LG appear to be leading the charge when it comes to 4G (LTE) handsets sold globally right now, with two of their latest additions being on hand at their booth during Mobile World Congress last week. We already came into contact with the Optimus F5, but there’s also a bigger brother which completes the duo called the LG Optimus F7 and here it is.
The F7 aims for a more premium user experience whilst maintaining that sense of ‘affordable LTE’ which the F series represents. In the hand the all-plastic body was light but didn’t feel too cheap with a rather stunning 4.7-inch True HD IPS LCD panel toting 720p HD resolution on the front along with a 1.3-megapixel camera and a hardware home button which features a multicolour LED surround, designed to offer visual cues for a variety of notification types.
Just as with the F5, the right side features a QButton for quick access to any app of the user’s choosing and there’s also room from a power/lock key and volume rocker. On the back is a rather eye-catching holographic pattern laid into the white plastic back which reminds us of the LG-made Nexus 4’s holographic glass backing. In addition to the pretty pattern, there’s an 8-megapixel autofocus camera, this time with an LED flash (a strange omission on the Optimus F5) and in the lower right portion, a loudspeaker.
The user experience is fairly heavy, but also refined with a wealth of options we’d more likely expect to see on their flagship Optimus G or G Pro: elements like QSlide and QuickTranslator, which uses Google Translate-based technology to alter foreign language text in real-time when using the camera via augmented reality. Such advanced featured amidst the fluid Optimus UI come courtesy of a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and a hefty 2GB of RAM. Storage is limited to 16GB or 32GB for internal memory but the option to expand via microSD by an additional 32GB if desired is possible. Due to the power hungry nature of LTE radios, LG have also blessed the F7 with a 2540mAh battery.
Unlike the Optimus F5, the availability of the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean-toting Optimus F7 in the UK is less certain. With its assumed price paired with its great mid-range hardware we’d like to see it on store shelves in Blighty, but it’s ultimately up to LG as to how much they push their 4G handsets here.
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