LG Optimus 3D review: This summer, in 3D

A social phonebook with an agenda

The phonebook displays all the contacts in a list ordered alphabetically and there is an alphabet scroll on the right. There’s also a regular search bar.

The list can be sorted by first or last name and you can choose how contacts are displayed – First Name, Last Name or the opposite.

Filters keep the phone book from getting overcrowded – you can choose which groups are displayed and which are hidden (e.g. Family, email contacts, Twitter contacts and so on).

The Contacts tab

Each contact is displayed with a contact photo and name – a tap on the photo brings up the quick contacts keys. You can use those to call the contact, send them a message or email or view their profile.

Viewing a single contact uses a tabbed interface. The first tab is Info – and it shows all available info for the contact with handy one-tap shortcuts for calling, messaging and so on. The next tab is History, which shows the communication history with the contact (calls, SNS updates, everything).

The third tab is Photos, which show the contacts online albums and finally, there's the Agenda tab, which displays calendar events that this contact is involved in.

Viewing a contact

You can join contacts so that if you have a contact added to multiple services, all the data from them is pooled in one place. When you tap Join, the phonebook will suggest a contact based on name and it’s right most of the time.

You can manually pick another one, if it’s wrong, of course. When you add a new account, the phone will offer to import all, only some of the contacts or only those it already has in the phonebook.

Editing a contact is mostly unchanged. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc) and there's a plus sign on the right - clicking it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded info.

Editing a contact

The Call log is clever and groups some of the calls, e.g. 3 missed calls from the same contact on the same day. A number next to the contact name shows the number of events. It’s a great space saving feature.

Call log

Telephony is good

LG Optimus One 3D showed good signal reception even in areas of poor coverage. The in-call quality though is good but rather quiet even at the loudest setting.

The Dialer has Smart Dial

The Dialer shows a virtual phone keypad that lets you dial a number. Smart Dial is available and works like a charm – it searches both numbers and names. Only one matching contact is displayed, but if you tap the down arrow button, the rest show up as well.

We ran our traditional loudspeaker test and the LG Optimus 3D scored a Good mark. Depending on your choice of ringtone, you shouldn’t miss any calls in all but the loudest environments.

You can find more about the testing procedure here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	66.6	65.9	66.6	Below Average
LG Optimus 2X	65.7	60.0	67.7	Below Average
Google Nexus S	68.1	66.3	69.3	Average
HTC Sensation	66.5	66.6	78.3	Good
LG Optimus 3D	67.0	66.6	82.7	Good
Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II	70.0	66.6	75.7	Good
Nokia N8	75.8	66.2	82.7	Very Good
HTC Gratia	73.2	73.6	83.5	Excellent

Rich messaging capabilities

The LG Optimus 3D can handle all common types of messages with ease - SMS, MMS and email. Email support is excellent with support for Exchange out of the box.

A press-and-hold on the text box gives you access to functions such as cut, copy and paste. You are free to paste the copied text across applications like email, notes, chats, etc.

Sending Dexter a message

The extended Gmail features include batch operations, which allow multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted, spam report and of course conversation-style email view mode.

The Gmail app is simple to use but very functional

The generic email client supports multiple accounts. If you do add multiple accounts, then the Combined Inbox feature will come in handy. Too bad there’s no conversation-style view like in Gmail.

The generic email app

There are two types of on-screen keyboard you get with the LG Optimus 3D – the phone dialpad and the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY is available in both portrait and landscape.

The QWERTY keyboard looks a little iPhone-like but the good news is that it’s very good too. Portrait mode is quite accurate for text input and the landscape mode makes things even better.

The on-screen QWERTY keyboard