LG Optimus Sol E730 Review

| Updated: Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 15:57 [IST]

LG Optimus Sol is one of LG's newest additions to its Android smartphones lineup in India. The handset was announced in August 2011 and was launched early this year. The handset is expected to get the Android 4.0 ICS update in the later half of 2012. Here is the review of the LG Optimus Sol smartphone.

Package

The package of the smartphone contains the following:

LG Optimus Sol handset

Charger

USB Data Cable

Stereo Earphone

User manual

2 GB memory card

Design

The handset is slim and sleek. Surprisingly, the phone is light weight. It has a plastic body with good build quality. It is extremely thin and very light weight making to easy to carry around. The glossy panel attracts too many fingerprints and is prone to scratches.

Coming to the design elements, the front panel is largely occupied by the 3.8 inch display. Above the screen is a VGA camera and a proximity sensor next to the ear piece. The sensor will turn off the display when the user is speaking to someone by holding the phone near the ear. Below the screen, there are three capacitive touch buttons for menu, back and home. These are backlit buttons and are good to use in dark environments. These buttons offer tactile feedback.

The left spine of the handset has the volume rocker while the right spine is bare. The 3.5 mm audio jack, power/screen lock button and the USB port with the protector cover are placed at the top. The back side of the phone is covered with the huge battery cover. It has a 5 MP camera and the loudspeaker grille at the top. The battery cover conceals the SIM card slot, micro SD card slot and the 1500 mAh battery.

Display

The Optimus Sol sports a 3.8 inch Ultra AMOLED display of 800 x 480 pixel resolution. The capacitive touchscreen has 16M color support. It displays vibrant colors and the black is especially too good in videos and games. The capacitive nature of the display makes it to be responsive.

Multimedia

The handset has a 5 MP camera with the auto focus option but lacks the flash feature. The handset also lacks a dedicated camera button. If one wants to open the camera in the quickest way, it can be only through the shortcut icon in the homescreen. However, the camera has all the basic functions in it. The image quality is mediocre and disappointing. The lack of flash affects the low light images.

The camera can capture 720p high definition videos at 30fps. The video recording feature is also not too good. The auto focus does a good ob but the videos appear pixelated. On the whole, the camera is a great downside for the handset.

The loudspeaker at the back doesn't offer good sound quality when played aloud. However, the earphone that is bundled with the phone offers excellent audio quality.

Hardware & Software

The Optimus Sol has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 processor. It has a 512 MB RAM that is average for the phones of this class. The hardware is not as powerful as it should be considering the price of the handset.

When it comes to the software, the handset is powered by the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread operating system with the LG's custom skin. The influence of the LG skin can be felt in the application launcher and on the homescreen. The users can have a maximum of seven homescreens on the smartphone. The notification screen has shortcut icons for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and more.

Battery

The Optimus Sol E730 has a 1500 mAh battery. This is quite average for a smartphone. The phone can last for about a day on a regular use. The display consumes more power when viewing bright like browsing the internet. However, a day of regular use is not bad.

Price

The Optimus Sol is available for a price in India of Rs 16,990.

Pros