[T-Mobile LG G2x] BarryH_GEG:
OK, I’ve now spent hours with the phone setting it up and configuring it. I had to do it twice because it got stuck at the LG spinning progress bar and a weird “checking system” warning was displayed on boot. I had to hard reset it and rebuild it (always easier the second time). Interestingly, it’s behaving better after the hard reset so newbies might want to do a hard reset when they first get the phone.

I’m coming from a G2 so first a comparison:

It’s light. The G2 feels like it weighs twice as much.

It crisp looking. The G2 looks old next to it.

I hate the reversal of the home and settings soft keys. I’ll get used to it through retraining but it’s a pain.

The screen is more responsive and a lot more vivid.

The volume rockers on the right vs. left side isn’t a good thing because when holding the phone to use the power button your hand is naturally right where they are.

HTC has far more customization settings. There’s only one notification sound for everything and you can’t set a vibrate (either alone or with sound).

Bluetooth audio is 1000% better. It sounds like a CD in my car. You can also answer a call and Bluetooth audio starts up again – a huge bug in the G2.

Not having LED’s sucks and the bizarre charging screen LG implemented as a replacement when you press the on/off switch is just stupid.

The things I like about the phone:

It’s fast. I’m using ADW Launcher and the 4D app drawer just flies. So does the moving wallpaper when scrolling.

WiFi is fast. It downloaded my Rhapsody playlists as fast as my i7 desktop.

Call quality is good – better than my G2 according to people I’ve asked.

The speakerphone works great, even with background noise. They hear me clearly and I hear them loudly.

It charges incredibly fast on AC power.

The battery life’s been good because I’ve been hammering away at it for hours. Although, once you go below 50% it seem to start dropping a lot faster.

It feels solid and good in the hand and the materials are high quality.

Bluetooth works better on this phone than any I’ve ever owned.

PlayOn which is a real CPU and bandwidth hog plays well over 4G which it didn’t on the G2 so the Tegra2 really does make a huge difference.

Things I don’t like:

4G is slow. My G2’s best speedtest.net score is 10289 down and 1582 up. The average is in the mid-8’s down and about 1.2mb up. The best score on the G2X is 7013 down and 1263 up. Average is in mid-6’s down and 1mb up. Not great performance for a state-of-the-art phone. One of the pro reviewers said it's slower than the SideKick, she's right.

The on/off switch is nuts. You have to press it forever and you still don’t know if it registered with the phone. I get that it’s so you don’t accidentally turn the phone on, but really? Also, since you have to press it so long and the volume keys are in a bad place you could accidentally restore your phone.

When the phone’s charging and you press the on/off switch some bizarre battery graphic appears. You have to press the switch again to get the phone to start up. If you press too long, it shuts down. Does anyone at LG actually use a smartphone?

Let’s talk software. TeleNav, really? Why load something that no one with Google maps is going to use that just hogs memory. And what’s with not pre-loading voice synthesis so you get a warning the first time you use voice dial to download it? They took out Quickoffice and replaced it with Polaris Office. You’d think you were getting a program to create and edit files, right? No, it’s a poor man’s version of Astro. All the T-Mobile stuff beside My Account and My Device is crap and a waste of memory.

There’s limited personalization. You get one notification sound for everything with no discreet vibrate option. HTC offers 10x the personalization.

I use Mobile Signal PRO to monitor my cell and Wi-Fi reception. It’s always been spot-on on my G2. It’s never shown the G2X to be on the 4G network while the T-Mobile indicator has never shown it to drop below 4G (which is impossible). Something funky is going on with the radio software.

Could this thing take any longer to start-up or shut-down? I mean seriously. First the LG logo, then the spinning progress bar, then the launching android, then loading internal SD, loading external SD, loading media files. All-in it’s easily twice as long to boot up as my G2. Same thing with shutting down. And after it got stuck on the spinning progress bar and I had to reset it, I cringe waiting for the stupid Android blast-off screen to appear.

So It’s only day two but I like more than I dislike. I’m definitely keeping it barring any unforeseen future weirdness once I start using it day-to-day. Hopefully as LG gets smarter with high-end devices some of the quirks will be addressed with software updates. Right now, based on the way I use it, I’d say it’s a good phone but not the phone-to-end-all-phones. There might be a Sensation in my future.