LG Optimus GJ review: Wild child

Android Jelly Bean with Optimus UI

The LG Optimus GJ is powered by Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, which is the most recent available Android build for any device in the Optimus line. The interface is overlaid with the company's own Optimus UI topping out of box, and the customizations run deep with a rich selection of themes, changeable icons and home-brewed apps.

We've shot a quick video showing off the user interface on the Optimus GJ. Check it out:

The LG lockscreen is virtually unchanged since the days of the original Optimus G. Swiping from any spot on the lockscreen creates a magnifying bubble effect, allowing a peek of what's underneath as if you're looking through a rain drop. You can also place up to four shortcuts that will unlock the phone straight into an app.

The lockscreen

You can change the lockscreen clock style too.

Lockscreen options

The bottom of the homescreen fits up to 6 shortcuts (including the shortcut to the App Drawer), which is more than what TouchWiz offers on the Samsung Galaxy S III. You don't have to use all available slots though - you can discard all but the App Drawer shortcut if you want.

As usual, the shortcuts are visible on any of the homescreen panes. With the exception of the app drawer shortcut, you can rearrange, delete or replace any of these with shortcuts of your choosing, even folders. In fact, most aspects of the phone's behavior can be customized, you can go to as small detail as the capacitive key backlight and the transition effect between homescreen panes.

The homescreen fits up to 6 shortcuts

LG's home-baked tweaks and enhancements are by no means limited to the visuals. The Q Slide option makes it possible for you to watch a video while using other apps, while the system-wide QuickMemo integration allows you to take a screenshot anywhere in the phone and write notes over it.

You can resize widgets or you can even shrink a widget down to the corresponding app's icon. Also, if you move a widget over an occupied slot on the homescreen, the icons underneath immediately move out of the way, which is really neat and comes as part of Jelly Bean.

Reordering and resizing widgets

Adding stuff to the homescreen is done by tapping and holding on a blank area of a homescreen. A context menu appears, allowing you to add various customizations to your phone. The tabs along the bottom let you select the appropriate app, widget or wallpaper, which you can add to the homescreen of your choice. Gridlines will appear when you hold and drag an app or widget, allowing you to easily place it on the homescreen.

Placing widgets and changing the wallpaper

LG has also enabled plenty of other customization options for the homescreen. There's a dedicated setting for looped homescreen scrolling and the so-called screen effect changes the transition effect between homescreen panes.

There are several homescreen themes to choose from. Each theme has a different set of icons and you can even make custom ones. Holding down an icon and then releasing it in the same place prompts a small paintbrush to appear over it that lets you adjust the icons appearance.

You can customize many aspects of your homescreen, even the icons

The notification area has also been tweaked by LG to let you rearrange the toggle buttons available. You are also free to add and remove toggles from the edit menu. You can add an insane amount of shortcuts here, and don't have to worry about whether they'll fit on the screen - the row becomes side-scrollable so you can still access them all.

As usual, if you have a music track playing in the background, quick controls will show up here. You can also swipe notifications to the left or right to dismiss them.

By default you get seven homescreen panes to fill up with widgets and shortcuts, but you are free to delete any that you don't need to speed up navigation. You can also set any one of the homescreen panes as default.

Homescreen preview • The notification area with reorderable settings

The task switcher hasn't changed a whole lot since ICS. It shows you all of the currently running apps, which can be swiped left or right to terminate. The task switcher is accessed by holding down on the hardware home button. There, you'll also find a shortcut to Google Now.

Additionally, there are number of icons at the bottom, which let you quickly open up a particular app or even stop all apps simultaneously.

Finally, there's a shortcut to the task manager.

The task switcher • The task manager and its corresponding widget

LG's task manager lists the currently running apps, but also lets you uninstall apps and gives you info on your storage. It comes with its own dedicated widget, which shows a graph of the available RAM and conveniently offers a button to clear up memory.

The app drawer lists all your available apps and widgets, with a dedicated tab for user downloads. There is a button in the top right corner, which triggers edit mode and lets you to easily reshuffle or uninstall applications. This is great for quickly checking which apps can be uninstalled, and which cannot.

The app drawer menu

You can opt to make the icons in the app drawer smaller too. If you select an app whilst in edit mode, a pop up will let you see information like storage usage.

App drawer options

LG borrowed a trick from Samsung's TouchWiz and implemented its own version of Samsung's Smart Stay - called Wise screen. It uses the front-facing camera to detect whether you're looking at the screen. This means you can browse the phone for hours on end without it auto-locking itself. We can confirm that the feature works very well.

Wise Screen