Difference Between LG Spectrum and iPhone 4S

LG Spectrum vs iPhone 4S | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

Somebody once asked me why mobile phone vendors tend to release their newest products at a common stage like International Consumer Electronics Show, rather than releasing them individually over a time. The argument he presented was that, the individual attention imposed on a certain model will be rather less among a lot of models that are alike, and thus it is disadvantageous to release a lot of handsets at the same time. This is a valid argument up to a certain extent. It is true that a mobile might get more attention if released individually at a discrete time, but that might not be the case, as well. There are many handsets that were released individually and did not get the due recognition. The importance of a mobile marathon like CES is such that, every handset of the same class gets equal attention. For instance, say we were not even aware of a Lenovo smartphone; however, if it falls into the same class as of popular more anticipated handsets, then Lenovo smartphone also gets the due attention. Further, it’s always easy to perform comparisons when you have all the candidates you need in one place.

So we’ve picked out two members from the two sides and, by sides, we meant the ones who takes advantage of public events such as CES and ones who has their own events to unveil the their new products. LG, been a promising company in the smartphone arena has unveiled their new Spectrum at the CES 2012 while Apple, who has a unique position in the smartphone arena takes up their own events to unveil products. Of course, since Apple has a unique place in smartphone market and because their products are almost always highly anticipated, we can completely justify my friend’s argument on been advantageous in releasing products individually.

LG Spectrum

LG is a mature vendor in the mobile phone arena with a lot of experience in identifying the trends of the market and going along with them to maximize their penetration. The buzz words in the industry nowadays are 4G connectivity, true HD screen panels, high end cameras with 1080p HD capturing etc. Although it’s not a surprise, we are glad to say that LG has captured all of these under the hood of LG Spectrum.

We’ll start the comparison by mentioning that LG Spectrum is not a GSM device; thus, it would only work in CDMA network, which makes it different from all the GSM devices, and we’d have preferred if LG released a more popular GSM version of this handset too. Nonetheless, it comes with the blazing fast LTE 700 connectivity for internet browsing. The Spectrum features 1.5GHz Scorpion S3 dual core processor on top of Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and Adreno 220 GPU. This combination is boosted by 1GB RAM and controlled by Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread with the promise to provide an upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich. It has 4.5 inches of gigantic HD-IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, featuring true HD resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels and a pixel density of 326ppi. In layman’s terms, what this means is that, you get crystal clear images in extreme conditions like direct sunlight, wonderful color reproduction, crisp and clear text down to the smallest details, utilizing less amounts of power. The availability of high speed internet connection would mean seamless browsing through your mails, light browsing and social networks. The ultimate power of the processor enables you to multi task in such a way that you can still browse, play games and enjoy media content while you’re on a voice call.

LG has included 8MP camera in Spectrum, which has autofocus and LED flash with geo tagging enabled. It can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second with LED video light included, and the 1.3MP front camera certainly is good for video conferences. It also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and Spectrum can also act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, which would be an ideal way for the user to share his super-fast LTE connectivity with friends easily. The built in DLNA functionality means that Spectrum can wirelessly stream rich media content to smart TVs. A special feature of LG spectrum is that it comes with ESPN’s ScoreCenter app that enables you to enjoy sports in HD on your screen.

LG spectrum is somewhat big, obviously because of the gigantic screen, but it is somewhat heftier as well scoring a weight of 141.5g and a thickness of 10.4mm. It has an expensive and elegant look with pleasing ergonomics. We gathered that the 1830mAh battery would work for 8 hours after full charge, which is admirable for a smartphone with a gigantic screen like this.

Apple iPhone 4S

Apple iPhone 4S has the same look and feel of iPhone 4 and comes in both black and white. The stainless steel built gives it an elegant and expensive style, which appeals to the users. It also is almost the same size as iPhone 4 but slightly heavier weighing 140g. It features the generic Retina display, which Apple is extremely proud of. It comes with a 3.5 inches LED-backlit IPS TFT Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors, and scores the highest resolution as per Apple, which is 640 x 960 pixels. The pixel density of 330ppi is extremely high that Apple claims that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels. This obviously results in crisp text and stunning images.

iPhone 4S comes with 1GHz dual core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU in Apple A5 chipset and 512MB RAM. Apple claims this delivers two times more power and seven times better graphics. It is also highly energy efficient, which enables Apple to boast an outstanding battery life. iPhone 4S comes in 3 storage options; 16/32/64GB without the option of expanding the storage with a microSD card. It utilizes the infrastructure provided by carriers, to stay in touch at all times with HSDPA at 14.4Mbps and HSUPA at 5.8Mbps. In terms of camera, iPhone has an improved camera of 8MP that can record 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It has a LED flash and touch to focus function along with Geo-tagging with A-GPS. The front VGA camera enables the iPhone 4S to make use of its application Facetime, which is a video calling application.

While iPhone 4S is graced with generic iOS applications, it comes with Siri, the most advanced digital personal assistant up to date. Now the iPhone 4S user can use voice to operate the phone, and Siri understands natural language. It also understands what the user meant; that is, Siri is a context aware application. It has its own personality, tightly coupled with the iCloud infrastructure. It can do basic tasks like setting up an alarm or reminder for you, sending a text or email, schedule meetings, follow your stock, make a phone call etc. It can also perform complex tasks like finding information for a natural language query, getting directions, and answering your random questions.

Apple is best known for its unbeatable battery life; thus, it would be normal to expect it to have a fabulous battery life. With the Li-Pro 1432mAh battery it has, iPhone 4S promises a talk time of 14h 2G and 8h 3G. Recently the users have been making complaints about the battery life and Apple has announced that it’s working on a fix for that, while their update for iOS5 has partially solved the problem. We can stay tuned for updates and expect the Technological Innovator to come up with a fix for the problem at hand soon.

Conclusion

The LG Spectrum ultimately has more processing power at 1.5GHz than that of Apple iPhone 4S at 1GHz. It also comes with 1GB RAM to accommodate seamless transitions than Apple iPhone 4S. The Adreno 220 GPU and PowerVR SGX are bound to score almost the same score so that tallies. Thus, looking at the hardware specs, LG Spectrum is the winner over powering iPhone 4S. But there’s more to it than just hardware. While Android comes as a general OS and optimization is handled by the vendor, Apple iOS is made for iPhones. For this reason, there exists a performance gap between them that can only be overridden by fine tweaking the UI performance. We are hoping that LG has made that commitment. The next difference at hand is the usability perspective. Up to date, Android OS hasn’t come up with a brilliant smartphone assistant like Siri and this prevails to be a void. Other than that, Apple has the unique stance on the mobile market with a sense of elegance. So one has to consider these factors to make the investment decision, and it certainly is up to you. We do have to warn you that Apple iPhone 4S would come with rather high price tag than that of LG Spectrum.