This Review is based on the latest firmware of LG P990 Optimus 2X(aka: star/dual/speed) -V10a, one of the best official roms I’ve ever used on android. This dual-core phone comes with Android 2.2 (upgradable to 2.3 in the near future) and is rootable with SuperOneClick. I rooted the phone and push new fonts and modified libwebcore.so to fix incorrect link ring. The rest remains the same.

Here is the pack of files I pushed into LG P990 http://bit.ly/gtRvWa
(I do recommend pre-installation of V10a before releasing to the market, otherwise this monster will be like a clumsy little pig)

For advanced users, LG P990 is now ready live on xda-developers. Recovery and Online Kitchen from MoDaCo are available to download. When it’s fully distributed into the market, I’m quite sure this android phone will be a major choice in consumers’ mind from its appearance, built-quality, and performance.

This review has 8 parts. Each part will give you only summaries. I’d love to keep it short and point out only interesting issues. YouTube is only optional in case you need more information what I summarized. Enjoy 🙂

1. General Information(Overall)

Play video

Material Used: coated plastic, feel good while holding, fit in my hand, nice assembly.
Firmware : Android 2.2 upgradable to 2.3 in anytime soon. However, I prefer 2.2 since it’s rootable.
Frequency Support: quadband for 2G. 900/2100 for 3G…if you are in a country (like Thailand) that most operators provide 3G on 850MHz, you might need to look over this phone.
Display Screen: TFT Capacitive 4” IPS WVGA 800×480 gives you good contrast and neutral color, Battery Friendly, Viewable on most angles.
CPU&GPU : Nvidia Tegra2 Dual Core runs most games flawlessly.
Wireless : 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth is only 2.1 not 3.0
FM Radio: plug-in the earphone to use its wire as an antenna.
A-GPS : fine speed and stability but OptimusOne is Better
Battery Life: After 6-10hrs of normal usage on these activities[auto-sync, several in-out calls(5-10mins each), twitter, browsing], 2X had 30-40%left. And after 1hr 45mins of playing DVD quality movie, 2X had 75%left.

2. LG Home and Overall Features

Play video

  • LG Home is smooth. no lag or delay.
  • notification bar comes with power control allowing users to turn on-off wifi, bluetooth, gps easily. However, music widget always appears even you never turn the music on, and it takes a lot of space.
  • App drawer is customized to allow users manage downloaded app more easily.
  • Widgets and Gesture control make 2X different. See how gesture control uses on youtube.
  • Live Wallpaper Support but it could slow down the overall performance.
  • internet tethering : allow more than 1 users connected over mifi and 2X still playable while sharing.
  • Bundled with Polaris Office, document handler application, which works nicely to view/edit MS Office files.

3. Telephony features

  • Good voice quality on both side.
  • Search contact through T9.
  • Ease to jump to any contact by pressing its initial in phonebook
  • English Keyboard is quite ok but unacceptable for Thai
  • Most necessary phone features are included and also integrated with social network eg. use your friends’ facebook display as contact image.

4. Browsing experience

Play video

  • Render speed is great.
  • 3rd party browsers are preferrable (dolphin, xscope, opera) due to more stability, more speed, and more customizable.
  • Flash Player support but only recommended for general usage such as streaming video, access flash only websites. To play games on facebook, I would say “don’t expect too much”. Some games run perfectly, but some will crash your phone. Moreover, when you access flash-rich page, your browser will strongly slow down or even crash. [see video]

5. Audio and Video /Entertainment

  • 2X’s speaker generates excellent volume.
  • Audio chipset used in 2X is the same with GalaxyS, which most pros accept its quality (as good or even better than iPod)
  • with 4inches screen size, watching movie through it is quite ok. Or you may choose to connect your phone to larger screen size, 42” LED TV, via HDMI and enjoy your day.
  • support many video format – MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV.
  • you can watch 2-3 movies per fully battery charge.

6. Camera and Camcorder

  • Many camera features included such as continuous shot, panorama, self-timer, exposure
  • value, and white balance but the GUI is quite unattractive and hard to use.
  • Only 4:3 ratio images are allowed.
  • 2X camera location is not good because it is bulged. Very risky to get scratch or stain
  • Image Quality:
    • even 2X comes with 8MP camera the overall image quality is not acceptable.
    • 2X gives unnatural White Balance and always has under exposure pictures.
    • Check out the sample images from http://bit.ly/gv0DCI . For more images, check on the right side of the screen and click LG-P990. It will show you the images from 2X from around the world 😀
  • Video Quality:
    • more acceptable than still image.
    • able to shot at 1080p without any lag or delay at cinematic-grade fps.
    • the one big problem is you cannot focus in camcorder mode.

7. Gaming

Play video

Samurai Vengence II : excellent
Dungeon Defender : frame rate decreased during massive unit scene or quick turn right/left.
Guerilla Bob : excellent
Mobern Combat 2 : excellent
Asphalt 6 : excellent
Hawk : excellent

It’s obvious that Games from Gameloft performs well but those games from Tegra Zone would sometimes lag or delay.

Gaming is the key feature of Optimus2X which it performs well. You can play games for hours without charging and the heat from the phone is acceptable. We did try to play on multiplayer mode- android-iphone, android-android- and it works fine 🙂

8. Benchmarking
An3dBench, An3dBenchXL, Linpack

Neocore, Quadrant

Pros

  • Nice Design and Quality assembly
  • Good Multimedia Supports.
  • Battery lasts long
  • Good for gaming
  • Nice IPS Screen
  • HDMI out

Cons

  • not support 850MHz
  • poor camera