We were wondering when LG’s top-tier L style device would arrive here in the Philippines, considering that their budget L3 has been here for a while. Lo and behold, LG has provided us with a demo unit of our very own of the LG Optimus L7, or more formally known as the P705 in the Philippines (P700 in other territories). While the LG Optimus L7’s hardware may not elicit the same wonder as the offerings of its other competitors, the Optimus L7’s unique blend of features and pricing may just sway you to buy one.
The Optimus L7 is the top device in the L-series of devices, and uses LG’s “floating mass display” technology, giving users the feeling that the screen is floating as they’ve put the display as close to the protective glass as possible. Speaking of displays, the Optimus L7 uses a 4.3-inch IPS LCD that has a 480 x 800 resolution that’s lovingly protected by Gorilla Glass.
The overall size of the device is 125.5 x 67 x 8.7mm. While the overall construction and build quality of the device was quite good, the plastic back was a bit disappointing, given the hi-end nature of the device.
Imaging-wise, the Optimus L7 uses a 5-megapixel camera with flash, along with a LED flash. There’s a secondary camera on the front.
Hardware-wise, you’re looking at 1 GHz Cortex-A5 processor that’s paired with 512 MB of RAM. Android 4.0 powers the entire experience, along with LG’s own UI overlay. Navigating the device is pretty straightforward – there’s a large, physical home key on the middle which is flanked by two capacitive keys.
The screen of the device was remarkably bright, and although the L7 only uses a single core processor, we found that the device was responsive enough. Of course, we’re still not happy with the UI overlay of LG, but at least it didn’t really get in the way of the user experience. One thing we did notice about the Optimus L7 is that it uses a large, 1700mAh battery. Combine that with a less power hungry 1 GHz processor, and we reckon this particular device will be able to soldier on even though you forget to plug it in at the nearest socket.
LG has pegged the price of the LG Optimus L7 at Php 15,990. At that price, we can forgive the lower-end processor used in the device. We gather most people looking for a decent smartphone at an affordable price-point will be willing to ignore it, too.
That’s it for now. Watch this space for a more thorough review later on.