LG Optimizer

I did play through a couple rounds of Temple Run to get a sense of how the GPU held up and, to be honest, wasn’t particularly surprised to find myself dying more often that I otherwise would have. The game did run, and was smooth at times, but every few seconds the frame rate would drop to under 10fps, resulting in jagged discord. Whale Trail fared a bit better, leading me to believe that most 2D games won’t pose too much of an issue for the device. 

Thankfully LG seems to have optimized its keyboard for performance, as I didn’t experience any of the annoying lag on the Optimus L7 as I did with the MOTOLUXE. I also had no issue streaming YouTube videos at standard resolution, though anything more intensive than the phone’s native res was too much to handle. 

Camera

The 5MP camera on the Optimus L7 is nothing to tweet home about. It takes pictures relatively quickly with a decent amount of detail in the right lighting conditions. The interface is usable and clean, and provides all the requisite options you’d come to expect from a smartphone camera, including white balance, exposure and ISO, and includes a number of Scene Modes which seem to do little more than increase contrast and sharpness in lieu of photo quality. 

The main issue with the photo experience of the Optimus L7 is that, like the rest of the OS, it is at times unresponsive. Loading the app usually takes several seconds, and though the shutter button will occasionally respond immediately, more often than not I was left waiting more than a second for the screen to respond, resulting in a blurry mess. 

The rest of the details are unremarkable. Low light performance, as expected, was poor. The lens’s macro abilities were almost non-existant. It’s not impossible to get a good shot on the Optimus L7, but you definitely have to work at it. 

And then there is video capture which is relegated to VGA resolution. Yes, in 2012 a smartphone is limited to shooting at 640 x 480. That’s just not OK. 

Software

LG has prettied up Ice Cream Sandwich just enough to differentiate it from the rest of the pack, but also wisely left much of the functionality alone. You have a customizable four-shortcut lock screen and a cool “preview” view when you unlock the phone. Like TouchWIZ there is a five-icon customizable dock with an app launcher icon on the far right. The drawer itself is horizontal and divides your apps into “All”, “Downloads” and Widgets. You can also move and delete unneeded apps directly from the app drawer.