LG Optimus 4X HD: Tegra 3 Handsets Stay Global

LG, quite simply, needed to hit a home run with the Optimus 4X HD after a string of poorly received products - devices that hit the right boxes on paper but ended up having mostly unsatisfactory user experiences for a variety of reasons. And they’ve mostly succeeded - the hardware is as solid as expected, and the software is an absolute revelation compared to LG’s previous efforts. It’s impossible to emphasize how big of an improvement UI 3.0 is compared to LG’s old Gingerbread ROMs (a place where life was most certainly not good), and it’s quite solid too. Compared to clunky reskins like Sense 4.0 and TouchWiz Nature UX, UI 3.0 is streamlined and stays quite true to the original ICS vision. To be honest, I think with the added functionality and UI chrome, I prefer it to the stock ICS build on my Galaxy Nexus (of course, after updating to Jelly Bean, it’s a different story, but still...). 

For the US market, I’m not sure how much it matters either way. LG has given us no indication whatsoever as to a North American launch, but they will have to release a new phone in the US at some point, so odds are it will be related to the international Optimus 4X HD in some way. Last time around, the Optimus 2X underwent a modem change (to X-Gold 626, interestingly) and came here as the G2x on T-Mobile; the O4X would only need different WCDMA bands to run T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network, since the modem is already HSPA+ compatible. LG could also join Samsung and HTC in skipping an American quad-core launch in favor of a tweaked model with a Qualcomm SoC paired with a 28nm LTE/DC-HSPA+ modem. We know that the Optimus LTE II with MSM8960 and a 4.7” 720p display - sound familiar? - is supposed to hit Verizon at some point as the VS930. If it’s anything like the O4X, it’ll be significantly better than the preceding VS920 Spectrum and VS910 Revolution. And the announcement of the Optimus G is another factor - it has LTE and should be much more attractive to American carriers in its default state, so perhaps we'll see carriers wait for that device. But without speculating further, I’ll just say that it will be interesting to see what LG chooses to do in the US market. 

Now with all that out of the way, I think my flagship phone recommendation for most consumers is still the One X. The industrial design, display panel, and camera are absolutely top notch, and other than the software side of things, it’s hard to find an area in which the Optimus 4X HD is significantly better. The HTC just offers a better all around hardware package than the O4X HD, even though they are based on essentially the same silicon - the surrounding features like design, display, camera are the ones that make a difference. It’s polished, powerful, and impressive - traits that are important in a high-end phone. The SGS3 comparison is a little bit different - the international S3 is more powerful than the Tegra 3-based O4X and One X, so even with lingering concerns about the design and form factor, it certainly has its appeal. If you care about performance, S3 and Exynos 4412 clearly have the edge, and if you care about design, One X is the way to go. On a hardware level, the Optimus 4X HD ends up playing second fiddle to both. It’s by no means a poorly designed phone, but it’s neither as powerful as the SGS3 nor as polished as the One X, so the O4X is less compelling than either for precisely those reasons. On paper, at least. In real life, I prefer the O4X HD - the elegance of LG’s software package, in my book at least, has a bigger impact on my day to day usage of the phone than the hardware polish of the One X or the GPU horsepower of the S3. In my personal rankings, the O4X HD and One X are almost even, with the O4X coming out just ahead, and the S3 is a definite third. But no matter what your preference is, we can say with certainty that LG has made it back to the ranks of high-end Android device makers, and with the Optimus 4X HD, they’ve truly created a well designed hardware and software experience.