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Hands-on with the LG Optimus Vu tablet phone

Gallery by Dan Seifert on Wednesday February 29, 2012.

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LG announced the Optimus Vu, its answer to the Samsung Galaxy Note, at Mobile World Congress 2012. The Vu features a large 5-inch display, but it has an awkward 4:3 aspect ratio that makes it a bit difficult to handle. We swung by the LG booth at the show to get a closer look.

When handling the Optimus Vu, you immediately come to the conclusion that it is a reactionary device to the Galaxy Note, and not a very good one at that. The 5-inch, 1024 x 800 pixel display is nice, but its 4:3 aspect ration makes it nearly impossible to use with one hand. All of the complaints that we had with one-handed use on the Galaxy Note are magnified on the Vu because of its oddball aspect ratio. It's just too wide for its own good. The Vu is very thin, but the back is comprised of a cheap feeling plastic that is not satisfying to handle.

LG Optimus Vu

LG is providing a stylus with the Vu (made of a material which it calls "Rubberdium"), but it is not an active stylus like found on the Note. It is merely a capacitive pointer that accomplishes the same thing as using a finger. The note-taking software that LG installed on the Vu for the stylus is very basic, and doesn't have any of the cool features that the Note has (such as different levels of pressure sensitivity). Also, there is no place on the body of the phone to stash the stylus when not in use, so expect to lose it if you opt to purchase this thing.

The 1.5GHz dual-core processor inside the Vu had no trouble keeping up with our inputs or demands, but unfortunately LG has chosen to launch the Vu with Android 2.3 Gingerbread instead of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It also has LG's less than attractive user interface on board. One good thing that we did notice was that the camera app launches much faster on the Vu than on older LG smartphones, which has been a complaint of ours in the past.

LG plans to launch the Optimus Vu in Korea in March, with a global rollout to follow later on. There are no plans to bring the Vu to a U.S. carrier at this time.