Credit Wired
Hands-On With LG’s Optimus 2X Superphone


Korean company LG was the first manufacturer in the world to announce a

smartphone equipped with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor (aka a "superphone").

However, LG has yet to find a carrier in the United States to sell the beefy

handset; so far it's only officially available in Korea and a few European

countries.
Hopefully LG finds a carrier in the states soon, because from my hands-on

testing of the Optimus 2X, it's a fast, solid Android phone. Plus, it has a

cool feature to hook it up to an external display.


The Optimus 2X feels like a high-quality device when you hold it; the glass

seems sturdy.


The Optimus 2X seemed very fast. The stuttery scrolling behavior that's so

common on Android phones was nonexistent on the Optimus 2X, similar to my

experience with the Tegra 2-powered Motorola Atrix


LG ran a benchmark test to demonstrate the speeds (since they created the

benchmark, we take the results with a big grain of salt), and rich 3-D

animations played very smoothly.


The Optimus 2X's resolution is a crisp 800-by-480 pixels (not quite as good

as the iPhone 4's, which is 960-by-640).


The Optimus 2X has an 8-megapixel rear camera. On the front, a 1.3-megapixel

camera allows videoconferencing.


The Optimus 2X's camera app was quick and responsive snapping a photo.


The highlight feature of the Optimus 2X is "HDMI mirroring" — an HDMI port

for you to hook up the phone to any display with HDMI.


I connected the Optimus 2X to a large display, and it showed the Android's

home screen. I see this as potentially useful for doing presentations in

business meetings or classrooms. And of course, it will be nice for

outputting movies or web videos from your phone. The mirroring effect was

very snappy; I didn't see a delay between the phone and the external display.


Another use case for HDMI mirroring is gaming. I tried playing a Shrek 2

racing game, which used the Optimus 2X's accelerometer to simulate a steering

wheel. It was fun, but the game looked pixelated and frankly kind of crappy

because it wasn't designed for a large display. amsphone.com