3D was just a gimmicky technology, seldom used in a few movies here and there before 2009. Then came the James Cameron 3D behemoth ‘Avatar’ and changed the movie industry forever. Since then 3D became an integral part of mainstream consumer technology and modern smartphones are no exceptions. When LG first introduced Optimus 3D in early this year, we knew it won’t be alone. HTC soon followed suit with their EVO 3D. While Optimus 3D was launched early in Europe, it took a long time coming to the US. Now as it is finally available here in the form of LG Thrill 4G, today we are going to review the handset.
What is it?
LG Thrill 4G is a 3D enabled smartphone from LG, which was originally launched as Optimus 3D in Europe. The Thrill 4G is available from AT&T in USA and available on the stores now. The phone has a ton of built in 3D contents already installed and offers a glasses free 3D viewing experience. Thrill 4G also has a dual 5 MP camera on the rear for shooting 3D stills and videos.
Key features
1. 3D Display
The first and foremost feature of the Thrill 4G is its 3D display and it does not disappoint. LG packed a 3D LCD capacitive touchscreen on Thrill and it packs a 800 x 480 pixels under its 4.3 inch size, giving an effective PPI of 217 which is similar to Samsung Galaxy S II. Although a standard LCD TFT screen, thrill’s screen packs a certain amount of punch. The colors just pop out and the screen also has a decent amount of brightness and contrast ratio. Viewing angles are pretty good, although the contrast starts to fade when the viewing angles are increasing. For the best part, LG also included a brilliant full 3D menu for accessing the 3D contents in 3D mode. Built in contents are pretty fantastic, including 3D games that give a pretty immersive experience, comparable to Nintendo 3DS and then some. The preloaded 3D pictures and videos are also visual treats for the most part. The included 3D toggle switch can easily go from 3D to 2D and vice versa and offers 3D related options on the fly.
2. Camera
LG provided two stereoscopic 3D cameras with 5 MP sensors for each. Thrill is capable of shooting both 2D and 3D photos and videos. In 2D mode, users can capture 5 MP stills and capture full HD 1080p videos. On the other hand, in 3D mode users can snap 3 MP 3D stills and 720p HD 3D videos. The camera performance in 2D mode is quite well; the photos came out with commendable colors and good contrasts. The 3D mode is quite different though. The cameras get confused very well in 3D mode when the phone is not shooting brightly lit objects or things that have very high dynamic ranges – creating only a huge mess of blurred 3D imagery. Far off objects did not have that popping out 3D effect on their 3D photos, you need to get close for a better performance. Anyway, the 3D videos are pretty cool and have a somewhat exciting feel into them.
3. Software
LG Thrill 4G ships with Android 2.2 or Froyo preinstalled but AT&T has already promised Gingerbread for it. The built-in Froyo does not show itself very often, thanks to LG’s custom 3D skin running on top of Froyo. But the custom skin job is not done in very tasteful manner and it lacks punch. There are no exciting widgets available, perhaps except a weather app. The influence of LG’s skinning of feature phones is pretty obvious here and it was never a good thing. Anyway, thanks to Android’s excellent skinning capability, using applications like LauncherPro can easily give Thrill 4G a good makeover.
4. Hardware
Thrill 4G does not disappoint in terms of hardware. It boasts of a dual core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, coupled with 512MB of RAM. The CPU works on a TI OMAP4430 chipset, which is also accompanied by PowerVR SGX540 GPU. Although the CPU is not a disappointing one, the amount of RAM is just paltry for a 3D behemoth like this. We will check the performances shortly in the next section.
5. Performance
Although LG Thrill 4G uses an older version of Android, namely Froyo 2.2, it performs very well in synthetic benchmarks and effectively trumps the other 3D competitor HTC EVO 3D. In Quadrant Thrill 4G managed to get a score of 2415 which is more than the usual crop of current smartphones. The stock android browser also works pretty well and scores less than 4000 in SunSpider benchmark. All these fast and smooth performances do not just come without any hits on battery life and if you insist on watching those 3D contents then the battery life can suck up pretty quickly. The standard usage can provide a full day of battery life though.
What’s innovative?
The 3D technology on smartphones is still an emerging sector and LG scores fairly well in this segment. The glasses free 3D experience is pretty amazing and has a certain ‘coolness’ factor in it. The smartphone also performs well, giving it an edge over the only 3D competitor HTC EVO 3D.
Price and availability
LG Thrill 4G is available for $99.99 from AT&T for a two year long contract.
Accessories
Thrill 4G comes with a standard set of accessories like Bluetooth handsets and earphones. As the device supports A2DP, Bluetooth based devices are easily connectable to it. Lack of NFC support is a downside though, but not too many devices support NFC anyway.
The up side
The LG Thrill 4G offers a glasses-free 3D display and comes preloaded with 3D content, as well as stereoscopic cameras for capturing 3D photo and video. The Android smartphone features a dual-core processor and an HDMI port.
The down side
The smartphone is large and heavy. It ships running Android 2.2 Froyo and can be sluggish at times. Camera quality could be better.
The bottomline
The phone performs pleasantly well, apart from the synthetic benchmarks we threw before LG Thrill 4G. The call quality is reasonable, so are the data speeds over 4G. The 3D experience is cool but at the end of the day, they are nothing more than a gimmick as they do not provide something radically new. If you are looking for a 3D Android-based smartphone, then Thrill 4G is a perfect choice for you. The other contender, namely HTC EVO 3D does not hold much of a challenge in front of Thrill 4G in terms of sheer performance. But if you are not exactly looking for 3D, there are a lot of better options available in Android world.
