LG Optimus One: VFM Android with Froyo FTW

FULL REVIEW

With close to three dozen Android phones that you could buy in India today, it's hard for a new entrant to make a dent without hitting a revolutionary price point. Priced just shy of 13 grand, the LG Optimus has the right set of specs and a massive battery, and gets the equation right for a mid-ranger. The phone is also confirmed to update to version 2.3 a.k.a Gingerbread.

At Rs. 12,990, the Optimus One is flanked by over half a dozen phones in the same range: Videocon Zeus, Motorola XT3 and XT5, HTC WildFire, Xperia X8, Galaxy 3. We'd expect a capacitive HVGA screen from a mid-range phone (Zeus, Xperia X8,  XT3, Motorola XT5 and Optimus One)- the WildFire and Galaxy 3 have QVGA and WQVGA screens respectively.
The Optimus One beats them all in one respect: It's the only phone with Android 2.2, Froyo at the moment. Froyo is awesome for many reasons, (USB Tethering, Wi-Fi Hotspot, improved speed and battery life, new Javascript engine and enterprise email features, Flash support). It's generally a good idea to have the latest OS preloaded on the phone than get an Android phone that promises an update, because you never know how tortous the upgrade cycle could turn out to be.

Build Quality
The Optimus One feels chunky and secure to hold - it is reinforced by a metallic chassis that sticks out on the sides, which is better equipped to face a drop to the pavement. Volume and power controls are blended into the chassis, the USB connector at the bottom, headphone jack on the top. The display's surface feels scratch and smudge free, and with the brightness tweaked up, looks good. The back panel can be flipped open without stress, and lets you replace the SD card without rebooting. The unit ships with a 2GB card, which is upgradable to 32 GB. The phone has a 3-megapixel camera, which works great in day-light, but is no good at night as it lacks LED flash.
 

User Interface
The UI is mostly stock Android 2.2 Froyo, which is good enough left alone considering how sophisticated and customisable it is. You can choose to have 5-7 panels decked out with useful widgets and shortcuts that let you access important features and information at a glance. Widgets, a particularly useful feature of Android lets me adjust brightness, put the phone on silent with a few taps. Widgets help present useful information: the Data Counter widget keeps track of how much data I am using each day, week  and month. A battery widget tells me how much juice I have left, while Twitter and Facebook widgets, which hog a lot of screen real estate round up the last few panels. One has to swipe the screen each time to swivel between these 5-7 panels; a trackball would have made it easier to do so, and was sorely missed. HTC's Sense UI is really much much faster in this respect.

The stock Android keyboard was a bit of a bother to use. There's a huge difference between a 3.5-inch screen and a 3.2-inch screen - especially in portrait mode where you are likely to encounter typos and missed keys when typing in a flurry. I was glad when a Swype Beta I had registered for earlier replaced the default keyboard - with the protective sticker off, the screen works well with Swype. Trying to spell out arcane landmarks and Hindi references is a bit of a challenge.

Apps - A bag of tricks
The combination of an HVGA screen and Froyo means that the Optimus One can run everything that its larger brethen can: Swype, Slidescreen, Google Maps 5.0, etc. If Quadrant benchmarks are anything to go by - the Optimus One is not a gaming phone. Yes, it runs Angry Birds, but the framerate is not as fluid as an iPod Touch. You would be better off with a high-end phone if you want to play 3D games like Need for Speed.
The 4 killer apps for Android are Gmail, Maps, Google Talk, and YouTube. The Optimus One can handle multiple email and Gmail accounts, run the latest version of Google Maps, and keep you live and online on Google talk on the go. Watching YouTube over Wi-Fi is fun, I was able to watch a few TV Indian channels from MunduTV's Android app as well.
An Android phone brings plenty of value in a 3G world as it is a data intensive phone - video calls on 3G are possible with Tango. The phone can also function as a Wi-Fi hotspot - I tested the feature out with a Docomo 3G prepaid connection and it worked without any hassle. You don't have to invest in a dongle or a data-card if you have this phone around.

Battery Life
The Optimus One has a chunky 1500 mAh battery, which manages to dish out enough juice for an activity filled day. The Wi-Fi hotspot feature and A-GPS can guzzle through the battery in a few hours and leave you short, but rest assured a 100 percent charge will last you atleast 12 hours as long as you keep an eye on battery intensive apps and features.

Conclusion
LG has customised the Indian version of the phone with around 40 preloaded apps, some of these are pretty useless to me (Infant Vaccine Tracker, BollywoodJi) but I can't uninstall them. It's a minor pet peeve, but it goes against the grain of the openness of Android. Nevertheless, if you care about running the latest apps, a Froyo phone is a must. The Optimus One is slated to get a Gingerbread update as well, which makes us happier still to recommend the phone.