LG Optimus L7 review

The LG Optimus L7 is the largest smartphone in LG’s Optimus range. It also has a 1GHz Cortex A5 CPU, 512MB of RAM, 2.7GB of storage and a screen resolution of 480×800. Most impressive is its operating system, which is Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Despite having a rather pedestrian resolution for its screen size, we found the L7’s screen bright and colourful, but it’s way too reflective, so much so that we couldn’t see it outside in bright sunlight. This will prove a problem for most people.

Its user interface is LG’s Optimus UI 3.0, and we found it to be smooth and pleasant to use. In fact, it’s smoother than the Samsung Galaxy S Advance. You can easily customise the home screen by adding apps and widgets to it with a couple of presses, and it looks great. It’s supposed to have a function called Quick Memo that lets you write on the screen with your finger as if you’re using a felt-tip pen, which would be great for taking notes or writing comments quickly, but we couldn’t get it to work. Apparently, you need to install a maintenance update that should be globally available by the end of Q3.

Its 4.3in touchscreen certainly makes web browsing a much more engaging experience. You can view more text than you would on a smaller screen, or alternatively you can zoom in to a section so that it’s clearer to read. We could view BBC News webpages at full width and still read the text, even with our longsight. Sadly, web browsing is where the limitations of this phone become apparent. It can be jerky when scrolling large and image-heavy web pages, but if you’re viewing less graphically intensive websites you shouldn’t have a problem. It also took 17 seconds to render the BBC News webpage, which is quite a long time for a modern phone. Despite its jerkiness and its relatively slow page rendering, the L7’s large screen still makes it a decent phone for the web.

The L7’s 5-megapixel rear camera has an incredibly well-designed user interface and a comprehensive settings menu that lets you alter scene settings, change flash behaviour and select ISO settings. You can also quickly select the front-facing camera, although its VGA resolution makes it great for video calls and facebook snaps only. We weren’t too impressed by the quality of images taken with its rear-facing camera, but they’re not bad for a mid-range smartphone.

As for apps, you get everything you need and nothing you don’t. You can play music and videos on the L7, as well as open and view MS Office files and PDF documents. The LG Optimus 7 worked with BBC iPlayer and MX Player, too, although BBC iPlayer programmes didn’t play smoothly, with jerky images lagging behind audio. You can store media on its 2.7GB of storage. Plus, the L7 also accommodates SD cards up to 32GB in size.

The LG Optimus L7 isn’t technically brilliant, but it has a large touchscreen and smoothly animated menus. It’s great if you just want a large smartphone for web browsing and listening to music, but not if you want to watch videos on your phone.