Delays aside the LG 4G finally made it to AT&T Sunday. Life being as it is, even with having the device four days prior I still couldn’t find a way to organize my thoughts on the Thrill until now. I’ve had it in my possession for a week now and it has mostly integrated itself into my life. Transitioning from the HTC Inspire 4g I found my only real challenge was putting my phone back together the way I liked. 5 months carrying the Inspire gave me the slow time to adjust the menu every day just a little bit. Putting that together in a weekend was no easy task, and with 0 help from Go Launcher’s “Save to SD” feature, I accomplished little in the real world.
Upon initial boot up the phone is snappy, responsive, and feels good in your hand. The dual core processor and dual channel ram give it an extra speed boost which is greatly enjoyed while downloading content, but rarely noticed during normal phone operation. I’m assuming this is due to Android’s lack of dual core support in the OS itself, being as I’m not a tech wizard you’ll have to take that observation with a grain of salt. Aside from that and Androids usual battery abuse I have thoroughly enjoyed the phone over the past 7 days.
The phone has a few things stock that I truly love, and a couple items that I find frustrating. Out of the box the LG overlay has many features similar to that of custom launchers. You can resize the LG widgets without resetting them by simply pressing for an extended period of time and dragging the arrows to adjust it’s size. I also fell instantly in love with the WP7 style lock screen notifications. The biggest thing I missed when I left WP7 behind was the quick-glance calendar and messages on the lock screen, LG has brought that to Android in this device. My love aside I discovered some updating issues with the lock screen notifications for those of us using a custom SMS app. The first thing I do with every Android phone is install Handcent SMS (my favorite SMS app). Normally i simply turn off notifications for the stock messaging app and let Handcent handle all of my business, with the LG this works flawlessly with one small quirk. LG’s notification system doesn’t take it’s cue from Handcent, it takes it directly from the stock messaging app, so even though they are being marked as read by Handcent and show up read inside the stock app, the lock screen still shows I have a grundle of text messages waiting until I open the messaging app itself. It’s a small gripe, but not knowing how many texts I have waiting gives me a small attack of OCD.
The only frustration I have found with the phone itself is the intermittent delay on unlocking. I would say that 85% of the time there is absolutely no delay, but the other 15% of the time there is a noticeable 1-2 second delay on lighting the screen when I press the unlock key. The hardware inside the LG Thrill should eliminate any delay in matters such as unlocking… so it’s definitely been a pain point for me this last week.
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The big selling portion of the Thrill is a big 3D screen! My thoughts on stereoscopic 3D on this phone are very similar to my thoughts on the 3DS, it’s an amazingly cool feature for those that can handle it for an extended period of time without getting sick, and a novelty for folk like me who can only work with it for a few minutes at a time. The ability to turn standard images into 3D makes for a fun afternoon of goofing off, and the 3D space itself is a work of genius. Not forcing the consumer into 3D is a smart move on LG’s part, and I’m sure a direct result of market testing. The 3D games on the phone run flawlessly and add an element of fun to the device that other phones simply won’t provide. For the first tim in 2 years I had to ask my wife for my phone back after her 2 hour affair with “Let’s Golf 3D.” That aside, I feel it’s more of an after thought on the phone. An extra thing to set it aside from your other smart phones, but nothing to run straight to the store screaming for.
The phone itself is a killer addition to the ATT portfolio, and for those of us that aren’t in love with Samsung, (I love their hardware, but I find their interface and icon styles to be tacky). It’s a great choice, for a scant $99.99 with contract you can while away your hours in 3D seeing the world that you never knew existed. You can check this gadget out at any ATT store nationwide