When Samsung first announced the very large Galaxy Note, we weren’t sure what to make of it. At first, along with many others, we thought that the giant smartphone idea wouldn’t work out. It seems that it has though, and now that Samsung has revealed the Galaxy Note II, LG has launched its rival product, the Optimus Vu II.
The original Optimus Vu didn’t ever seem to hit the big time outside its home country of Korea, whereas the Galaxy Note was available in the UK on most major networks and with many retailers. The second Optimus Vu will be limited to Korea for the time being, so it doesn’t look likely that it will make for a rival to the Galaxy Note II here in the UK for a while.
So what does the Optimus Vu II pack? Well, for starters it has a very impressive 5-inch IPS display, which totes a high resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, in the 4:3 aspect ratio – compared to the iPhone 5, it’s a rather square device, sort of like a miniature tablet.
When we look at the Optimus Vu II the words ‘compact’ and ‘ergonomic’ don’t really come straight to mind. The handset is fairly weighty at 159g, and measures 132.2mm long by 85.6mm wide, with a fairly slim profile of 9.4mm thick.
Inside the rather square shell you’ll find a 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 dual-core processor which provides 4G LTE connectivity, an impressive 2GB of RAM, a large 2,150 mAh battery and a micro SD card slot for expanding on the internal storage, which hasn’t been specified just yet.
The Optimus Vu II has a few other neat tricks up its sleeve, including wireless charging, Miracast, which is a clever way of wirelessly beaming the phone’s display to a TV or computer, and IR Blaster, which allows the phone to be used as a remote for other devices.
The Optimus Vu II runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and will be priced at a rather hefty £534. For now, it will only be sold in LG’s home country of Korea in black, white and pink variants.
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