LG Optimus L7 review

This is by no means a luxury device, but that doesn't have to be an issue — there's a difference between something feeling cheap and being built to a price.

The L7 bears somewhat of a resemblance to the Prada Phone 3.0, and features the same "floating mass" design language, which separates the phone into three parts. There's a 4.3-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display up front, along with a physical home button, a pair of capacitive keys, and a VGA front-facing camera. A faux-metal plastic band covers the top of the L7, and curves down to surround the phone on all sides. While I'm not a fan of plastic masquerading as metal, the lines of the device are really well thought out, and the effect isn't as gaudy as you'd imagine. It’s both thin and light enough to keep up with competition as well, measuring 8.7mm (0.34 inches) thick and weighing 122g (4.3 ounces).

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The removable back cover is a solid piece of ridged white plastic which encases a Micro USB port at the bottom and a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash. It feels sturdy and has an ergonomically-sound curve towards its edges. On the sides, you'll find a plastic volume rocker and that's it — there's a headphone jack and power button up top, but this is a remarkably sparse design.

Removing the back cover is a cumbersome affair. Unlike most devices, there's no opening for you to pull it off from, so you have to wedge your fingernail inside the Micro USB port and pull. Once you pry the cover off, you’ll find a 1700mAh battery, space for a full-sized SIM, a microSD slot, and contacts for the cover’s built-in NFC antenna.

While the materials used don't exactly exude quality, the utilitarian design principles at play here have worked wonders. LG has managed to put together an attractive, somewhat desirable handset that strikes the perfect balance between cutting costs and maintaining appeal. It's not going to stand out in a crowd, but I'd much rather that design reflects what an object actually is. This is an affordable device made from simple, sturdy materials.

This is the first device from LG to come with Android 4.0 pre-installed, and was released before LG announced its Optimus UI 3.0 skin for ICS. Although it’s missing a couple of features announced alongside the new Optimus UI, this is almost exactly the experience LG will be giving all its Android 4.0 devices.

While this is definitely Ice Cream Sandwich, at first glance it's difficult to tell. The default homescreen has everything you'd expect to find in an LG Android 2.3 skin; a four-icon dock, a cheesy beach scene wallpaper, and cartoony icons are all carried over from Gingerbread. Just as I was mentally preparing myself for a tirade against LG, I clicked the Applications icon. Despite first impressions, LG hasn't actually drastically changed Android 4.0, and the app drawer looks almost exactly like Google's stock version.

It may look similar to stock Android, but there's definitely some LG influence at play here. Alongside the standard Apps and Widgets options at the top of the app drawer, you'll find a Downloads button which displays only your downloaded apps — an ICS remix of the category you'll find on many of the company's Android 2.3 handsets. There's also a small cog in the upper-right corner that puts you in edit mode to quickly remove and reorder apps. While Android purists may not like what LG has done, the changes are easy to ignore, and I'm a fan of both anyway.

LG's new lock screen is also worth a mention. Placing your finger on the screen opens a circular translucent window that shows you what you're unlocking to, and as you swipe away from the circle, it grows to show you more of what's behind. A subtle vibration lets you know when you've gone far enough to unlock. There are also four icons along the bottom of the lock screen and swiping out from each takes you to the associated application. It's a cute way of avoiding unwanted attention from Apple's lawyers, and a nice way to unlock your device.

One of the first things I do with a new device is change the wallpaper and re-arrange the icons and widgets to my liking. Apart from the aforementioned beach scene, and an ugly woodland photo, the wallpapers are okay, but I headed straight to Google Play to pick up a clone of the Phase Beam live wallpaper that comes as standard on the Galaxy Nexus. Suddenly things were looking a lot more like ICS: LG has thankfully stuck with Roboto for the L7's system font and the status bar is nearly identical to that of stock Android 4.0.

