LG Optimus Net Review

Introduction:

LG isn’t as productive as Samsung or HTC in churning out Android handsets as if there’s no tomorrow, but it did provide us with a fair amount this year, and the LG Optimus Net is its latest low-end offering. 

Pretty run-of-the-mill as far as specs go, the handset’s main virtue will likely be its low price, but does it have any other tricks up its sleeve to entice you? Will this be a good replacement for the successful Optimus One? Read on our review to find out…

Design:

The LG Optimus Net is your typical black and curvy low-end Android handset – nothing remarkable about its design, with a cheap plastic look and feel. The tapered edges and rounded corners do give it some ergonomic feel in the hand, and its 3.2” screen is small enough for easy one-handed operation.


You can compare the LG Optimus Net with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The LCD display is with 320x480 pixels of resolution, which is enough fora low-end Androids exhibit, but means 180ppi pixel density – just on the border of making everything look grainy, yet not quite there. There is no ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness automatically, so you have to do it yourself when trying to look at the screen under sunlight, where it behaves fairly average – same as its viewing angles.

We are also lacking a front-facing camera, and the 3MP shooter on the back is missing its flash companion. LG has given the microUSB port a protective cap for some reason, and placed the smallish, hard to find power/lock button at the top.

Interface, Functionality and Software:

The Android 2.3 Gingerbread is overlayed with the Optimus UI of LG, which is basic, but functional. The best thing going for it are the connectivity switches in the pull-down notification bar, which make turning the GPS or data radio a snap.


A 3.2” screen is usually borderline uncomfortable for typing on a virtual keyboard in landscape mode, and it only gets worse when you turn it in portrait mode. The on-screen keyboard on the Optimus Net, however, is well-spaced and fairly easy to use, considering the screen size.


The main menu is scrollable downwards with app category separators by default, instead of sideways in pages as usual, but you can quickly change it to the familiar layout via the context menu.


The 800MHz processor is aided by 512MB of RAM, which is a decent combination for Android Gingerbread, even when many apps are open at once. The interface moves fairly quick, but it’s a far cry from the fluidity supplied by 1GHz processors and above.

LG provides some familiar and useful apps out of the box, such as Polaris Viewer for Office documents and file browsing, SmartShare for the DLNA streaming management and RemoteCall for managing and diagnosing the handset by a service rep from afar.



Browser and Connectivity:

The Gingerbread browser on the LG Optimus Net works fast enough and you can pan around while zooming. Text reflow is supported, but Adobe Flash performance is… non-existent, since the Qualcomm MSM7227 CPU is Flash-less.


The phone sports basic 3.6 Mbps 3G data connectivity radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS and FM Radio. The basics are covered, and you also have DLNA thrown in for good measure, managed by the SmartShare app, which allows easy streaming of the multimedia on your phone to compatible TVs or stereos via Wi-Fi.

Camera:

The LG Optimus Net camera interface is with your typical Optimus UI we find in the company’s Android handsets. Here it sports a few effects and preset scene modes like Sport or Night, but there is no macro.


The pictures resulting from the 3MP shooter are pretty bad – dark, lacking focus and detail, with botched exposure and color representation.

Video capture is done at 640x480 VGA resolution with 24fps, which it had problems to achieve. The clips turn out too soft, dark and lacking detail, which adds to the bad impression from the low resolution.

LG Optimus Net Sample Video:



Multimedia:

The music player is basic, without any bells and whistles like equalizers presets or embedded song recognition. LG Optimus Net’s loudspeaker is of average quality with thin sound, but decent volume.


Video playback is one of the strong sides of the handset, since the DivX/Xvid codecs are hardwired in the silicon, and it ran our MPEG-4/DivX/Xvid samples up to 720x480 resolutions without a hitch.

Performance:

Voice quality in the earspeaker of the LG Optimus Net is with good enough volume, and fairly clear sound. On the receiving end the sound from the phone's microphone is a bit weaker, and people said we sound a tad muffled.

The fairly generous in terms of capacity 1500mAh battery is quoted for just four hours of talk time in 3G mode and 100 hours on standby, which is pretty short by any measure.

Conclusion:

The LG Optimus Net doesn’t really stand out from the sea of Android handsets and sets the bar pretty low even for the basic category. Uninspiring plasticky design, lack of ambient light sensor, front-facing camera or flash for the 3MP shooter on the rear don’t help its cause to differentiate itself either.

The biggest drawbacks are its voice and camera quality, but the handset surprises pleasantly with good video codec support, and playback of DivX/Xvid videos up to 720x480p definitions.

The closest alternative to the Optimus Net is the Samsung Galaxy Y, which features the same cheap plastic shell and basic hardware, but has a slightly smaller screen. For only a bit more money you can score the HTC Wildfire S, too, which has much better looks and feel, plus a 5MP camera with LED flash.

In the beginning we were wondering if this one will be a successful replacement of the Optimus One. The answer is not. It is just a minor processor improvement over the old model, and comes way later to the market, where the requirements are way higher now. The shelves are already flooded with budget Android handsets, and most of them are better than the Optimus Net.

Software version of the reviewed unit: V10a-Jul-14-2011

LG Optimus Net Video Review: