LG Optimus One P500 review

The LG Optimus One may not be your average killer gadget, but it sports a tempting pricetag, solid build, a nice looking set of features and Android 2.2 Froyo. And with the Optimus One in your hand, you are free to mock and tease those seemingly superior phones, which are still stuck on Eclair – now that's priceless!

Indeed, the Optimus One offers an awesome price-to-features ratio among modern Android smartphones. With 1 million units sold already, the LG Optimus One P500 seems to be a popular option and it’s not difficult to see why.

 
LG Optimus One P500

True, it's only got a moderately clocked CPU running at 600MHz, but with the performance boost from Froyo it feels reasonably fast and responsive most of the time and the plenty amounts of RAM give it enough app-toggling punch. Here go the rest of the specs:

Key features:

• 3.2" 256K-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels); Multi-touch input
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
• 600MHz CPU running Android 2.2 Froyo; 419MB RAM
• 3 megapixel autofocus camera; face and smile detection, geotagging
• VGA video recording @ 18fps
• microSD card slot, up to 32GB, 2GB in the box
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Standard microUSB port (charging)
• GPS receiver with A-GPS; Digital compass
• Wi-Fi b/g; Wi-Fi hotspot functionality built-in
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotate; Proximity sensor
• FM radio with RDS
• Office document editor
• Portrait and landscape on-screen QWERTY keyboard
• Social networking integration
• DivX/XviD support
• Smart dialing
• Excellent loudspeaker performance

Main disadvantages:

• Slow CPU makes editing Office documents a chore
• Camera is just 3MP, has no lens protection, no flash and no dedicated shutter key
• No Flash support in the browser despite Froyo
• No front facing camera

Digging inside the camera settings you can almost get lost – smile shots, face detection, face-tracking effects, beauty and art shots and so on. At 3MP it’s a no-frills camera but certainly one for casual users to have so much fun with.

The LG Optimus One P500

Then there are the Facebook and Twitter apps which come preinstalled and the video player has DivX/XviD video support – the LG Optimus One P500 knows good fun. There’s a serious side to it as well, the Office document viewer/editor will help you get some work done.

Overall, the Optimus One can’t compete in the Android big league but great value for money is likely to draw many people away from feature phones (which is a huge market to tap into).

It’s not without its limitations – editing a complex Office document is painfully slow and video playback stops short of VGA resolution.

But when you’re buying cheap, you know you’ll have to make compromises

Retail package includes a 2GB card

The LG Optimus One P500 has the essentials – a long microUSB cable, a charger that uses it to connect to the phone and a one-piece headset. The headset is nothing special and its remote is quite a lump.

There isn't much stuff in the box

The Optimus One box does have a pleasant surprise though – a 2GB microSD card. Unless you carry a large music collection, the card is big enough for photos and videos from the camera. Oh, and since this is Froyo you can also install apps on it, which makes up for the poor inbuilt memory.

LG Optimus One P500 360-degree spin

The LG Optimus One P500 has grown compared to the original Optimus, which is understandable given the bigger screen. The phone measures 113.5 x 59 x 13.3 mm and that’s about average for a 3.2” 3:2 aspect ratio screen. Its 129 grams put it over the average, though the Optimus One carries the extra heft with its chin up and feels very solid in the hand.

Design and construction

The LG Optimus One P500 has rounded corners like some of its siblings and its humble styling aims for practicality. We’re reviewing the Black version, but the Optimus One is also available in Wine, Titan, Blue and Silver.

The screen is bright with fairly vivid colors (for an LCD) and has surprisingly good viewing angles with contrast and colors remaining fine even from steep angles.

There’s no ambient light sensor so the brightness isn’t automatically adjusted – no handy brightness toggle in the notification area either.

Sunlight legibility is OK but the screen is quite reflective, so depending on how you turn the phone the reflection of a bright sky or sun will usually overpower the display.

Unlike most capacitive touchscreens, this one is tuned NOT to register extremely light presses. We actually prefer this to screens, which will detect as much as a finger hovering, resulting in one too many accidental presses.

With the Optimus One you actually have to press on the screen for it to respond. However, there’s no sensitivity setting for those who prefer the more sensitive setup.

A HVGA capacitive display is a good compromise between features and price

To the left of the LG logo is the proximity sensor which blends so well with the surrounding surface it’s almost impossible to spot. Above the logo is the earpiece which also doubles as a loudspeaker.

The earpiece/loudspeaker and proximity sensor are above the display

Below the screen there’s the traditional assortment of Android buttons. The two more commonly used controls – home and back – are part of a double rocker-styled button framed with a silver strip.

The rocker is big and easy to hit. The other two buttons – menu and search – are on each side of the double button. They are smaller but solid to press.

 
The four Android keys below the display party without a trackpad

The only thing of interest on the right side of the LG Optimus One is the very thin volume rocker. It’s very slightly raised and quite uncomfortable to use. The left side is completely bare

  
The uncomfortable volume rocker on the right • nothing on the left

The top features the 3.5mm audio jack and the Power/Lock key, which is thin and small and tricky to use (much like the volume rocker). Between the two is a small notch you can use to pry the battery cover open with your fingernail.

 
The 3.5mm jack is on top along with the tiny power key

The bottom of the Optimus One has two features – a microUSB port (left uncovered) and the mouthpiece next to it.

 
microUSB port and mic pinhole at the bottom

Time to flip the LG Optimus One over and inspect its back. The 3MP autofocus camera lens is placed in the center of the upper part of the back, making it less likely you’ll cover it with your finger. It’s got no scratch protection whatsoever.

 
The 3 megapixel camera lens is prone to scratches

The back itself is fairly featureless but it’s made of soft matte plastic, which is very pleasant to the touch and hides fingerprints very well.

Below it is a pretty impressive 1500mAh Li-ion battery. It’s quoted at 700 hours of standby (in 2G, 550 h in 3G) and up to 8 hours of talk time (in 2G, 7 h 30 min in 3G).

 
The 1500mAh battery has a lot of juice • the microSD card slot

The microSD card slot is located to the left of the camera lens and even though it’s not accessible without removing the back cover (which comes off easily), it’s easy to swap.

A silver frame is running the sides of the LG Optimus One – it’s actually the same stuff you’ll see when you pop the battery cover open. It’s plastic but a kind that will easily fool you. There’s no metal on the Optimus One body but the asymmetrical silver frame is a stylish accent nonetheless.

Even though we’ve seen more compact phones with 3.2” screens, the LG Optimus One P500 is still very pocketable and the rounded corners make it comfortable to hold in the hand. The pleasant finish and quality plastic help a lot too.

   
LG Optimus One P500 in the hand • Size comparison with the original Optimus and the iPhone 4

To sell one million units as fast as LG sold the Optimus One, you’d need the right mixture of hardware and software. The hardware will probably top your expectations for a phone in this price range. Now, it’s on to the software.

Froyo topped with custom UI

The LG Optimus One P500 runs Android 2.2 Froyo out of the box and it has been skinned by LG. It’s nothing that breaks away too much from the traditional Android UI, but enough to make it recognizably an LG interface. It looks a lot like what the original Optimus (GT540) is running but with some improvements.

You get either 5 or 7 homescreens (there's a setting for that) and you can fill them up with widgets (including several LG-made widgets), shortcuts and folders.

  
You can choose between having 5 or 7 homescreens.

The notification area, one of the Android strong points, got a tweak as well – it has five switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, cellular data and sound.

 
The lock screen and the modded notification area

Pressing the menu button at the homescreen brings up shortcuts for adding things to the homescreen (you can also do that with a press and hold on the homescreen), change the wallpaper (Live wallpapers are supported), a shortcut for search, the notification area and the settings menu.

The sixth shortcut is for “Home settings” – this is where you choose between having 5 or 7 homescreens. We would have preferred some more flexibility here (e.g. choosing an arbitrary number of homescreens between 1 and 7), but it’s still better than stock Android.

At the bottom of the screen there is the main menu shortcut in the middle and two other shortcuts on each side. They hold the most commonly used features and are visible on every homescreen and even in the menu. You can change them if you’re not happy with the defaults.

LG customizations went further – the main menu has been changed too. The menu is separated into two categories – Applications (the preinstalled apps) and Downloads (user installed apps).

   
The LG menu • you can add categories from the settings menu

This isn't set in stone – a tap on the menu key brings up helpful options. You can add, rename and delete categories and move items between them. The Uninstall option lets you uninstall apps with just one tap right from the menu.

The original Optimus had the so-called Homescreen selector, which let you choose between vanilla Android and the LG skin. This option is missing from the Optimus One, but the LG modifications do add a few useful extras to the mix so we wouldn’t switch to the plain UI anyway.

Android comes with a good selection of apps but LG added some of their own (a handy Messaging widget for SMS messages, power toggles, etc.) and the preinstalled Facebook and Twitter apps have added their own widgets as well.

   
Adding a widget • Some of the LG Widgets

The LG Optimus One P500 software is acceptably responsive, but still there’s some slight lag between you swiping your finger and the screen scrolling and scrolling itself is not as smooth as on more powerful phones.

It’s nothing too annoying and considering the CPU is clocked at 600MHz it was to be expected. Still, thanks to Android 2.2 Froyo the Optimus One does very well on the benchmarks (which are synthetic and don’t necessarily reflect real-world performance).

   
LG Optimus One P500 benchmarks (Froyo, 600MHz, 512MB RAM)

   
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 benchmarks (Eclair, 600MHz, 156MB RAM)

   
HTC Aria benchmarks (Eclair, 600MHz, 384MB RAM)

A social phonebook

The phonebook displays all the contacts in a list ordered alphabetically and there is an alphabet scroll on the right. Its font size is quite tiny so you have to be very precise when using the alphabet scroll. But we guess that’s because of the small screen.

There’s also a search bar that cannot be hidden and eats up one line of the screen (the hardware search key makes it unnecessary for the search bar to be always visible).

  
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.

You can hide contacts without phone numbers but the phonebook is even more flexible than that. You can choose which sources are used for the contact list – e.g. hide or show Facebook contacts, Twitter contacts, email contact along with the contacts from the phone.

  
Viewing a contact

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 other tab is History, which shows the communication history with the contact (only calls, messages and email, Facebook is not included).

You can link contacts (it’s called “join” in the Optimus One) 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.

  
Dee Dee is on Facebook and Twitter

One annoying thing we noticed is that when you link a phone contact with a Twitter or Facebook account, it would overwrite the name of the contact in the contact list and we couldn’t change it back.

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 unneeded info.

 
Editing a contact

The Call log and Favorite Contacts need no special introduction. You can add favorites by taping on the small star right next to the name.

Call log

Telephony is good

Signal reception on the LG Optimus One P500 is strong even in areas of poor coverage. The in-call quality 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.

Calling Dexter

We ran our traditional loudspeaker test and the LG Optimus One and it aced the test with an Excellent score. The vibration is also quite strong so you’re unlikely to miss a call even in noisy environments.

You can find more about the testing procedure here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Sony Ericsson Vivaz	64.8	59.8	69.1	Below average
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8	66.6	66.6	69.1	Average
Apple IPhone 3GS	69.5	69.5	71.7	Good
Samsung I5800 Galaxy 3	73.7	66.6	72.3	Good
Nokia C6-01	75.0	66.3	77.8	Very good
LG Optimus One P500	77.1	74.5	77.9	Excellent
HTC Desire	75.2	75.7	85.5	Excellent

Rich messaging capabilities

The LG Optimus One P500 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 and social media buffs will be pleased with the level of integration of that content as well.

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

Gmail is one thing that you can't expect to have changed much compared to other Android handsets.

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

Multiple email accounts are also supported. 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 One – the phone dialpad and the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY is available in both portrait and landscape, but the keys are rather tiny in portrait mode so you might prefer the dialpad + predictive input combo.

When you flip the phone on its side, the keyboard automatically switches to the landscape QWERTY, which is much bigger and better to use. It covers most of the screen however, leaving room for only two lines of text.

