LG Optimus Sol E730 Review by FoneArena

Article by Srivatsan Sridhar

Here is the FoneArena review of the LG Optimus Sol. LG announced the Optimus Sol last August and it went on sale early this year after pre-order in December. It has 3.8-inch Ultra AMOLED display, 1GHz processor and runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) expected in Q2 2012.

Box Contents

Charger
Stereo Ear Microphone
USB Data Cable
Manual
2GB Memory Card

Hardware

The phone has unique shape with curved edges and curved bottom. The first thing you notice about the phone is the Ultra AMOLED display. The 3.8-inch (800 X 480 pixels) 16M color display is perfect with vibrant colors especially black color that looks good while watching videos and playing games. The capacitive touch screen is quite responsive.

There is VGA camera at the top next to the ear piece.

There are capacitive touch buttons for menu, home and back, below the display that lights up on response and has haptic feedback.

The volume rocker is on the right.

The power / lock button, USB port with plastic cover and the 3.5mm audio jack are at the top.

The phone is sleek at just 9.8mm and weighs 107g.

There is a 5MP CMOS Auto focus camera at the back.

The loudspeaker grill is present at the bottom with the LG branding next to it.

When you open the back cover, you can see the microSD card slot at the top next to the SIM card slot along with the 1500 mAh battery below that.

Camera

The 5MP shooter takes good shots. There is auto focus with touch focus option that lets you focus a particular space. There is face tracking no macro mode in the setting. There are different modes including, Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night and Sunset. Other Camera camera options include option to change image size, ISO settings (Auto, 400, 200 and 100), White Balance (Auto, Incandescent, Sunny, Florescent and Cloudy), Timer, Image quality, Shutter sounds and Geo tagging. There are also on-screen camera options such as digital zoom (up to 4x), Contrast and scene modes (Mono, Negative, Solarize, Sepia and Aqua). You can switch to the front VGA camera to take images and make video calls. The lack of LED flash and dedicated camera button is disappointing.

Here are some camera samples.

The video camera option lets you record videos at 720p HD resolution at 30fps. The video quality is not great and it focuses every time when you focus and object. You can mute the audio recording. Other features such are similar to the image mode.

Software

The UI is similar to the other LG Optimus phones. It has slide to unlock option similar to other LG Optimus phones. There is a weather app and standard bottom bar with dialer, contacts, text messages and Applications. You can have up to 7 home screens with one screen as default.

To add widgets, shortcuts and folders or change the wallpaper, you need to long press the screen that would list the widgets and shorts and you could simply touch them to add it on the screen. You can also add apps and folders in the similar way.

The notification bar has shortcuts to control the Sound, WiFi , Bluetooth , GPS and Data. It has gesture controls for different actions including calls, video playback, alarm etc.

Apps

The phone comes with Gmail, Google Search, Google +, Polaris document Viewer (Excel, Power Point, Word, PDF) and YouTube. SmartShare app enable you share music and video to DLNA compatible media devices. The Wi-Fi Cast App can detect and connect the nearby Wi-Fi Cast supported devices automatically to transfer images, videos and music in hi-speed. The utility apps include Calculator, Calendar, Clock and Voice Recorder. There is Social+ widget to connect to Facebook, Twitter and Myspace from a single place.

The recent applications can be viewed from the home screen when you press and hold the home button. There is no app manager in the recent app list like some of the other LG phones but you can access it from the settings.

The application manager lets your view running and installed app and shows the RAM usage. There is LG World and Google Play Store (previously Android Market) to download more apps. The 1GB internal memory is more than sufficient to store more apps. You can also moved supported apps to the microSD card that is expandable up to 32GB.

Media Player and FM Radio

The Music Player supports MP3, WAV, AAC and WMA audio formats. The sound quality good with the bundled headphones and the loud-speaker. The video player support 720p HD video playback which is smooth that support multiple codec formats including MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and DivX.

The FM Radio has RDS support and auto scan option with channel shortcuts at the bottom. You can also edit the station name manually and can change to loudspeaker / headphone using listen via button below.

The browser is similar to the one present in other LG Optimus devices. There are tabbed browsing support and different options such as remember passwords and default search engine. It also has flash support.

The browser managed to score 182 in the HTML5 test.

Dialer and Messaging

The Dialer is similar to other Android devices. The call log display recent incoming, outgoing and missed calls. You could Sync from your Google contacts and also import contacts from SIM and export it to SIM or MicroSD card.

You can make a video call to a contact by pressing video call option inside contact details. The Messaging supports individual and group messaging and has a standard LG keyboard to input. The phone has default LG e-mail support (Microsoft Exchange, Others, Google Mail, AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail) other than the Gmail app.

The phone has 3G support with HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps, Wi-Fi b/g/n with hotspot feature, DLNA and Wi-Fi direct, Bluetooth 3.0 and a Micro USB port.. It also has On Screen Phone function v2.0 lets you see your phone screen on the PC via Bluetooth/ USB.

Benchmarks

Vellamo

Quadrant and Smartbench 2012

Verdict

The eye-catching Ultra AMOLED display is a plus for this phone. The apps and games are faster with the 1GHz processor. The battery life is also good that lasts more than a day with average use with few phone calls, browsing on 3G and few hours of audio playback. You can manage without the dedicated camera button on the phone but a 5MP camera without flash is a bit disappointing if you want to capture images in low-light.

Pros

Good display
Good build quality
Good Mulimedia support

Cons

No camera flash
No dedicated camera button

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Srivatsan Sridhar is a Mobile Technology Enthusiast who is passionate about Mobile phones and Mobile apps.
To see his review of the Optimus Sol E730 on FoneArena, click here.

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