The LG Revolution made its big début at CES 2011 this past January and I’ve been waiting patiently to get my hands on this high-end LG android handset which is something new for LG to do for the U.S. Market as they usually tend to stay in the mid-rage when it comes to the U.S. but with the G2x and Revolution they are stepping it up. Let’s start off with the hardware.
Hardware
The LG Revolution isn’t a thin phone by any means. One of the first things you will notice is that it’s a bulky phone but as soon as you pick it up you will see the weight is evenly distributed and gives a comfortable feel in hand. The back has a nice soft touch coating that gives the overall feel of the device solid and premium. It comes with a 4.3 inch screen which is keeping up with the trend with 4G phones on Verizon. The screen is nice and crisp and will work for you but there are some angles where the screen will get washed out. About the screen is a 1.3 MP front facing camera a for video chat and a below the screen is your touch sensitive backlight buttons that are raised a bit higher from the bottom so you don’t accidently touch. On the side there is a chrome trimming where you will find a micro USB port, mini HDMI but not cable included which is always lame and volume controls. On the top with no trimming is a 3.5 MM headphone jack and power button with a microphone port on the bottom where there is no trimming as well. Internally you have a 1.0 Ghz processor that is a 2nd generation Snapdragon and is fast and smooth which you’ll see in our software and usability part of our review.
On the back you have a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording. 5 megapixel has become mid-range with today’s high end phones getting up to 8. With that being said the camera is good. It’s not great nor is it bad its very in the middle and good. We covered the camera extensively in our camera r review so be sure to check that out for more details. Behind the door cover there is 1500 mAh battery, 16 GB micro SD card and 4G LTE sim card. Good solid hardware here from LG.
Software & Usability
The LG Revolution comes with Android 2.2 with a custom interface that LG references as the UX or user experience. The UX is a middle of the road experience as it’s not to heavy on custom UI like HTC Sense but a bit lighter than Touch Wiz UI on Samsung devices. You get 7 home screens, custom LG widgets, a decent music player, customizable app drawer with grouping and lock screen with added functionality. The phone has Bing pre-installed in it which you may want to think about before grabbing but you can still download Google search and other standard Google apps on the phone through the android market it just won’t be as tightly integrated as Bing is on it.
The phone comes pre-installed with Netflix which works very will with the 4G connection. Movies download pretty fast and you can skip and track through the video at good speed without waiting too long for the buffer to catch up.Speaking of 4G speed the handset gets speed pretty well. Over the weekend I got an average of 6Mbps down and about 3Mbps up but once the weekday came it shot up to 10Mbps down and 6Mbps up which is ideal 4G speeds and makes web browsing fast and responsive with the standard android browser.
Battery life is disappointing. You do see improvements in battery life over past android devices but when you start to using it heavy you will be looking for a charger during the day. If your moderate or lite user you should be able to get through the day with a full charge. We’ve see other recent 4G android phones improved on battery and wish that LG would have done the same here.
Call quality is good for the most part. I was able to make calls without experience and dropped calls but the reception indicator seems look a bit off as there were times when it showed full bars one minute and then down to 1 or 2 the next in the same place. With either indicator I was able to connect and complete my call but a software fix for better accuracy looks needed. With audio people were able to hear me without too much trouble and I was able to hear them well on mid to mid high volume settings. If you go all the way up though there is a muffled sound that comes from it so you’ll want to keep that in mind. I did get a weird buzzing sound in some of my video recording while using a wireless mic which you will noticed in the video part of the review. it may have that same buzzing issue that GSM phones have but this is the only handset that’s happened with and it didn’t do it often enough for it to become a major issue during our review but its something you may want to keep any eye on for those that will get it for the long run. Beside that this is a good software set that create a solid user experience here from LG.
Overall
There isn’t too much of a “revolution” here from the LG Revolution. The handset does a lot of things that we have already seen on many other phones before it, especially in the 4G level of phones. Good hardware, software, call quality and camera but nothing is great. it stays right in the middle of the road and doesn’t try to veer off it. The phone is definitely one to consider in you choice of 4G phones but a lot of those other options do a better job of standing out.
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