As promised, I’ve put up my thoughts on the O2X a couple of weeks after I bought it.
I’ll try to give an honest, everyday opinion of the phone, consider it’s my only phone and gets some decent use actually as a phone for my day job and gets used for games and social media in the evenings.
I put my initial thoughts here when I first bought the phone.
My lovely phone….
Hardware
My initial impression on the quality still stand, I’m very impressed with this phone, not quite as good as my Nexus one, but a very very close second. Certainly would recommend it. The screen is great, nice and clear, very bright and even works in daylight, not perfect, but a long way from the original Amoled of the Nexus that was almost unusable in sunlight. The Gorilla glass screen is nice, strangely feels smoother than other phones I’ve used. The speakers are very good, the earphone is plenty loud enough and the main speakers are half decent with a hint of bass there! My only issue is the charger, I’ve had a few instances where I pug it in to charge overnight and it hasn’t charged more than a couple of %, I’m currently trying to find the cause, but the charger is prime suspect.
Speed
Of course, this phone is a dual core device, running the Nvidia Tegra2 cpu and it flies! Very quick and smooth, a real jump in performance from the single core devices I’ve used in the past.
Software
The software that the phone comes with as stock is not bad, LG have only added minor additions to the phone, a few apps and their homescreen UI, neither are annoying or intrusive. Other than that it is the same as you are used to with android.
Usability
I find the size of the phone just right, I do like a chunky phone and this certainly is, the large area at the bottom of the phone for the soft keys take up a lot of space and make the phone bigger than it could be, the plus side of this is the row of four buttons are nice and large and easy to press, no chance of accidentally pressing them when you go for the space on the keyboard! I had no issues with the screen waking on calls or issue when in calls. I do however have one problem, the speaker is set back slightly leaving an edge where the surround of the phone is, I seem to hold the phone tight to my ear and it tends to hurt after a few minutes. I realise this could be considered user error, I’m interested to know if others have noticed this as well.
Camera
In a word, Superb! It is excellent,I can’t really add to that, best camera I’ve used on a phone. I must confess I haven’t used the video recording or bought a HDMI lead to try the output.
General impressions
Some things that are worth noting. The battery life is so far very impressive, certainly better than all other smartphones I’ve owned with a 3.5″+ screen. The internal/external storage can cause issues with connecting to the pc, it took me a few attempts to get the pc to see the storage.
As a phone out of the box I would certainly recommend it, available for £400 or less as an unlocked Payg phone or free on most carriers on contract you won’t be disappointed.
Now, Some of you will stop reading at this point as I’m going to talk about Custom Roms and development!
The Optimus 2x has been taken on board by a lot of the development community, this is a result of LG being very friendly towards this side of android and almost encouraging them to hack the devices. As a result of this the phone has been taken up by high profile developers such as Cyanogen and is enjoying custom Roms and all the little fixes this brings.
With this in mind the phone is easy to unlock and root, no locked bootloaders here!
I’ve been running stock, MCR and CM7 , Both MCR and CM are improvements over stock, Pauls MCR simply adds some performance and choice apps and removes some of the spamware that often clutters up phones, CM adds performance and the add ons that we have come to expect. If you like playing with your phones, this one is nice and open with plenty of support, another reason to get one.
( Ironically I have tried taking screenshots but due to some teething bugs CM7 is corrupting the photos on the external storage card. Sorry about the lack of photos.)
Conclusion
So, In conclusion I’m very happy to recommend this phone, either as a standard phone out of the box or as a developers phone.
Apologies of the slightly patchy review, but please fire away with questions in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.
I was interested in your review because like myself, you have owned a Nexus One in the past. I am having nothing but problems with what appear to be very common issues with the phone freezing and awful battery life (compared to Nexus) on both original rom and custom roms. Apart from that, it is a great phone but too many people seem to be having problems at the moment.
Strange? Battery on cm7 is proving to be very good. I’m not really suffering lag, I do get the odd freeze but only on cm7,mcr was near perfect for me.
If you want real speed you should try out the Samsung Galaxy S2, now that phone is fast! can even play 1080p youtube flash video in the browser!