  
The on-screen QWERTY keyboard

Image gallery with 3D effects

The LG Optimus One uses the standard Android gallery. The gallery automatically locates the images and videos no matter where they are stored. The gallery boasts cool 3D effects and transitions, which we find rather attractive.

Images and videos placed in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder, which is very convenient - just like a file manager.

The different albums appear as piles of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected.

  
The gallery certainly is a looker • sorting by date

Alternatively, you photos can be organized by date with the help of a button in the top right corner which switches between grid and timeline view. In grid view, there’s a date slider, which can also be used to find photos taken on a certain date.

The pinch zooming is also available here thanks to the Optimus One multi-touch support but you can also use double tap or even the +/- virtual buttons.

  
Looking at a single photo

There are tons of options for a picture – you can crop or rotate it directly in the gallery. The Send feature offers quick sharing via Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Email apps, Bluetooth or MMS.

Zooming and panning is fast and smooth, but there’s a perceptible lag until the actual panning (or zooming) starts, which is slightly annoying.

Same old music player

Sadly, the music player saw no updates in Android Froyo. The music player is not too bad at managing your audio files but there’s definitely room for improvement.

The interface uses four tabs, which offer the four main ways to search your music collection - by artist, album, song or the playlists you've created.

 
The music player saw no changes

There’s a handy feature that allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search by holding down a finger on a song.

You can use the search feature to quickly find songs by gradual typing. The now playing list can be easily reordered (by holding the “handle” on the left of each song) and you can also toggle shuffle and repeat modes.

  
The "Now playing" screen

The stock music player lacks an equalizer and alternative visualizations, which is a disappointment.

FM Radio with RDS

The LG Optimus One P500 is equipped with an FM radio too. The interface is simple – there’s a tuning dial and you can save as many as 48 stations as favorites. You can also listen on the loudspeaker, but the headset is still needed.

 
The FM radio

Decent audio quality

LG Optimus One P500 is a decent performer as far as audio quality is concerned. It may not be the best but it certainly delivers more than its price tag suggests.

When used with an active external amplifier the Optimus One does very well all over the place. Intermodulation distortion is maybe only average and the extreme bass frequencies have been cut off but the rest of the scores are just excellent. Oh, and the LG smartphone is pretty loud too.

When you plug in the headphones there is a notable increase in stereo crosstalk, which is not exactly ideal and the intermodulation distortion raises a bit more too. Volume levels went down and the Optimus One is not much better than average in this scenario. Frequency response, on the other hand, improved slightly.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
LG Optimus One P500	+0.17, -1.69	-85.6	87.2	0.021	0.301	-86.2
LG Optimus One P500 (headphones attached)	+0.19, -1.36	-85.4	86.9	0.021	0.643	-46.5
HTC Aria	+0.12, -0.58	-84.5	86.9	0.022	0.172	-85.4
HTC Aria (headphones attached)	+0.37, -0.15	-87.0	90.4	0.026	0.400	-52.3
Nokia C6-01	+0.07 -0.37	-88.2	88.1	0.0073	0.017	-89.4
Nokia C6-01 (headphones attached)	+0.48 -0.25	-88.1	87.8	0.016	0.362	-71.7
Nokia C7	+0.06 -0.33	-88.1	88.0	0.0069	0.017	-88.9
Nokia C7 (headphones attached)	+0.46 -0.21	-88.1	88.1	0.017	0.362	-66.2
Samsung S8530 Wave II	+0.02 -0.04	-90.9	90.9	0.017	0.026	-92.3
Samsung S8530 Wave II (headphones attached)	+1.21 -0.27	-90.7	90.5	0.021	0.701	-49.7

LG Optimus One P500 frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Video player with DivX/XviD support

The video player is fairly simple. It displays a list of all videos on the phone (each video has a thumbnail, which will help you orient yourself) but the search button doesn’t work here (there is an alphabet scroller however).

 
The Video player has a simple interface

Once you start the video you have only three controls – the previous and next (which fast-forward and rewind when you hold them down) and play/pause. You can also scrub through the video with the touch control. What’s missing is the crop feature – the video player can’t fill the screen by cropping the video to fit.

