Techcitement Review: The LG Marquee Disappoints

Last time I wrote an opinion piece, I shared some of my thoughts about the little LG Optimus S. Or, more specifically, why I appreciate it more than the bigger and beefier Superphones from Sprint.

I praised LG for realizing that a budget handset doesn’t need to equal a poor user experience. The original Optimus may not have had the most impressive specs on paper, but LG decided not to skimp on the GPU. And honestly, that makes all the difference in the world.

Because the GPU is the part directly responsible for how quickly the display responds, the lower-end hardware of the original Optimus actually offers a buttery-smooth experience that was just as fluid as the bigger, badder (more expensiver?) phones.

In fact, about a year ago I decided to prove my point by conducting a little test of my own, placing the Optimus S (free with a contract at the time) against the HTC EVO 4G (the flagship product at the time, with a price tag of $199), running the same OpenGL graphics tests.

Surprisingly, the little LG managed to not only hold its own, but even outperform the EVO in frames per second. And because it had a smaller display and energy efficient CPU, the battery easily outlasted other Android devices. All this for a phone that cost as much as a standard feature phone (even Asurion’s replacement insurance treated it like a feature phone, at only a $50 deductible instead of the $100 they charge for Smartphones).

On the left: HTC EVO 4G scoring 51.6 frames per second. On the right: LG Optimus S with a surprising 65 fps.

That’s not to say the Optimus was without fault. The CPU is not one of the ones supported by Adobe Flash, the internal memory is painfully small, and the camera produces rather weak images. It would also be really nice to have a front facing camera, and although this is not considered a necessity, I recognize that video chat is something the flagship phones offer that this one doesn’t.

Now you may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with the LG Marquee.

Well, as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to hear about the Marquee coming to Sprint. The Marquee is actually a branded variant of the LG Optimus Black, a higher-end device from LG that addresses all of my concerns about the original Optimus. LG also threw in their new NOVA display, which claims to be bright enough to be visible in direct sunlight. Nice.

I was literally counting down the days until it was released, calling Sprint every now and then to verify the date and that it was compatible with my plan without additional fees (SERO-P, no 4G). But the week it was supposed to come out, none of the local stores had one in stock for me to see. Apparently busy preparing for the iPhone 4s, many of them weren’t even aware of a new LG device. Preferring to see it in person before ordering, I decided to wait and look for reviews from other users online.

And that’s when my heart sank. Early adopters didn’t sing praises as they did with  the Optimus S, but rather they returned the phone for all sorts of problems, including sudden dropped signals to batteries draining faster than they could charge to laggy display responses.

This was dissapointing to hear after the glowing reviews of the European Optimus Black as well my experience with the original Optimus. My first guess is that there is some sort of software bug at play here, causing the radio to have trouble negotiating towers, which explains the sudden dropped signal and the significant battery drain. It might even explain the occasional unresponsive screen because the processor is busy trying to figure out the signal problem. A software fix might come in an update, but again this is just a theory.

This morning, I stopped into a local Sprint store again after confirming that they did, in fact, have a demo Marquee on display. I didn’t notice any immediate signal problems (but again, this was in a Sprint store), and I’ll admit that the NOVA display is pretty bright and crisp.

However, I’m not impressed by the user experience. In fact, the Marquee appears to be the complete opposite of the Optimus S. While the Optimus is unsuspecting on the outside yet sporting impressive performance, the Marquee aims to impress externally, but falls short of delivering the high end experience I was expecting.

After seeing it in person, I’m not certain a software update will fix the experience. I’m under the impression that the higher resolution display is too taxing on the GPU now, causing it to stutter and slow down. It would appear my praise for LG was premature, perhaps the winning combination in the Optimus S was a fluke?

Interesting to note that LG’s stock has been dropping lately as well. Apparently investors are having rather similar second thoughts about the company and their future.