By Neil Schneider

Introduction

I like to think of myself as a gadget guy.  After starting with a series of simple generic devices to store my address book, I later upgraded to Palm Pilots, and by accident, I ended up owning a third generation iPod Touch.  The iPod started as a required purchase for speaking at a conference, and I just liked it so much, I couldn’t part with it.  While I’m big on the PDAs, I never chased down a fancy cell phone or smartphone because outside of the occasional emergency or when I travel to the US and need to be reached on the go, my needs aren’t that great.

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about 3D smartphones by LG Electronics and HTC – and with good reason.  Most of these devices are glasses free, and given their portability, they could play an important role in helping make 3D popular through word of mouth.  Now that MTBS has been doing hardware reviews and 3D is becoming an important part of mobile technology, we just had to try some of these gadgets out.



Today, we are reviewing LG’s Thrill 4G Smartphone (AKA The Optimus 3D Smartphone).  The Thrill 4G is based on a 4.3” glasses-free parallax barrier 3D screen featuring 480x800 resolution.  Pushing the pixels is a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP4 chipset and Android 2.2.2.  For the shutterbugs among us, the phone also sports two 5MP cameras for either 1080P 2D filming at 24FPS, or 720P 3D filming at 30FPS.  An 8GB mini-SD card comes built in.

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Great review, Neil
I don't have a smartphone and the s-3d support really got me thinking of getting one. I do rather enjoy playing games on my 3dtv, but having a glasses-free s-3d device is kind of awesome. I guess the real question is whether it's worth the jump with these early models, or wait for something with better viewing angles.
As for gaming, I am really disappointed that the PS Vita won't have s-3d support, for me this would have been a great selling point, the best combination of hardware and software for a portable gaming device. I've read your post on gamasutra and completely agree about the 3ds. Personally I haven't seen one, but in general - who needs a portable s-3d gaming device if there's nothing good to use it with.

Great Review!!!!!!!!! Now whenever you run into the folk that say "oh, I don't really like 3d cause the quality is so bad yadda yadda" just show em this phone and they'll piss emselves!

Glad people like the review so far. One of the videos was reversed, and I had that fixed.

Regards,
Neil

Sadly, this is not an Android feature. Android only has native support for mp4, the rest must be added by the manufacturers. LG seems to have done a VERY good job at this though My Samsung galaxy S will also play almost anything except DTS audio - I guess Sammy was too cheap to pay the DTS license.

Can't you download additional codecs on your own? Granted, you may have to pay for the license yourself, but is it not an option?

Regards,
Neil

Who is the cute baby? Just kidding! LOL!

Im just waiting for verizon to get a 3d phone (also 4g).

I know for a fact that there are software players on the Market that "work", but they all use a lot of CPU(hence a lot of battery juice) and probably won't play higher quality clips. There might be hardware accelerated players too, but since i've never needed one i haven't really been looking either.

An owner of Optimus 3D (european version) here. I concur with the positive review, it's the best phone I've seen so far. When I brought it, everybody in the office came to see it and reactions to 3D were mostly "this is really good"
The call quality over mobile network seems usual to me, maybe I would say voice clarity is somewhat improved over my old HTC.

The unfortunate bad sides I've encountered:

• some YouTube 3D movies are reversed or in wrong aspect ratio - there is no way to correct that in app on the phone; yet the mentioned functionality is available for videos locally on the phone
• Android market doesn't allow buying applications in some countries, or even if it does, it works only for some mobile network providers (guess why I've mentioned this? )
• LG World (sort of specialized market) works in a very limited number of countries
• web browser sometimes for no practical reason pretends stupid and refuses to download some files (we needed some drivers quickly to fix problems on a local LAN server)

Great review, Neil! I have been considering getting one of these myself, you are killing my budget here. A few questions:

1) How sensitive is the angle you have to hold it at for the 3D effect, compared to the 3DS?

2) Will you please do a followup review when LG releases the update they have announced that will convert OpenGL accelerated apps into 3D?

3) Have you had a chance to see the Evo 3D? Even a rough-ish comparison would be great.

4) Is this your own personal phone now, or was it provided by LG/AT&T? I would guess the former, but best to know for sure either way.

Again, great review!

Thanks, Palmer! This was my first mobile technology review, so I'm glad it came across well. Now to answer your questions...




I just did a quick comparison. It's really a tough call because both products have the same limitations with how their auto-stereoscopic 3D technologies work. While LG has a bigger screen with a somewhat higher resolution, Nintendo has the advantage because the way their system is designed, you don't have to futz with your fingers on the screen directly - so you are less likely to shake it around. So, while I can't give one screen a clear victory over the other, the nature of having committed controllers or joysticks helps the 3D image hold true with the 3DS.




More than that. I have some ideas for these mobile 3D drivers, but I need to get a better handle on how they work and with what.




Not yet!




LG sent it - which we are grateful for. MTBS is very serious about doing further hardware reviews, and we have additional talented writers looking to share their informed opinions on the site. If manufacturers are reading this, please don't hesitate to contact us to make arrangements.

Regards,
Neil

Hi guys! I just wanted to show off a little bit. This entire message was written with android's voice recognition system.

Neil

I have the Optimus 3D, and I don't know how this can change for the Thrill, but the games are not doing S-3D correctly at all. Gameloft doesn't seem to know what they are doing with S-3D. The first 3 games that came with it, Nova, Let's Golf and Asphalt, the in game cameras are rotated inward which is not the correct way to do S-3D (rotated projection plains versus windowing the projection plains, for you technical folks out there), it makes many objects look bigger to one eye than the other and can give you a headache. And this is entirely strange considering that recently Gameloft released Let's Golf for the Nintendo 3DS eShop and they did S-3D correctly!

The recent game Gameloft released for the optimus 3d was Spiderman, and it's S-3D is inverted but it's hard to tell most of the time because most of the time it's flat! Their other games, Assassin's Creed, etc, the only perceivable S-3D effect is a floating UI, everything else looks flat or really really far away. Gameloft is doing a disservice to S-3D gaming. If gameloft is going to be the only developer creating S-3D games, I don't see much of a future for pocketable S-3D gaming outside of the Nintendo 3DS.

My optimus 3d doesn't work with bluetooth keyboards, mice, wiimote and I am sure other special bluetooth game controllers wouldn't work either. I'm not sure why this is.

The only thing I find exceptional about the Optimus 3D is it's support of media files, jps, mpo, mp4. I was able to convert several 3D bluray movies using DVDfab and converting them to 800x450 mp4 files, getting around 1GB a movie. So in theory with a 32gb microSDHC you can carry 30 S-3D movies on the go that you can watch any time you want. All you have to do in the gallery is open your mp4 file, turn on 3D mode, open up the settings/menu, select 3D formatter and choose the correct 3D format and it will save your settings for that video.

LOL, I misspelled 'plane' as 'plain'.

I didn't think Assasin's Creed was too bad on the Evo. Sure, the stereo effect is subtle, but it works and doesn't make my eyes hurt. Spiderman just seemed too lame to bother playing for more than a couple minutes.
Anyone heard of any other studios putting out 3d games for Android?

Also I read an interview linked elsewhere on this board that the 3d drivers for generic OpenGL games was going to use 2d->3d conversion rather than actually rendering 2 perspectives. I'd hope this is incorrect, has anyone heard otherwise?