Anyway, there’s DivX/XviD support built-in to go along with the 3GP, MP4 and WMV support. It can only play videos up to a certain resolution – the largest video we managed to play had 640x360 resolution, while a VGA and D1 videos failed to play (with an unsupported resolution error).

The Optimus One couldn’t handle large files either but videos under 1GB should be fine. Otherwise things play smoothly with bitrate below 3Mbps.

So, the LG Optimus One P500 is not the ideal media player (the 3.2” HVGA screen with 3:2 aspect isn't very good for 16:9 content) but it can do the job and handle many videos without the need for re-encoding.

3MP camera with so many features

The LG Optimus One P500 is equipped with a 3-megapixel auto-focus camera and has no flash whatsoever. It does, however, impress with the sheer number of features that it offers.

The camera interface manages to pack a lot of controls and info on the viewfinder, which can easily be hidden to remove the clutter. The right column is taken by the still/video camera toggle, the virtual shutter and the gallery shortcut.

On the left, there’s the zoom controls, the exposure compensation, scenes mode, autofocus mode and finally the extended settings menu. The top of the screen shows info on the currently selected resolution and the number of shots remaining. All of this can be hidden (and brought back up) with a tap (they also hide automatically after a while).

  
  
Camera interface

Let’s try to go over all the features. There’s scenes, panorama, geo-tagging and face detection (the Optimus One can track up to 5 faces) but that’s just the basics. Smile detection is also supported as are LG’s Beauty and Art shots and face effects.

Beauty shots try to do some automatic post-processing photos of people with dubious results), Art shots are just color effects (and fewer than the regular color effects). Both limit the maximum photo resolution to VGA so you’re better off not using them (or using the regular color effects which preserve resolution).

Face effects can be quite fun. For example, the funny mask effect puts odd hats and masks on people (multiple different masks if there is more than one person in the shot), shallow focus blurs the everything around the face to create the impression of shallow focus, mosaic censors the faces by pixelating them and so on. Note that the photo size is reduced to VGA again.

Okay, so maybe those features are not particularly useful but you can have a lot of fun with them. And with a 3MP camera you’d never be able to shoot like a pro anyhow, so you might as well have some fun with friends at the party with their funny virtual hats.

Anyway, when it comes to taking a photo with the LG Optimus One, the autofocus is reasonably fast as is the shot to shot time.

For a 3MP camera, the snapper is not that bad – there’s only reasonable amount of noise but there's a general softness of the image, which is then oversharpened to make some details pop out. Furthermore the automatic white balance made some photos too bluish, which makes the photos look colder than most people would prefer them.

  
 
LG Optimus One camera sample photos

Photo quality comparison

Even 3MP snappers like the LG Optimus One P500 have a place in our Photo Compare Tool. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.

  
LG Optimus One P500 in our Photo Compare Tool

Poor video recording

The LG Optimus One camcorder is far from impressive - it manages VGA videos at 18 fps and the resulting 3GP video files are heavily compressed.

Still the colors are pleasant and the captured videos are not as soft as the photos but still the low framerate is generally a deal-breaker.

 
 
Camcorder mode

The camcorder interface is almost identical to the still camera’s, which is good but far from enough to redeem the camcorder.

Here’s VGA@18fps video sample from the LG Optimus One P500.

Connectivity is great for the class

Though it doesn’t support the latest incarnations of some technologies, the LG Optimus One P500 still offers a complete connectivity package.

There’s quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support along with dual-band 3G with 7.2Mbps HDSPA. Local connectivity is handled by Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and a microUSB cable. There’s also a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

The Optimus One also packs a built-in GPS receiver with a digital compass.

To save on power, you can use the power toggle widget and switch on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS only when you need them.

A good but Flash-less web browser

The Android browser is one of the best available on a mobile device. It’s fast, problem-free and easy to use.

The user interface is completely minimalistic (it’s the Google way). All you get on the screen is an address bar and +/- zoom buttons. The address bar is placed on top of the page, so scrolling down moves it out of view and the zoom controls auto-hide.

   
Browsing GSMArena.com on the Optimus One • page options

The minimalist UI is quite powerful – hit the menu key and six keys pop up. You can open a new tab, switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, and open bookmarks. The final button reveals even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).

