LG Optimus Vu Review

The LG Optimus Vu is an fascinating and commendable idea, taking the large screened smartphone inside a slightly different direction by getting a shorter, wider screen. However, even more than the Samsung Galaxy Note, it really is a bit too large.

The screen is 5.3 inch from corner to corner but because it uses a 4:3 aspect ratio it's considerably wider than any other telephone in the marketplace. This extra width clearly has its problems because the telephone both looks a bit odd and is inevitably challenging to handle.

A dedicated screen-capture button sits along the leading edge alongside the headphone jack, microUSB (MHL) port that's hidden behind a sliding door, and the energy button that's outlined by a funky white glowing ring. Incidentally, we'd normally lament getting these buttons on the leading edge where they're challenging to reach but given the way this phone is meant to be held and used we are able to type of forgive it.

Elsewhere round the handset you will discover a par for the course 8MP camera on the back, a 1.3MP one on the front and 32GB of storage tucked away inside.

Placing aside its size and ratio, the screen is excellent. The IPS LCD panel packs in 1024 x 768 pixels, compared to the 1024 x 600 you'd usually expect from a 6:10 ratio model, and has great viewing angles, strong colours and deep blacks.

The telephone presently runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) but a 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) upgrade will happen to be applied by the time the phone ships in a couple of months time. It has been fairly heavily customised in terms of visual tweaks but it's mostly regular Android below the hood. Because it is likely to be quite different by the time the product ships, we won't dwell on the interface too much here. The obvious extras are the tweaks for pen optimisation and some additional apps, like the inevitable note-taking one.

My be useful... ^_^