LG Optimus L7 - Review

A fashion phone for the designer-challenged. Last season's Prada at knockdown prices. The LG Optimus L7 will have to face comparisons with the latest Prada phone by LG and we cannot think of many that will swing in its favor. But there's no need to be negative. The L7 is big-screened, inexpensive and Ice Cream Sandwich-flavored. Doesn't sound too bad now, does it?

A very respectable connectivity set, complete with NFC, is sure to give the LG Optimus L7 a good advantage against midrange competition. The phone is well built and quite attractive, much of which goes down to the impressive slimness. Changing out of the designer outfit was no big deal but one CPU core had to go with the Prada dress. In theory, the old Snapdragon chipset should flash red on all alarms but our concerns over speed have eased a little.

  

The bigger loss is HD video recording. The L7 is obviously not even half the cameraphone the Prada is. And LG know they have no use of an overpriced designer handset in the midrange. An affordable, good-looking and reasonably equipped smartphone is what they need instead. The Optimus L7 might just be it.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 4.3" 16M-color capacitive IPS LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Android OS v4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich
• Single-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A5 processor, Adreno 200 (enhanced) GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• 4GB of inbuilt storage (2.7GB user available)
• 5 MP autofocus camera, face detection and geotagging
• VGA@30fps video recording
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
• NFC
• GPS with A-GPS
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microSD slot up to 32GB
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Front facing VGA camera, video calls
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0, MHL TV-out
• Smart dialing, voice dialing
• DivX/XviD video support
• Polaris Office document editor
• Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement

Main disadvantages

• Outdated hardware with a single-core processor
• Occasional performance hiccup and laggy browser
• Less than impressive camera performance
• VGA video recording only
• Poor sunlight legibility

The LG Optimus L7 is in charge of the new L-style series that debuted at this year's MWC. Much of the latest Prada styling has been carried over to the three new phones, which should give LG good coverage of the entire midrange. This is not the first time LG have taken design cues from collaboration with a fashion brand to use on their own line of devices.

The L-Style phones continue the Black Label series tradition of iconic phones like the Chocolates and the Secret. The big difference is that smartphones are involved this time around. And as far as we can tell, Android wouldn't put up with anything too fancy. The L-Style phones seem to have gotten it right though, with a distinct but subtle design. Let's see. The full hardware inspection is coming up after the break.