LG Optimus 7 review

Windows Phone 7 made its debut a couple of months ago, and it made quite an impression on the PC Pro team. For a mobile OS designed from the ground up in little more than 18 months, it looked slick, was easy to use, and has proven extremely responsive on all the phones we've tested so far.

The LG Optimus 7 is no exception. It's snappy in everyday use and easy to get to grips with, and the hardware is lovely too.

A brushed-aluminium panel conceals the battery compartment on the rear, a glossy glass 3.8in screen tops the phone, and below it are the three standard Windows Phone 7 buttons: back, start and search. It all feels very well put together.

It isn't quite as arresting as the Samsung Omnia 7 with its 4in OLED display - this one has only a TFT screen - but aside from that, you'd be hard-pushed to tell the difference.

The screen has the same number of pixels at 480 x 800, the camera is the same resolution at five megapixels, and both shoot 720p video.

The battery is also of identical capacity at 1,500mAh, and it lasted just as long; we recorded 60% remaining after our 24-hour test - perfectly acceptable for a large-screen smartphone.

As for performance, although responsiveness is excellent, page rendering speeds are middling, with the BBC homepage appearing in 21 seconds. We couldn't persuade it to complete the SunSpider benchmark, however.

So the LG Optimus 7 shares the advantages of the other Windows Phone 7 handsets, such as Microsoft Office and Windows Live integration, but it also has all the same foibles.

This phone has no support for Flash Player 10.1, no memory expansion option, no free turn-by-turn satnav, no cut and paste and the number of apps and games available to download for the Windows Phone 7 platform is as yet slim.

The prices are similar, but look hard enough and you'll find there are some differences between this phone and the Samsung Omnia.

The key one - and the principle reason to buy the Optimus over the Samsung - is that it has double the storage at 16GB. But the Samsung has the better camera.

However, this is all just point scoring. Windows Phone 7 can't yet hold a candle to iOS or Android for polish or content. And until the Windows Phone 7 contingent can match phones such as the Desire for price, we can't recommend any of them.

Author: Jonathan Bray