LG Optimus 3D review

You get an HDMI output so you can send video to a bigger screen, which includes 3D if your TV supports. You can also convert any 2D video or image to 3D, but this doesn’t fare so well. The depth effect worked in places, but it looked more like one of those old holographic stickers where the image changes as you move your head. Next to a proper 3D shot of the same scene, there’s simply no comparison.

Even without 3D, the 5-megapixel stills are among the Optimus 3D’s strengths. Detail and sharpness are both very good and, although colours were muted throughout our test shots, it produced perfectly good photographs from indoor macros to outdoor scenes.

The internals are pretty beefy, as you’d expect from a smartphone with such cutting-edge abilities. A dual-core 1GHz ARM processor had the Optimus 3D whizzing through most of our tests: it managed the SunSpider JavaScript test in a decent four seconds and scored 2,543 in the Android-only Quadrant test; only a time of nine seconds to load the BBC homepage disappoints.

But if it all sounds like the LG is flying high up to this point, prepare to lose cabin pressure. Running Android 2.2 – which is a little disappointing in itself – we carried out our battery tests: a half-hour phone call, an hour-long podcast, an hour with the screen on in a browser, then we left the phone syncing Gmail with Wi-Fi switched off until it died.

Now, usually we’d give the result as a percentage of battery life remaining when the clock hits 24 hours, but we can’t with the LG because it didn’t last 24 hours. In fact, it barely even managed half, and that isn’t the most strenuous workout – we didn’t engage the 3D feature at all in that time. Its final battery time of 14 hours is one of the most embarrassing test results we’ve seen since smartphones became smart.

The rest of the phone is perfectly usable, but it could be gold-plated for all the good that would do in the circumstances. The inescapable fact is that the LG Optimus 3D will cost you £25 a month for two years, yet will struggle to last a single day of general use. We’ve long complained that battery life suffers most as smartphones become more powerful, but this just takes the biscuit.