LG Optimus 7Q

Telecom recently launched the LG Optimus 7Q as a contender to HTC’s 7 Trophy, Vodafone’s top Windows Phone 7 (WP7) handset.

The Optimus has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, on which I could happily write a few hundred words. This is the main area where the 7Q scores over the touchscreen-only Trophy. However, the 7Q also comes with a few particularly useful pre-installed applications.

There’s Panorama Shot, which auto-matically take five photographs in a row to create one panoramic image, PlayTo, which streams music and video from the phone’s 16GB memory to another device via a Wi-Fi connection, and ScanSearch, which uses Google to help you find everything from banks to shopping malls within a 50km radius. Interesting, considering the phone’s default internet search engine is Microsoft’s Bing.

Last year, when I first used the Music & Videos application in WP7, I thought it was good but I had little to compare it to. Now, having extensively used the Android media player on the Motorola Milestone, I realise just how good WP7’s media player is.

The other function worth raving about is the calendar which automatically syncs with your Hotmail or Windows Live account. Any appointments you enter on the phone appear in your online account, and vice versa.

I do have a few small beefs with Windows Phone 7, which I expect Microsoft will fix when it releases its next free update for the operating system. Notably, you can’t select an MP3 as a ringtone, even though many basic phones have had that option for years.

The last update added copy and paste of text, which was absent from the initial WP7 release.

Altogether, the Optimus 7Q is a strong smartphone; and another chance for WP7 to win over the audience it so desperately needs to carve out a niche in the market.