LG recently showed its first quad-core Android phone well ahead of the others and also the Mobile World Congress in the form of the Optimus 4X HD. We can safely say that the quad-core phones are the superphones of 2012. Seriously, quad-core? On a phone?
The LG Optimus 4X HD uses NVidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor making it one helluva powerful smartphone in today’s standards. But quad-core? On a phone? I keep on asking what good will a quad-core on a smartphones do when its highly unlikely you will be doing your video editing or code compiling on a phone. We’ll get back to that later.
Anyway, not considering the quad-core processor, the Optimus 4X HD is just like your typical 4.7-inch (1280 x 720) phone with an 8.9mm thin form factor that runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Then there are the usual goodies that are standard on a high-end phone: 16GB storage, 1GB RAM and 8-megapixel camera capable of full HD video recording. No word on NFC or HSPA+ but still it’s shaping to be one badass phone from LG.
Ok back to quad-core phones. The game changer. What can a phone do with four cores? Well the main thing I can think of is a zippy performance when switching between apps. But isn’t that what we said when we saw the first dual-core phone? And I believe ICS was further optimized on how the Android OS handle multiple apps. I’ve been using the HTC Sensation for quite awhile and here’s one thing I noticed, just like desktops, it gets laggy at times in the long run so I guess more cores are welcome but I do wish they also increase the RAM.
On the issue of battery life, the Tegra 3 on this phone uses what NVidia calls a 4 plus 1 architecture. It’s necessarily a 5-core processor with the 5th one being a low-powered core for low-resource tasks like e-mail, music and messaging to save on battery.
Well be on the lookout for more info about this phone once MWC 2012 commences.
LG Optimus 4X HD Specs: |
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Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A9 |
ULP GeForce |
4.7″ HD-IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 1280 x 720 resolution |
Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) |
16 GB storage, 1 GB RAM |
8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
1.3 MP front-facing camera |
Full HD 1080p video recording @ 30fps |
HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps |
TV-out (via MHL A/V link) |
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, EDR |
8.9 mm thickness |
Li-Ion 2150 mAh |