LG Optimus 4X HD Review

Media

The improved UI makes its presence felt in the media department as well. The music player has a few cool additions. It now comes with a sleep mode option that automatically switches off the player after a set time interval. There are a bunch of equalizer settings and they work well to tweak the sound output. Dolby Mobile has been included in the fray as well. Music via the bundled earphones was good with a nice thumping bass and a nice tone quality. The usual formats are supported but the default audio player refused to play our FLAC files. 

Media interface

As far as video playback is concerned, the display is brilliant for watching videos. Nice colours, not overly saturated, not too pale, great viewing angles and that massive 4.7 inch screen mean you’ll be using this device a lot on-the-go to get your daily dose of entertainment. 1080p files played without a hitch and DivX, Xvid support is present as well. The media section is rounded off with the inclusion of an FM Radio with a nice simplistic user interface. 

Connectivity

The Optimus 4X HD is a quad band handset. It has 3G, dual band Wi-Fi, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and last but not least, NFC. Everything you need and everything you want. The phone has a loud enough earpiece and speaker. In our call tests we observed no problems whatsoever while communicating with the recipient. 

Brilliant inbuilt browser

The 4X HD has got a brilliant browser as well. We noticed a much faster loading time than usual and a much smoother experience for even image heavy sites. The stock browser also has a toolbar at the bottom that lets you quickly open a new tab and visit bookmarks and history. Manoeuvring between the open tabs was quick as well. Typing on the super large 4.7 inch screen isn’t a problem, but one handed usage will take some adjustment to get used to. 

The phone also comes with two NFC tags that let you set up profiles for corresponding environments – car, office, sleep etc. You can change, add and modify profile options such as Wi-Fi, data network, sound, and Bluetooth. Upon tapping with the tag applications can be instantly launched. For example, if you place it in your car, the tag can instantly start Google Maps for you. It's a neat feature, and as the tag is already provided with the device, you can get started with using this relatively new feature. 

Misc. Apps

Let’s start with the notable additions first. The phone comes with an Application Manager, which as the name suggests, lets you view the installed apps and uninstall them. There’s a Backup App that lets you back up your downloaded apps, bookmarks, calendar, call log, contacts, messages and system settings onto the internal memory or the SD card. The Media Home works as a hub for your videos, photos and music.

Misc. Apps

There’s a Task Manager to free up some additional memory, but there wasn’t any incident that led us to use that app. The other apps include LG’s SmartShare for DLNA streaming, LG SmartWorld, LG RemoteCall for diagnosis, Memo and Memo. May not be a big deal for many, but audio recording via the built in Voice Recorder app was surprisingly good.