LG Optimus One P500

LG is hoping that its new Optimus One smartphone will be a credible alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Apollo and the HTC WildFire.  The Korean firm means business, too: it's planning to shift 10 million Optimus Ones.  

The recipe is a low- to mid-range phone with Android 2.2 Froyo running natively (a first!), with the aim of winning over users who've never tried a smartphone before or people changing handsets at the end of their contract.  The Optimus One includes a 3 Megapixel camera, GPS and a few extra Optimus software tools.




LG clearly wants to give the impression that its new mass-market smartphone can do everything the big big boys can.  As a result, the general look and feel has clearly been inspired by the Google Nexus One and the HTC Desire.  The Optimus One is a little smaller than those two, though, and its cheaper build quality is given away by the poor materials and the stingy buttons.

Another aesthetic detail: the version we tested, supplied by an operator, wasn't in the best possible taste, combining a perfectly decent grey with an eye-wateringly bright blue.  It's a subjective choice, of course, but we strongly recommend you wait for the black version, which looks much nicer and does the otherwise broadly acceptable finish justice.


We were glad to see four physical buttons under the screen, giving direct access to your settings, the home screen, the previous option and Google search.  These turned out to be excellent, especially compared to the HTC WildFire, which uses touch-sensitive buttons, which are much less accurate and can be accidentally activated far too easily.

The multipoint capacitative touchscreen boasts 320 x 480 pixels across its 3.2'', while there's a 600 MHz Qualcomm processor on the inside.

Small but (quite) powerful

By choosing such a limited toolset, LG is running the risk of scuppering its smartphone before it even takes off.  That's no doubt why Android 2.2, which is supposed to leave less work for the OS, has been installed directly.  It works pretty well.  Of course, the technical quality is nothing like what you'd get from a Samsung Galaxy S or an iPhone 4—but compared with either the WildFire or the Apollo, the Optimus One has nothing to be ashamed of.  Even Froyo's dynamic wallpapers work without a hitch, and there's only a very limited amount of jerkiness in games.  The GPS, meanwhile, picks up a signal very quickly and does the job perfectly.


There are a few things to add to our list of complaints, including the rather slow 45 second start-up time, somewhat average responsiveness from the screen—which sometimes needs to be tapped several times before it work—and the fact the phone begins to struggle as soon as you open several apps at once.  The onscreen keyboard is the main victim of the sluggish touchscreen, and using it in portait mode is a real challenge as there isn't enough space between the virtual keys and they aren't laid out very sensibly.  You'll almost certainly have to rely on landscape mode.  It's a shame that LG hasn't included a social hub to bring together your contacts from Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.  That would have been a good way of winning over a wider public, the supposed target market for the One.  The Optimus software layer, meanwhile, offers five or seven homescreens, but they're largely uninteresting given the almost total lack of originality.  Apps you download are shown separately from the ones that are installed by default, for instance ...

Multimedia

You can't expect wonders from a 3 Megapixel camera, especially one without stabilisation, autofocus or an LED flash.  When it comes to using it, the absence of a physical shutter release—or even direct access to the camera itself—might also put you off.  The photos it produces are barely acceptable, with plenty of detail disappearing.  It's a shame, because the camera offers a lot of customisation, including ISO sensitivity and face detection, as well as several scene modes and a digital zoom mode, though you should be careful with this last feature.  Whether you're taking photos or videos, though, the Optimus is always going to be a last resort rather than a first port of call.