The Optimus One browser supports three zoom methods – dedicated buttons, double tap and multitouch pinch-zooming. The browser also supports text reflow – a moment after adjusting the zoom level, columns of text adjust to fit the screen width.

   
Tab management • bookmarks • most visited • history

The bookmark list shows a thumbnail of the bookmarked page and you also get a “most visited” list in addition to the history.

Zooming and panning is fast but not very smooth. Still, the 3.2” screen fits desktop-versions of pages quite well (the text reflow feature helps a lot here) and the HVGA resolution means text is readable at low zoom levels (but not as sharp as high-density screens).

 
Text reflow in action

You might have expected flash support (we did, the Optimus One runs Froyo after all) but it’s not here. And we tried downloading the Flash player from the Market but it wasn’t available. It turned out that the ARMv6 CPU inside the Optimus One doesn’t support Flash at all. The minimum is a ARMv7 CPU.

 
A YouTube app partly makes up for the missing Flash support

Sure, there’s the YouTube app but that doesn’t help much for other video-sharing sites or sites that use Flash for navigation.

Organizer is good, office document editor preloaded

The LG Optimus One comes with the usual set of organizing apps and there’s a preloaded document viewer/editor too (which is a great perk for a phone of this caliber).

The app in question is ThinkFree Office and it supports viewing and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (with Office 2007 support) and also PDF files.

   
ThinkFree Office viewer and editor

Handling Office documents is an intensive task and is one of the few places where you really see the 600MHz processor struggle. While viewing files is slow but workable, editing almost any document (save for docs with very little content) is so slow, it’s unusable.

  
  
Editing Word and Excel documents in ThinkFree Office

We tried out Google Docs, which support document editing if you’re using Froyo (see how important it is to have the latest OS?), and they worked considerably faster. However, the interface is nowhere near as good as the native Office app and it lacks even basic formatting options (the mobile version does anyway). Give it a spin and see if it’s an acceptable compromise to the nigh-unusable native app.

  
Google Docs can edit documents too

The calendar has four different types of view - daily, weekly, monthly and agenda. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

   
The calendar has the usual good functionality

The LG Optimus One features an alarm clock application, which allows a lot of alarms to be set, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.

  
You can easily set up multiple alarms

The organizer package also includes a voice recorder, which might be pretty useful for making audio notes and a nicely touch-optimized calculator.

 
The voice recorder and the calculator

Extensive Facebook and Twitter integration

The LG Optimus One P500 features great SNS integration. Both Facebook and Twitter contacts can be added to the phonebook and you can link those to existing phone contacts.

When you link a contact with their Facebook or Twitter, their last message will be visible on the top of their contact info screen (right next to their contact photo). Links to their profiles on the respective social networks are added to the Info tab as well.

The two apps are the official apps and they support full interaction with the networks.

The Facebook app lets you read news feeds, post messages on people’s walls, browse their profiles and so on. You can of course post status updates and including a photo is very easy.

   
The Facebook app has a lot of features

The Twitter app is also feature complete. A lot of actions are simplified as the app automatically uploads the photo (to either TwitPic or yfrog), shortens URLs (with bit.ly or TinyURL) and there’s a toggle to switch geo-tagging of the tweet on and off. Another nice feature is the Trends section of the app, which gives you a glimpse of what the Twitter hive mind is chattering about.

   
The Twitter app automates almost everything

When you receive a new message, it will appear in the notification area just like regular SMS messages do.

Android Market gives you loads of apps

The Android Market structure is quite simple - featured apps on top and, below them, three sections (Applications, Games and Downloads). There is also a shortcut up there for initiating a search. With HVGA resolution and Froyo, the Optimus One will be compatible with most apps, so you don’t need to worry about the fragmentation of Android.

   
The Android Market gives you access to tons of applications

The first screen of the Market shows several featured apps. The Market organizes apps and games into two separate tabs and each tab lists sub-categories (e.g. Finance applications, Arcade & Action games). In each category you can select to view the Top free apps or ones that are “Just in”.

