Nutty Mobiles

We pitch the Samsung Galaxy S2 against LG’s new arrival, the Optimus 2X

We compare the Samsung Galaxy S2 with the new LG Optimus 2X.

Form:
Samsung Galaxy S2 – 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm, 116 g
LG Optimus 2X – 123.9 x 63.2 x 10.9 mm, 139 g

Both these phones seem to come from the same school of design birthed by the Apple iPhone with their angular corners and long, svelte proportions, there’s very little which interrupts the continual expanse of glossy black and it’s all very modern and minimalist.

The Samsung is quite a bit thinner than the LG and considerably lighter as a result, though this is largely down to the use of thin lightweight plastics which some have found an unwelcome step back in build quality, though it has to be said the overall visual impact is pretty good. We’d say the Samsung overall comes out slightly better here but there’s not a lot in it.

Winner – Samsung Galaxy S2

Display:
The Galaxy S2 uses Samsung’s Super Amoled Plus technology for its 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen, the resolution clocks in at 480 x 800 pixels and with a pixels-per-inch (ppi) of 218. Display features include the toughened ‘Gorilla Glass’ screen, a preloaded TouchWiz 4.0 user interface (UI), multi-touch input as well as the usual accelerometer and gyro sensors.

The LG uses a 4-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the same resolution as the Galaxy S2 but a higher ppi at 233, just like the S II the Optimus also features a ‘Gorilla Glass’ display, multi-touch, accelerometer and gyro sensors.

It’s a case of swings and roundabouts really. The Galaxy has the larger screen but not by a huge stretch and it has a lower dpi, though it will likely compensate for this with the Super Amoled screen providing excellent colours, brightness and power efficiency. The LG has a slightly smaller screen but with a higher dpi at the same resolution the picture should still be very sharp indeed.

Both screens are excellent and we’d be happy with either.

Winner – Draw

Storage:
LG has fitted the Optimus 2X with a commendable 8 GB of storage space while the processor is supported by 512 MB of RAM. Card support is the usual with Micro SD up to 32 GB.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 has considerably more memory to play with, it comes in two versions with either 16 or 32 GB of internal storage capacity and 1 GB of RAM while card support is identical to the LG.

While the LG’s 8 GB is better than most it’s still small potatoes next to what the Galaxy S2 is packing and the Samsung has twice the RAM to boot.

Winner – Samsung Galaxy S2

Processor:
The Optimus uses a dual core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor on NVidia’s Tegra 2 chipset while the visuals are boosted by yet more NVidia magic in the form of a ULP GeForce graphics processing unit (GPU).

Samsung has also gone with dual core ARM power, the Galaxy S2 is loaded with a 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 processor, this time on the Orion chipset and with a Mali-400MP GPU handling the flashing images.

It’s a close one and there’s no denying the LG has some decent power behind it which makes it an appealing piece of kit, but we do feel the Orion chipset and Mali GPU offer better performance than their NVidia counterparts on top of the slightly faster clock speed of the Samsung.

Winner – Samsung Galaxy S2

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