LG Optimus Pad preview: First look

Introduction

An 8.9" screen hits the sweet spot for tablets and LG's Optimus Pad shows good thinking. The first tablet of the company will want to make a difference among more or less uniform rivals. Tablets coming to the market look almost the same - screens, hardware, OS. There is very little room for experiment, but LG are keen to disagree.

3D is more of a fun show-off feature to have on the side - but LG has taken that very, very seriously. We already met with and were impressed by the Optimus 3D smartphone. Its tablet sibling didn't get an actual 3D screen, but it can take 3D stills and videos. Anaglyph 3D viewing is enabled with a standard pair of polarized glasses.

LG Optimus Pad official photos

The Optimus Pad is based on the powerful NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipeset - the only one currently compatible with the Android 3 Honeycomb (though this is supposed to change with the upcoming 3.2 update). Its 8.9" TFT touchscreen of 1280 x 768 pixel resolution and 32GB of internal storage don’t sound too bad either. The imaging skills are the highpoint on the spec sheet.

LG Optimus Pad at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 10.2 Mbps, HSUPA 2 Mbps
• Form factor: Tablet
• Dimensions: 243.8 x 150.0 x 12.7 mm, 621 g
• Display: 8.9" 16M-color WXGA (1280 x 768 pixels) TFT capacitive touchscreen
• CPU: Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, ULP GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 chipset
• RAM: 1GB
• OS: Android 3.0.1 Honeycomb
• Memory: 32 GB storage
• Camera: dual 5 MP, autofocus, LED flash with 1080p@24fps video recording; Stereoscopic 720p@30fps videos; geotagging, face detection; 2 megapixel front facing camera, video-calls
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2PD, standard microUSB port,GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI TV-out
• Misc: built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, gyroscope sensor

So, on top of the ordinary Full HD video capture, you get 720p 3D video. At one point users of the Optimus Pad will want to consider the Optimus 3D smartphone. If they haven't already got themselves an LG 3D TV set.

LG Optimus Pad live photos

It's arguable whether video capture - let alone 3D - is such an essential feature to have on a tablet. We wouldn't call it a unique selling point just yet - but it's obvious LG wanted to set the Optimus Pad apart from the competition. Before we get to that though, we need to get the basics out of the way. Let's take a closer look at the hardware before we proceed to Android Honeycomb and the 3D stuff.