be reflected in the price.

Please read on for our full hardware overview, Android 2.2.2 Froyo software review, or the LG Optimus Black rating and conclusion sections.

Jump to page: