Of course, it’s not a “regular” Optimus LTE but the one fine-tuned for the tech-savvy Japanese users that also comes with 1seg digital TV and NFC-based mobile wallet capabilities.

LG’s official press release goes on praising the Optimus LTE and its 4.5-inch 1280×720 pixels (16:9 ratio) True HD IPS display that is “superior in color accuracy, clarity, natural color and battery efficiency providing the ultimate viewing experience for HD content.”

All in all, we’re pretty confident this is the best device LG has ever made and arguably the best Android smartphone released this year. In its own backyard, LG managed to move some 150,000 Optimus LTE units and that number keeps growing. Something tells us they’ll repeat the success other LTE markets around the world…

For camera buffs out there, the cream of the crop is still the Nokia N8, though we understand why you’d want to avoid it since it’s running an ancient, almost impossible to use operating system. The Samsung Galaxy S II is also impressive, but it comes in third place behind the iPhone 4S, which is not only amazing, but also has a wide range of image editing and sharing applications available in the App Store. Now those rankings can radically change, and likely will over the next 2 months as CES and MWC kick off in January and February respectively. We’re expecting to see the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Nokia Lumia 900, and who knows what HTC has up their sleeve. We hope that someone, likely Samsung, will make use of this Sharp camera module, and hey, you never know, it might show up in the next iPhone!

For the folks who take photo taking seriously, what smartphone do you use? And for those of you who could care less about taking pictures, if your camera was better would you actually take more photos?

NTT DoCoMo launched such a device, Fujitsu Arrows Kiss F-03D, that not only looks girly, but also comes with some apps that make it easier for its users to get around the day. The Android smartphone sports such pre-installed apps like Beauty Body Clinic that monitors your posture, Sukkiri Alarm that wakes you when it thinks you’re ready and Karada Life, which is a pedometer app offering health advice.

Specs wise, Fujitsu’s baby rocks Qualcomm’s single-core 1.4GHz processor, 3.7-inch WVGA touchscreen, 8.1-megapixel camera, OneSeg mobile TV, mobile wallet capability and the Okudake-Juden wireless charging system. Price is unknown at this stage but we know the Arrows Kiss F-03D will be released on November 25th. And I doubt it will ever be available outside of the Land of the rising Sun.

[Via: Engadget]

The bigger question here is why are we making such thin phones in the first place? As our smartphones get faster and faster, and come with larger and larger screens, doesn’t it make sense to sacrifice a few millimeters to throw in a good battery? Case in point, for a long time Nokia’s 1500 mAh battery was considered the biggest thing in town, but now nearly everyone throws 1600 mAh to 1800 mAh batteries inside their devices, all the while they remain 9 mm thick. They do that thanks to making larger, but thinner batteries. Would it kill people to have a 10 mm or even 12 mm thick device if it’s guaranteed to go 2 days with heavy use?

Next year we’re going to see the first devices based on TSMC’s 28 nanometer process hit the market, notably the Qualcomm S4 stuff in early 2012 and then the Tegra 3 refresh in late 2012. That’ll help with the power problem, but we can’t help but feel that it’s simply easier for handset vendor to simply just use a bigger battery.

[Additional reading: NTT DoCoMo]