LG Optimus 7 E900 review

LG’s Optimus 7 is a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) handset. It differs from the original Android-powered Optimus in both design and specification: it has a larger, clearer screen, a better camera with an LED flash, and a generous 16GB of internal storage, though it lacks a memory card slot. We much prefer the new design, with its sculpted body and reassuringly solid metal back cover.

Battery life was just over 22 hours in our light usage test, so you might be able to get away without charging it every night – if you’re careful with WiFi, GPS and 3G usage. Camera snaps were reasonably sharp but suffered from noisy shadows and a lack of fine detail. Our only complaint with the hardware would be the placement of the Back button, which is the furthest left, and a harder reach for your thumb (if you’re right-handed).

Microsoft likens the tiled homepage to the Windows Start menu. Like the Start menu, you can pin applications from the main menu as a Live Tile: for example, the email tile will show the number of unread emails, so you don’t have to open the email app to check. However we couldn’t find any third-party applications, such as Twitter, that offered such live previews.

You get a mobile version of Office, which can edit all office documents and create Word, Excel and OneNote files. There’s Internet Explorer, which we found easy to use. We liked the way the back button took us to the previous page, rather than exiting the application – much like Android’s Webkit browser, in fact.