{"id":656403,"date":"2013-05-06T13:56:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T17:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=642478"},"modified":"2013-05-06T13:56:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T17:56:31","slug":"first-impressions-of-a-new-flagship-the-lg-optimus-g-pro-for-att","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/656403","title":{"rendered":"First impressions of a new flagship, the LG Optimus G Pro for AT&amp;T"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, AT&#38;T announced it is <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/05\/01\/att-gets-another-exclusive-lg-optimus-g-pro-for-199-with-contract\/\">exclusively selling the LG Optimus G Pro for $199<\/a> with contract. The phone can be pre-ordered now and is expected to be available on May 10. I received an early review unit and have spent just a little time so far using the phone. A few things already stand out to me: LG is mimicking Samsung&#8217;s large phone approach &#8212; both with hardware and software &#8212; and those looking for a flagship phone will have to add the Optimus G Pro to their list of potential candidates.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll have a full review forthcoming &#8212; I never review a phone without at least five days use for testing battery life and other reasons &#8212; but for now, here are my first impressions, in no particular order, followed a some images of the phone.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height:13px;\">When I first removed the phone from the box, I thought I was sent the wrong phone. It appears nearly identical to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, although LG&#8217;s new handset is roughly a quarter-inch narrower in width. And that small width shaving makes a big difference &#8212; for the better &#8212; when holding this phone.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height:13px;\">Like the Note 2, the Optimus G Pro is all plastic and has a\u00a0removable\u00a0back cover. In all seriousness: If I didn&#8217;t see the LG branding on the top of the device, I would have sworn it was Samsung made.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>The 5.5-inch 1080p display is excellent, easily rivaling those on the Galaxy S 4 and HTC One, both of which also have 1920 x 1080 resolution screens. There&#8217;s nary a pixel to be seen.<\/li>\n<li>LG&#8217;s software is much improved over earlier efforts. Although this phone doesn&#8217;t run stock Android, LG&#8217;s skin is very minimal compared to similar phones. The home screens have a nice 3D effect: When swiping through them, everything on the display rotates around the left axis of the screen as if the icons and widgets were rotating around a flagpole.<\/li>\n<li>Short of LG&#8217;s Tag+ NFC software and an IR remote control app, there are no other LG-specific apps. The same can&#8217;t be said of AT&#38;T: I count at least nine bits of software from the carrier.<\/li>\n<li>Similar to the Galaxy S 4, the Optimus G Pro has settings split up by four tabs. It&#8217;s not a confusing layout, but clearly the high-end Android phones are gaining more features that could add complexity. There are no hover gestures, but you can pause video by turning the phone over.<\/li>\n<li>A quad-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 with 2 GB of memory powers the phone and for some reason it appears to perform a <em>smidge<\/em> better than the HTC One and Galaxy S 4 in my limited usage so far. I suspect the lack of a complex skin atop Android may be the reason, however, it&#8217;s too early to determine a performance winner.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t mind a physical home button on Android phones although some do. The one on the Optimus G Pro isn&#8217;t my favorite though. I find it too small; it&#8217;s wide enough, but very thin. It does, however, have a nice LED ring around it with different colors for notifications and such. I also personally don&#8217;t like the placement of the two capacitive buttons: Back is on the left side of the Home button, while Menu is to the right. This may not bother others.<\/li>\n<li>The phone comes with 32 GB of internal memory at this price; cheaper than the 32 GB Galaxy S 4. And you can expand it, unlike the HTC One, although some won&#8217;t have to. However, the total space available is 23.3 GB, which surprises me; I would have expected around 26 GB or so. Carrier bloatware, perhaps?<\/li>\n<li>Like many new phones, the Optimus G Pro ships with Android 4.1.2. There is a bit of multitasking capability as some apps and widgets have a transparency slider. Use this and the app is see through so you can interact with other apps. Slide it back for the original app to regain focus.<\/li>\n<li>Although there isn&#8217;t a stylus, the phone has a dedicated note-taking app called QuickMemo, which is available from the drop-down notifications shade. I almost wish there was a stylus because I don&#8217;t see many folks taking notes here with their fingers.<\/li>\n<li>I haven&#8217;t taken many photos with the 13 megapixel rear camera yet. I did notice that there are only a few camera modes: Normal, HDR, Panorama, VR Panorama, Burst Shot and Beauty Shot. Perhaps that&#8217;s a good thing so consumers won&#8217;t get overwhelmed by a wider range of image modes.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s too early to determine battery life on a single charge. 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The phone can be pre-ordered now and is expected to be available on May 10. I received an early review unit and have spent just a little time so far using the phone. A few things already stand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}