LG was the first handset vendor to announce a dual core Android smartphone way back in December 2010, the Optimus 2X. Here we are, over a year later, and they’re now the first phone manufacturer to announce a quad core Android smartphone, the Optimus 4X HD. Now the Optimus 2X may have been the first dual core smartphone on paper, but it hit the North American market in mid April. By that time the Motorola Atrix 4G was already out for two months. The same thing is likely going to happen to the Optimus 4X HD. Despite being the “first” quad core device, Clove UK says it’s going to land in Europe in June for roughly $725. Contrast that to HTC, who also announced a quad core phone called the One X. They say it’ll be out on the market “within 60 days”, so that translates to a launch date on or before April 27th.
The bigger question is why are you considering buying the Optimus 4X HD in the first place? When was the last time LG made a smartphone worth buying? Anyone? The Optimus 2X, which actually has a Guinness World Record for being the first dual core smartphone, was such a buggy and plasticy device that we didn’t recommend it to anyone. That sort of track record doesn’t bode well for the company. More importantly we also saw some early benchmarks of the dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, and guess what, despite having two cores it’s actually faster than NVIDIA’s quad core chip!
Anyway, there are probably LG fanbois and fangirls out there who want the Optimus 4X HD. To you guys, it looks like you’re going to have to wait about three months. That’s a bit ridiculous, but then again so it thinking that you need four processing cores to make web browsing “snappy”.