LG announced the Optimus Vu 5 inch Android smartphone

One week ahead of the Mobile World Congress, LG announced the Optimus Vu smartphone. This came as no surprise to us even though the timing was a little ahead of what we expected.

LG is saying this about the Optimus Vu.: The biggest feature of this product is the 5 inch IPS display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. LG want to emphasise the advantages of the 4:3 aspect ratio, but 4:3 is more common that you might think. 240x320, 480x640 and 360x480 pixels all have the 4:3 aspect ratio. The IPS display has 650 nits of luminance which is quite good but not best in class. For a comparison, the brightest smartphone available is the Nokia 701 with claimed 1000 nits, iPhone 4S has 569 nits and Motorola Droid X2 is reported to have 697 nits.

One sign that give away that this device with the current specs is headed for the South Korean market only is the terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) feature. This TV-on-the-phone feature is only available in a handful of countries in addition to South Korea.

LG Optimus Vu highlights

• Size: 139.6 x 90.4 x 8.5 mm
• Weight: 168 gram
• 5 inch ISP display with a 768 x 1024 resolution
• 8 megapixel camera, auto focus, LED light
• 1.3 megapixel front camera
• 32 GB internal storage
• 1.5 GHz dual core processor. Qualcomm
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS
• 2080 mAh battery
• HDMI
• Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi direct
• DLNA
• T-DMB