The notification area is also faithful to Google's creation, save the addition of a personalizable toggle area that lives at the top. It's in keeping with Google's Holo theme and, as with the app drawer, I found LG's modification here to be a useful addition. Although four icons sit across the dock by default, LG does allow you to add a fifth, and after rearranging the Applications icon to the center, you're left with a very Nexus-like device. That is, except the icons.

Companies initially skinned Android because by default the operating system’s icons, typography, and general aesthetics left much to be desired. We tolerated skins because they were, for the most part, no worse than what stock Android had to offer. With Android 4.0, Google has done all the work — along with much-improved performance, it provides attractive icons, a great app drawer, and functional task switching. There is certainly no need to replace the icons, and LG's are among the worst you'll see on any device. Unlike wallpapers, icons aren't so easy to change, although if you persist there are workarounds that will let you change the icons on your homescreen, at least. Unfortunately, without the simple changes I made, there was a total disconnect between the homescreen experience and the rest of the UI. It's a jarring experience — it shouldn't be up to the user to fix LG's wrongs.

The L7’s 1GHz single-core Snapdragon SoC is simply incapable of running Android 4.0. The Snapdragon MSM7227A isn’t the S4 that was smashing benchmark records earlier this year; nor is it the capable S3 that featured in some of last year’s flagship devices; it’s not even an S2, as found in the HTC One V; no, this is a Snapdragon S1, a Cortex-A5 chip that can also be found (albeit with a reduced clock rate) in the ultra low-end Lumia 610 — and Android 4.0 is a lot more demanding than Windows Phone 7.5.

There’s no need for fancy vocabulary — the Optimus L7 is slow. Graphical transitions stutter, applications take two or three seconds longer than expected to open, and even swiping through homescreens can cause problems from time to time. LG has openly stated that it's looking to entice first-time smartphone buyers with its L-Style lineup — it should be offering them a better experience than this.

We had difficulty even running our benchmarking suite on the L7, and the same was true with a number of apps. Video streaming through Netflix was glitchy (although playing back videos through the native gallery app was fine), and the live view in the camera app stutters. I compared the L7 side-by-side to the reasonably low-end Motorola Defy, and can honestly say Moto's year-old device is more responsive. If LG wants to include more advanced features, it has to throw in a more advanced SoC to deal with them.

Gaming, aside from basic puzzle games, is very hit-and-miss on the L7. Of course everything loaded up without issue, but playing Samurai II was definitely not a pleasurable experience. If you're a gamer, you'll find nothing but slowdown waiting for you here. That's hardly surprising when you consider that the GPU is a slightly enhanced version of the four-year-old Adreno 200 found in devices like the Nexus One. That said, you’ll still be able to play titles like Angry Birds, or any titles that aren’t negatively affected by low framerates.

I had the opportunity to try out LG’s Android 4.0 skin on a Korean Optimus LTE, and with a faster processor the Optimus UI 3.0 was a pleasure to use. Put simply, the L7’s SoC is just too underpowered — even if you’re not a power user, you’ll be frustrated by the stuttery UI and long loading times. LG’s money-saving measure has effectively ruined what was shaping up to be a compelling budget option.

The L7 maintains LG's reasonably high standards when it comes to call quality. The speaker is loud and crisp, and no one I spoke with had any issues hearing me. The loudspeaker was loud enough, although I found myself having to shout in order for people to hear me. Signal strength is a major strong point, and the L7 consistently held signal better than the Xperia P, Galaxy S II, iPhone 4S, and Razr that I had on hand. 3G performance was equal to all of the aforementioned devices, maxing out at 7.1Mbps down and 2.4Mbps up.

The L7 has a generous 1700mAh battery, and when combined with its meek processor I had high hopes for its battery life. Unfortunately, the processor's Cortex-A5 architecture shows its weakness here, and turns out to be pretty power hungry. It lasted 5 hours and 11 minutes in our battery test, which cycles through websites with 65 percent screen brightness, and in more regular use lasted the day just fine. That’s pretty average for a smartphone, but if you’re coming to the L7 from a featurephone you’ll have to get used to charging your phone every night.