What’s Good and Not So Good About the LG Optimus One P500.
Thursday, November 17th, 2011The price of technology does come down if you wait long enough as is proven by the LG Optimus One P500. If you want a genuine smartphone, but not the price, this phone can be purchased for the fraction of the cost of most better known brands. Whether this phone is really a bargain or would you be better off spending more money on a different smartphone is something we’ll try to determine in this review.
LG Electronics is not the best known name in mobile phone technology, but they’ve been around since 1958 and have been gaining a foothold in the smartphone market recently. With its headquarters in South Korea, this company creates many high tech devices all over the world. Their smartphones which use the Android operating system have recently become an area of focus and effort for them. The LG Optimus One P500, a good basic smartphone for the budget conscious, is one of their more popular models. This phone was released as the Optimus One in Europe and Asia, and in the U.S. it’s called the Optimus S, Optimus T and the Vortex, depending on the network. If you’re using the Sprint network in the U.S., you won’t be able to find the LG Optimus One P500, at least under that name, but you can get the LG Optimus S, which is the same basic phone. The Optimus S has been called “the best budget Android phone we’ve seen,” by PC Magazine. Operating with the Spring ID interface, this phone will allow you to download different apps and many kinds of widgets. You will find it easy to do social networking, play games or visit your favorite websites. For easy access to the content and features you use the most, you can customize your phone.
Like all smartphones, the LG Optimus One P500 allows you to play videos. The display resolution on this phone doesn’t allow support of all videos which can be a problem. An option is to install the Rockplayer app which will improve the video performance. This app is free if you don’t mind ads, or you can pay for an upgraded version. Another issue is that the LG Optimus One P500 doesn’t support Adobe Flash which will limit your ability to load flash based web pages as well as watch certain videos. This phone does lack the hardware specs so the Android flash app doesn’t work on it. If you really need a smartphone for watching videos or loading websites that use flash, then this is one is probably not the right choice. If you are realistic and understand that the LG Optimus One P500 won’t perform exactly like phone that are much higher priced, then you won’t be disappointed. As well as taking care of all the basic communication capabilities you will need, this
phone also gives you the basics for web browsing, game playing and taking pictures. So for someone seeking a reasonably priced smartphone, the LG Optimus One P500 is a good choice.
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