There's a third tab – Downloads – that keeps track of what you’ve already downloaded. Do keep an eye on this tab – when updates become available for an app you’ve installed, a label shows up next to the app name to notify you.

The Android Market flew past 100,000 apps recently but it’s the quality of the apps that really matters. The good thing is that many companies have made official Android apps and plenty of popular games have received an Android port.

Google maps and GPS navigation

The LG Optimus One P500 comes with a built-in GPS receiver. In under two minutes it got an accurate GPS lock. If you need only general location (within 100-150 meters) for location-based services, you can use Cell-ID and Wi-Fi network positioning.

Google Maps is part of the standard Android package. With it you can plan a route and track your current location but you have to rely on network data for downloading the map info. To zoom in and out in Google Maps you have to use well-known controls - +/- keys, double tap and pinch zoom.

   
Google maps is an inherent part of the Android OS

The Google Maps Navigation option is available too – but only for supported countries. And while Maps does cache map data for the route, it will need to contact Google’s servers again if you deviate from the route (which makes it unsuitable if you don’t have a data plan or when you are roaming).

Street View mode is supported and it's probably the most fun part of Google Maps - it gives you a 360-degree view of the surroundings where it's available. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like you're taking a virtual tour of the location.

  
The Street View is great in compass mode

Final words

So that’s it for the LG Optimus One P500 review – it’s time to sum up. There were very few negative things we found about the phone and in many areas it actually managed to outperform our expectations.

The Optimus One is a low-end Android but it performs very well in its price bracket. LG’s main goal with this one is pull people away from feature phones by offering more functionality than even the most high-end feature phone.

And they have struck the right balance – the screen is good (unlike QVGA screens of other low-enders), the battery is huge, Android 2.2 Froyo gives even the 600MHz processor an edge against the competition and the software package is almost spotless (save for that laggy document editor and the lack of Flash).

Feature phones usually offer a better screen and a better camera but often features go underutilized. Fine, there’s a GPS but what good is it without a SatNav app? There’s more to Wi-Fi than just Internet browsing too. And Android offers an incomparably rich app package compared to any feature phone platform.

LG may have a genuine smartphone for the masses on their hands (and the Optimus One has already sold over a million units, so that’s hardly a prophetic statement), but let’s see where its main competition lies.

The LG Optimus Chic E720 is pretty much the same phone, save for the better 5MP camera, DLNA support and smaller battery. The Samsung I5800 Galaxy 3 is upgradable to Froyo and does have a slightly faster CPU (667MHz) but the RAM is only half of what the Optimus One offers. And that WQVGA screen is about as low as you can go.

   
LG Optimus Chic E720 • Samsung I5800 Galaxy 3 • LG GT540 Optimus • HTC Aria

The original Optimus, the LG GT540, has a smaller screen (3”) and with only 156MB RAM it’s no powerhouse, but since it got the Android 2.1 Eclair update it’s a viable cheap smartphone that should not be overlooked.

The HTC Aria (or Gratia depending on which region you live in) has a 3.2” HVGA screen, but is considerably more compact than the Optimus One. There’s no Froyo for it yet and the compactness and 5MP camera have driven the price up.

A couple of Symbians – the Nokia X6 16GB and the Sony Ericsson Vivaz – hover under the Optimus One price spot. If you can swallow the not-so-user-friendly OS, you’ll enjoy a higher-res screen and an excellent camera from the Vivaz (8MP, 720p video) or 16GB built in memory from the X6.

 
Sony Ericsson Vivaz • Nokia X6 16GB

Finally, three high-end feature phones are cheaper, with beautiful screens and better cameras but none of them can use their hardware as fully as the Optimus One. Check out the specs of the LG GD880 Mini, the LG KM900 Arena and the Samsung S8000 Jet before making a final decision.

  
LG GD880 Mini • LG KM900 Arena • Samsung S8000 Jet

If the LG Optimus One P500 is your first smartphone you won’t regret it. Or if you’re looking for a smartphone on a budget, it’s a great option too. But if it’s between the Optimus One and one of the feature phones, the only thing that keeps it from being the obvious choice is the lower res screen