The T-Mobile G2X is actually a phone made by LG. With some kind of a business deal, T-Mobile have been able to re-brand the phone as one of their own. Either way, the G2X is a might impressive phone with several great specs like a dual core processor, Android 2.3, 8MP camera, HD video recording, DLNA support, HDMI out and more. Read on to learn more about the G2X specs.
G2X specs
The Good
This phone is currently being sold by T-Mobile for a $99 price tag.Of course, the price is applicable only if you sign up for a two year contract with T-Mobile. But, even with the contracted price, the phone offers so much value for your money. You get 4G HSPA+ speeds, Android Gingerbread, a great 4 inch screen, a pretty good 8MP camera that is capable of HD 1080P recording and many more impressive specs. Read through the passages below to get a closer and more detailed look at the G2X specs.
The Bad
Though the 8MP camera sounded exciting, we though that the pictures it produced were on par with some of the 5MP cameras that we have seen in the past. We also felt that there were an issue with call quality.
Summary
If you are a T-Mobile customer and are looking for a 4G (HSPA+) enabled phone that won’t burn a hole in your pocket, this phone is easily your best choice. At a contracted price of $99,.99, it is definitely one of the hottest buys from the T-Mobile stable of phones. We are pretty sure that you will be impressed with the G2X specs in every department that has been reviewed below.
Design
The phone has a simple yet elegant smartphone look to it. It has some nice rounded edges, some nice metal accents on the sides of the phone and a soft touch finish at the back that will allow you to get a premium feel of the phone. The housing or setting of the screen or display on this phone deserve some special mention here. T-Mobile or LG have called the setting a piano-black face setting. You just have to hold the phone in the hand to appreciate how the screen just blends into the rest of the body. It is pretty unique and adds that wow factor that is missing in so many run of the mill Android smartphones that come out today.
The T-Mobile G2X has a 4 inch screen, 8MP camera, Android Gingerbread and HSPA+ support
As for dimensions, the phone measures 4.9 inches in length, 2.5 inches in width and just .4 inches in thickness. The phone weighs in at a very solid 5 ounces. We like phones that weigh in around the 5 ounces mark. Though some people prefer phones that weigh no more than 4 ounces, we thought that the 1 extra ounce gives the phone that premium feel, reminding you that you are holding a pretty sophisticated phone. Either way, even if you don’t like the heavy phones, you will probably get used to the increased weight pretty quickly.
The phone uses a 4 inch IPS LCD display that puts out a 480X800 pixel resolution. Pixel density or pixels per inch is at 233 PPI. If you want a quick benchmark to compare that PPI, just compare it with the 336 PPI found in the iPhone’s retina display. Currently, the iPhone’s retina display has the most pixel density. But, at 233 PPI, the G2X’s screen is still pretty good even though it is not as good or sharp as the retina display or some of the more modern Super AMOLED screens that are out there.
Camera
G2X specs include a 8MP camera that is aided by a LED flash. There is also a front facing 1.3MP camera that will help you out with good video calling. The 8MP camera of the G2X does very well in ideal lighting conditions. Outdoor shots or shots with even indoor lighting result in pictures that show natural colors and good sharpness.
However, when the phone is used in low light conditions, the lens seems to lose out some of the color capture. Dark colors are particularly affected in low light conditions, appearing to be too dark. There are a lot of settings on the phone that you can play around with. We tried altering the white balance, ISO levels and the color composition levels although we didn’t have much luck in improving the quality of the indoor shots. However, if you ask us, we would tell you to just leave the settings alone and enjoy the good pictures the phone’s camera can take, in good lighting conditions.
The G2X's 8MP camera with LED flash takes great outdoor pictures and pretty good indoor pictures. It can also shoot 1080P and 720P HD Video.
The 8MP camera can also shoot HD video in both 1080P HD mode and 720P HD mode. In 1080P HD mode, the video is captured at 24 frames per second while 720P HD mode will allow you to capture video at 30 frames per second. Video capture is very natural and playback is very good as well. Audio capture was also very good and the phone’s camera will serve you well for amateur video recordings like homemade videos or those YouTube kitten videos.
Data transfer
G2X specs include support for 4G. However, you must realize that 4G HSPA+ speeds are very different from 4G LTE speeds. This phone only supports HSPA+ networks that will give you maximum download speeds of about 14.4Mbps. The actual download speeds are usually in the 5Mbps range, depending on the quality of the HSPA+ connection in your area. 5Mbps speeds are much better than average 3G speeds of about 1.5Mbps.
Call quality
Call quality was very good in general. The only complaint that we might have about this phone is that you may be requested to speak up a little bit by the person on the other end. For some reason, the phone tends to drop a few decibels before it sends your voice over. But, this is something you will adjust to very quickly. Background noise and other distortions like white noise are very minimal.
Speakerphone quality is pretty good and the usual speakerphone problems like echo and a tinny effect are absent on this phone.
Memory
G2X specs include 8GB in internal memory. You can upgrade this to 40GB by installing a 32GB SD card. We looked for a pre-installed SD card and found none. Most smartphones comes with at least a 2GB pre-installed SD card. So, it was a little disappointing that the G2X specs did not include a pre-installed SD card.
Processor and performance
G2X specs are very impressive in the processor and performance department. The phone is equipped with a dual core 1GHz Cortex A9 processor that is supported by 512MB RAM. We are always wary of smartphones with 512MB RAM as they can be sluggish here and there. But, there are no such problems with the G2X which does really well with various functions like launching of apps, loading of the camera and so on. Even with HSPA+ speeds (and not 4G LTE speeds), you can watch YouTube videos and stream other content without breaks in continuous play. Buffering times are negligible or even absent, depending on the strength and quality of your HSPA+ network.
Battery life
The G2X ships with a 1,500 mAh battery that will give you about 7 hours of continuous talk time. We thought that the battery life on this phone was pretty good, considering that it runs a dual core processor that sits on a state of the art Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. On standby mode, the phone can last for about 11 days.
Conclusion
G2X specs are very impressive when you keep the $99.99 price in mind. Though the phone doesn’t have 4G LTE speeds, HSPA+ speeds will give you a big jump over 3G speeds. The 8MP camera, dual core processor, Android Gingerbread, 7 hours of battery life are all very good smartphone specs for a $99,99 phone. If you are with T-Mobile and want a phone that costs less than $100, buying this phone is such an easy choice to make.
Outside the U.S., the T-Mobile G2X is known as the LG G2X
Are you interested in brand new cell phone releases. If yes, you will probably want to catch up on the latest iPhone 5 news as the iPhone 5 is going to hit store shelves soon.