BARCELONA — God, do I hate 3D. It's a dizzy gimmick, a headache-causing brain-garble that seems to be designed primarily for the wow factor. So I went into my hands-on time with LG's Optimus 3D, the first mass-market 3D mobile phone, with low expectations and a lot of trepidation.
Let it be known that I like the Optimus 3D in 2D. It fits well into the new world of super-smartphones: it has an unusually bright 4.3-inch 800x480 LCD screen and it feels fast all around thanks to the TI OMAP4 dual-core processor. The phone runs Android 2.2.1 with LG's light customizations. I like their one major innovation, which is to give your Android app drawer folders so you don't end up with a big jumble of apps. The photo gallery also "tilts" when you tilt the phone, which is neat.
But what everyone wants to know about is the 3D, right? The Optimus 3D has a no-glasses, parallax 3D screen and dual cameras on the back that can record 3D video to be played back on 3D TVs that require polarized glasses. And the effect is, well, polarizing.
First of all, the screen is "aquarium" 3D — it has depth within the screen, it doesn't pop out. Second, if you don't hold it at the right distance, some 3D effects just become a jumble of headache-inducing depth confusion. This wasn't so much of a problem with videos or games. But the phone has a 3D UI demo on it that was just a mess. It was blurry, jaggy, and the depth effects were confusing.
There's plenty of 3D content, though. The phone comes with some 3D videos and some popular games rearchitected in 3D, including NOVA and Let's Golf 2. It also accesses 3D YouTube — the first phone to do so. The phone also seems to deal with 3D format confusion well: when I tried to open a file that wasn't in the Optimus's standard 3D format, it told me it was converting it, and then showed it in 3D. The phone outputs 3D video through an HDMI port on the left hand side.
I watched a video of myself recorded with the camera, and it was smooth, but the edges of things looked jaggedy, like the video was lower-resolution than it actually was. I couldn't tell whether that was the phone, the TV I was watching it on, or something in the nature of 3D.
Overall, though, I just couldn't figure out what 3D was adding to the experience. Depth effects were either subtle or troubled, the screen has a lousy viewing angle, and you can't even watch it easily at a varied range of distances. The LG Optimus 3D has a lot going for it: I like the bright screen and the fast TI processor. Ordinary 2D games play super-smooth. But I'm not sure 3D is its best feature.