MWC 2011 Live: LG Optimus Pad (T-Mobile G-Pad) Hands-on Preview

Tweet

This year’s Mobile World Congress is in full swing and we have already seen a bunch of very impressive devices including the Galaxy S 2, the cheap Galaxy family (and I don’t mean that in the wrong way), the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and its Android brethren. Therefore it was just a matter of time until we handled LG’s new Android devices that came over at MWC 2011.

As you already know LG launched officially the LG Optimus 2X and the Optimus Black, two handsets we’ve already seen at CES, and, most importantly, the LG Optimus 3D and the LG Optimus Pad, which you might already know as the T-Mobile G-Slate.

The LG Optimus Pad is a 8.9-inch Android tablet that’s simply surprising, in a very pleasant way. I crossed Hall 8 from Samsung’s booth to LG’s booth with absolutely no expectation regarding the Pad. I have already been impressed by the Honeycomb-running Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Galaxy Tab 2) that I wasn’t really expecting anything better from its South Korean rival.

But by Jove, the Optimus Pad, and I really mean that, with every bone of my iPad-owning figure. The device responds instantly to your commands and Honeycomb looks almost unchanged from the version I saw on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the one we saw on the Motorola Xoom during the official presentation.

The Optimus Pad, despite being a little smaller than the iPad (see comparison images in the gallery below) has about the same weight. But inside you’ll find a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 Cortex-A9 dual-core CPU, 32GB of memory, two cameras, a 3D stereoscopic one on the back (basically 2 x 5-megapixel shooters) on the back and a 2-megapixel front-facing one, 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, support for HD video playback, 3D and HD video recording and Android 3.0 Honeycomb under the hood. Just as you expect there are no hardware buttons to deal with, and the home screen is pretty intuitive. You’ll be navigating back and forth through menus and widgets in no time, and without getting lost.

As a fun fact when looking over the settings of the device we discovered the Tab believes it’s a tablet, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 which thinks it’s a phone, and it certainly acts up as just like a tablet.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the first iPad contender and there has been much controversy regarding Tab sales. The Tab 10.1 will definitely sell even better, and so will the Motorola Xoom. But if LG really means business, and puts some elbow grease in marketing the Optimus Pad then I think we could be looking at a great iPad 2 alternative. Provided that the price is also right, of course! As for pricing and launch dates, well, we don’t have those details for you yet.

Click here to catch up with all our MWC 2011 Coverage