LG Optimus 2X & NVIDIA Tegra 2 Review: The First Dual-Core Smartphone
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on February 7, 2011 3:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Tegra 2
- LG
- Optimus 2X
- Mobile
- NVIDIA
Display
I’ve already talked a bit about the 2X’s display in the intro—it’s a WVGA (800x480) IPS panel topped with a capacitive digitizer. Touch detection is nice and snappy, and supports up to 10 contact points simultaneously which was confirmed with some testing using the LG touch screen test application. The same surface is also home to the capacitive buttons just below the display edge. They’re responsive and work perfectly fine. In the video review, I struggle on camera with taps a few times, which is purely a function of using the phone at a weird angle some distance away—the buttons are actually very responsive.
Though the 2X display is indeed IPS, it doesn’t score too highly in our display tests. I found contrast to be more than adequate, even if it isn’t AMOLED. At maximum brightness there’s just a bit too much brightness in the blacks which hurts that contrast score. I prefer LCD over AMOLED personally because of how grainy and off-white PenTile looks on most devices, so it’s nice to see an LCD. The automatic brightness dynamic range on the 2X could stand to be way bigger, it doesn’t go as dark as the darkest setting in pitch blackness, or as bright as maximum. That’s more of a complaint about how Android in general handles auto brightness by default than something LG is guilty of doing wrong. It's a shame we don't have the same kind of color calibration checks on smartphones as we do displays, because subjectively the display looked just about perfect. Auto brightness also sometimes seems to change brightness abruptly, without a gradual transition.
We talked in the physical impressions area about how the display surface is curved. It’s a gentle curve out at the edge which slopes down to meet flush the plastic lip running around the edge. If you put the phone face down, it seems that these areas are slightly raised, and thus the area that scratches is out at the start of that curve. What’s more interesting though is that several times I’ve noticed that with the sun or bright light at the side, light will enter through the raised curve and totally internally reflect all the way across the surface of the display. The result is that you see a ton of repeated vertical lines across the phone from light reflecting off the front and back surfaces of the glass. It’s a weird effect to describe, but I’ve seen it happen twice now during brief stints outside.
Viewing angles are decent, though there’s a bit more color distortion when viewed from extreme horizontal angles. The slight curve doesn’t really affect viewing angles in that direction—it’s nowhere as extreme as the Dell Venue Pro. Likewise, viewing angles in the vertical direction are great.
Outdoors there’s a bit of glare, including an odd secondary reflection from the second (back) surface of the glass. The result is that when you get glare outdoors, there are two images. One much more visible reflection from the first surface, another fainter image from the second surface. I haven’t really noticed it as much on any other device as I do with the 2X. It isn’t honestly a problem outdoors, just something worth noting. It’s too bad that LG couldn’t toss their super bright “Nova” display on the 2X, but as it stands right now LG has a pretty decent IPS on the phone.
The final interesting thing is an odd option under the display settings page. At the bottom is the option to change the Android display font. There are 7 fonts options, including the default Dorid Sans font, two other sans-serif fonts (one of which appears monospace), three nightmarish script fonts, and a serif font.
It's definitely not something I'd change yet (mostly because the alternatives to Droid Sans are visual atrocities), but this is the first time I've seen font changing on Android outside of the rooted/modding crowd.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
rpmrush - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
Solid review, but please at least use spell check. I'm not a grammar or typo freak, but there were way too many simple typos that spell check wouldn't even let you get by with. At least have someone proof read it before you publish to the public.zowie - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
who can create a new type battery, who will be the richest man in the worlduhuznaa - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Yeah, and until then those who manage to come up with some decent power management will be the richest...Seriously, every improvement on the battery front almost always just leads to devices drawing more power. It's somewhat ironic that last year's iPhone still leads the pack when it comes to battery life. Power management (that is: don't draw more power than absolutely necessary by throttling or shutting down components that aren't needed or aren't fully needed in a given moment) is hard and boring design work nobody seems to care for. And with devices and software getting replaced with the next iteration every few months this is even understandable, it's just not worth the effort, especially when nobody seems to care and benchmarks are so much more important to the crowd.
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
How is is typically played back: Cropped, or vertically resampled?Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Tegra 3 has 4 1.5GHz Cortex-A9's according to a leaked slide.That was a great article! A few minor corrections: The ARM11 VFP is fully pipelined (so it can beat the A8 on FP performance). Like the A8, Scorpion is 2-way in-order, not limited out-of-order. In-order cores issue instructions in-order but may complete them out-of-order. On the other hand, OoO cores use register renaming to issue instructions out-of-order but complete them in-order.
Note none of the micro benchmarks used emits Neon instructions. JIT compilers don't have enough time to generate high quality code, let alone autovectorize! For proper benchmarking you will need to run native code compiled with a quality compiler (not GCC - it is still far behind the state of the art on ARM, especially Thumb-2).
metafor - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
I would argue with that definition of OoO. A design does not need register renaming in order to issue any arbitrary instruction OoO. It's simply a trade-off of whether to centralize hazard tracking on register accesses or on retirement.PWRuser - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Excellent review. Please, in your future reviews don't stop including gems like this one:"Generally while browsing I can feel when Flash ads are really slowing a page down - the 2X almost never felt that way."
That's what matters! Including hands on observations along with a full volley of synthetic benchmarks.
This review comes as close as humanly possible to portraying a handset's ability to readers without the said readers trying it out.
Your attention to detail puts other reviews to shame. Keep up the good work.
sarge78 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Don't forget about ST-Ericsson's U8500 A9. They could be a major player in 2011/2012 with potential design wins from Nokia and Sony Ericsson.warisz00r - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
What equipments do you use to test the phone's audio quality with?phut- - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
"NVIDIA tells us that the Tegra 2 SoC is fully capable of a faster capture rate for stills and that LG simply chose 2MP as its burst mode resolution. For comparison, other phones with burst modes capture at either 1 MP or VGA. That said, unfortunately for NVIDIA, a significant technological advantage is almost meaningless if no one takes advantage of it. It'll be interesting to see if the other Tegra 2 phones coming will enable full resolution burst capture. unfortunately for NVIDIA, a significant technological advantage is almost meaningless if no one takes advantage of it. It'll be interesting to see if the other Tegra 2 phones coming will enable full resolution burst capture. meaningless if no one takes advantage of it. It'll be interesting to see if the other Tegra 2 phones coming will enable full resolution burst capture."LG have probably made this decision based on the sensitivity of the invariably minuscule sensor they will have used. Having 6 frames of 12mp is pointless if they are 12 incomprehensible megapixels due to the lacklustre sensitivity of the pixels in their chosen part.
The kind of sensor you find delivering a meaningful burst in something like a 5D mk2 is enormous and power hungry, in comparison to an operating environment such as a phone.