LG Optimus 4X HD: Tegra 3 Handsets Stay Global
by Vivek Gowri on August 29, 2012 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Ice Cream Sandwich
- Mobile
- Tegra 3
At this point, Tegra 3 is mostly a known quantity, but the O4X HD was my first day-to-day experience with a T3-based smartphone. It's a pretty fun SoC, for sure. This is a pretty impressive amount of performance packed into a phone, but it does come with some drawbacks. Think of it like the first generation of quad-core notebooks – there’s too much power here. Simple as that. It’s fast, yes, breathtakingly so. But it’s also pretty power hungry, and heats up more than you would ever expect a phone to do. I can't wait for the die-shrunken Tegra 3+, which will certainly go a long ways towards quelling these issues.
Something worth noting is the lack of any immediate day to day performance differences between this and Krait-based devices like the One S or even older A9 dual cores like the Galaxy S2 or Galaxy Nexus - they're all fast enough to run a stock or lightly-skinned ICS build smoothly, and all of the remaining UI slowdowns are simply issues internal to ICS. Google basically admitted as much with Jelly Bean's Project Butter - no matter how much hardware you throw at ICS, those occasional frame rate dips will continue to exist. I'm admittedly not a particularly demanding smartphone user like, say, Brian is. I do a lot of messaging, a decent amount of browsing, and then the usual smartphone stuff like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, camera, etc. But almost no gaming, and not that much in the way of HD video decoding. Honestly, Tegra 3 hasn't done anything for me that OMAP4 and Exynos 4210 weren't already able to do just fine. So while it's awesome that quad-cores have come to phones, I'm not certain that it'll change your smartphone usage patterns significantly unless you have a specific need for a ton of compute horsepower.
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SpaceRanger - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Same here.. Fellow G2X owner and I will NEVER get another LG product again.VivekGowri - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Yeah, I had a G2x for a long while. Gave it to my brother, so no longer my headache. The software on that phone was literally never finished. That's what the problem was, and that's why it was so ridiculously buggy. I think the O4XHD will get the 4.1 update at some point, but definitely nothing after that.Myrandex - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Hey there windows Phones were / are pretty well supported! Their launch Quantum is supopsed to be getting the 7.8 upgrade, its just a shame that they have been pretty quiet on that front too. I knew a bunch of people that bought the Quantum here in the U.S.Myrandex - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
their*VivekGowri - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
That's because Microsoft is doing the updating, not LG's software engineers.Lepton87 - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Aren't you a little contradicting yourself? First you say "Now with all that out of the way, I think my flagship phone recommendation for most consumers is still the One X." and then "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."
So you actually prefer LG but think than you are unlike most consumers and thus ONE X will be better for them?
VivekGowri - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
Essentially. The HTC is without question a better phone - better design, better screen, better camera. But honestly, I enjoy using the LG more, simply due to the software. It's essentially the same rationale behind me sticking to a Galaxy Nexus when the hardware has been outstripped on T-Mobile by the One S and S3. It's a purely personal preference, and if you don't have an issue with Sense 4, then there's no real reason to not get the One X.MDme - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
it is a rectangle with rounded corners!Spunjji - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
HOMG CALLZ TEH LAWYERS!!!1Spunjji - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
(But seriously, it's OK, the radius of the corners is wrong. Because that is somehow relevant and can totally be patented.)