Difference Between LG Spectrum and Samsung Galaxy Nexus

LG Spectrum vs Samsung Galaxy Nexus | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

Always, there is something better around the block, no matter how hard you try. That’s the simple concept of mobile phone markets because someone or the other come up with a new model, a new design that is better than what we have within a short period of time. What if you are the owner of the concept behind a smartphone? Well, it does not matter because you’re still going to see better models out there. This is the case for Google’s brain child Galaxy Nexus, as well. Google released the most recent version of Android OS v4.0 IceCreamSandwich with Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The handset we are going to compare against Galaxy Nexus does not have IceCreamSandwich just yet, but it has the performance intensity required by the operating system, and the vendor seems to indicate the availability of an upgrade.

LG Spectrum would be our choice for the better bloke around the corner for Samsung Galaxy Nexus and this may sound like a conclusion in itself, but it’s not! Keep reading through and you’ll find out the differences between these handsets and their strengths and weaknesses.

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’s 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.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Google’s own product, Nexus has always been the first to come up with the new versions of Android and who could blame for they are state of the art mobiles. The Galaxy Nexus is the successor for Nexus S and comes with a variety of improvement worthwhile talking about. It comes in Black and has an expensive and gorgeous design to fit right in your palm. It is true that Galaxy Nexus is on the upper quartile on size, but amazingly, it doesn’t feel hefty in your hands. In fact, it only weighs 135g and has dimensions of 135.5 x 67.9mm and comes as a slim phone with 8.9mm of thickness. It accommodates a 4.65 inches HD Super AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors. The state of the art screen is going beyond the conventional size boundaries of 4.5 inches. It has true HD resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels with an ultra-high pixel density of 316ppi. For this, we can daresay, the image quality and the crispness of the text would be as good as iPhone 4S retina display.

Nexus is made to be a survivor till it has a successor, which means, it comes with state of the art specifications that won’t feel neither intimidated nor outdated for an extended duration of time. Samsung has included a 1.2GHz dual core Cortex A9 processor on top of TI OMAP 4460 chipset bundled with the PowerVR SGX540 GPU. The system is been backed up by a RAM of 1GB and non-extendable storage of 16 or 32 GB. The software doesn’t fail to meet the expectations, as well. Featuring the world’s first IceCreamSandwich smartphone, it comes with a lot of new features that hasn’t been seen around the block. As for starters, it comes with a new optimized font for HD displays, an improved keyboard, more interactive notifications, resizable widgets, and a refined browser that is intended to give a desktop-class experience to the user. It also promises the best gmail experience to date and a clean, new look in the calendar, and all these sums up to an enticing and intuitive OS. As if this isn’t enough, Android v4.0 IceCreamSandwich for Galaxy Nexus comes with a facial recognition front end to unlock the phone called FaceUnlock and an improved version of Google + with hangouts.

Galaxy Nexus also has a 5MP camera with autofocus, LED flash, touch focus and face detection and Geo-tagging with the support of A-GPS. It can also capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. The 1.3MP front camera bundled with built-in Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP enhances the usability of video calling functionality. Samsung has also introduced a single motion sweep panorama and the ability to add live effects to the camera, which looks really enjoyable. It comes to be connected at all times with the inclusion of high-speed LTE 700 connectivity, which can gracefully degrade to HSDPA 21Mbps when LTE is not available. It also has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n that enables you to connect to any wi-fi hotspot, as well as, set up a wi-fi hotspot of your own easily. The DLNA connectivity means that you can wirelessly stream 1080p media content to your HD TV. It also features Near Field Communication support, active noise cancellation, accelerometer sensor, proximity sensor and a 3-axis Gyro meter sensor that can be used to many emerging Augmented Reality applications. It is commendable to emphasize that Samsung has given a 17-hours 40 mins talk-time for Galaxy Nexus with a 1750mAh battery, which is beyond incredible.

Conclusion

Everybody tend to fall for the new bloke around the corner, but at some point, people understand the new bloke and the old bloke aren’t so much different after all. That’s what this conclusion will be about. We have started with the assumption that the new bloke around the corner would be better. It is, indeed, better in certain aspects. For instance, LG Spectrum has a better processor, which is eminent by looking at the hardware specifications. In reality, these two configurations would not yield much different results at all. In fact, most of the time, this difference won’t even be visible. Further, Samsung Galaxy Nexus scores very well in certain benchmarks because Android IceCreamSandwich is designed having Samsung Nexus in mind and thus ideally optimized to it. On the other hand, we can safely determine that LG Spectrum does come with a great screen panel that is better than Super AMOLED panel of Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It performs better in still images as well with the 8MP camera. As means of compensation, Samsung Galaxy Nexus has some added features such as barometer sensor and Near Field Communication. Thus, it’s difficult to give out an objective judgment. All we can point out is that both of these handsets differ slightly in performance and, the rest is going to be subjective judgment.