Gadgetory

the world of mobile technology is one of the fiercest competitive markets ever in the quest to stand out from the pack some companies make bold moves and succeed brilliantly others are more meek and fade into the unexceptional background still others fill the space between innovating once and then endlessly iterating over and over again then there are those that just screw it all up thanks to choices that are either too bold too meek or just plain old absolutely insane these are the products that fall flat on their face they're not to be mocked but the lessons they teach should certainly be remembered and that's why we're here I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is episode 3 of worst gadgets ever featuring the LG intuition aka the optimist view we usually don't do worst ever episodes on devices still offered for sale but we made an exception in this case not to bash LG but more so to show how far it's come in such a short time we are no stranger to the optimist view our own Brandon minimun unboxed its Verizon variant the LG intuition and rendered his first impressions six months ago it started like this whoa this thing is huge this thing is monstrous is this really a phone this is a joke and things never really got better from there here's the deal with the optimist view it was the first attempt by a mainstream manufacturer to compete with Samsung's Galaxy Note series of smartphone tablet hybrids but where Samsung maintained the classic dimensions of a smart phone when scaling up LG didn't with its four to three aspect ratio the optimist view looks a lot more like a roof shingle or a coaster than a smartphone awkward is the word of the day when it comes to the view it's awkward to hold it's awkward to talk on it's awkward to adjust the screen ratio every time you open an app it's even awkward to charge because of the top mounted and recessed USB port the thing is just too weird to use properly the view probably would have done better if it had been marketed as a Minh tablet using the view in public we were struck by how many double takes we didn't get because this thing actually looks like a tablet in the hand because you're obscuring the bottom half of it with your palms and as a tablet it's hardware really isn't too bad the wide 5-inch screen allows for a spacious software keyboard and it's IPS LCD panel actually looks quite nice the wide body also gives you more icon room in the dock and the bonus of having both a multitasking button and a menu button in the capacitive route down below but these slight advantages aren't enough to overcome the sheer clumsiness of a device shaped more like a cocktail napkin than a phone that's our first take away from the optimist view and it's a familiar one bold choices are good but being different just for the sake of being different just doesn't work we know LG can build solid phablet hardware we see it in the Optimus G pro then we're glad to see the company's more conventional efforts in fact that's what the view should have been in the future when pants are designed differently you might be able to fit this in your pockets later but you can't comfortably fit it in your pocket now unfortunately it doesn't get much better on the software side while we enjoy LG's custom skin on other devices like the Optimus G we primarily enjoy it on those phones because it's responsive that's not the case on the intuition we've got here despite the normally speedy dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 the interface lags sometimes badly closing any app usually means we're waiting sometimes awhile for the home screen to reload once in a while that's not too bad but it happens quite often on the intuition and we're not sure why there's also the question of the stylus features LG has built in a hardware button so you can jump right into quick memo that's a feature that's much easier to use with a stylus than with a fingertip and LG has included one in the box but it's a capacitive stylus it reminds us of the Samsung C pen which we hated but we might have been able to live with that if it had somewhere to live on the device sadly it doesn't there's no silo on the optimist view so you need to carry the stylus separate that's ridiculous and it brings us to our second takeaway don't integrate half-baked features if you're going to provide stylus support make sure it's more than just a capacitive pen and make sure it can slot neatly into the device and while we're talking takeaways in software let's jump right into number three support your phone's properly after release we've only seen one software update for the intuition so far not to bring jellybean or anything good like that but primarily to rearrange the bloatware you didn't want on the phone in the first place and that update hasn't exactly been getting the best reviews from users with some reporting that the update trashed their camera calendar and email apps nice we could talk about the awful raspy speaker phone or the subpar battery life but let's stop there the view and the intuition aren't entirely worthless there are some folks out there who obviously really value this device usually due to tablet centric features like ear eating or web browsing both of which the phone does quite nicely but it hasn't been marketed or positioned properly by LG and it's been practically ignored by Verizon for the duration of the time it's been offered it feels like this was a hobby project inside LG someone thought how can we differentiate ourselves and the company decided to do it via form factor but then somebody else had a better idea in the Optimus G and Optimus G pro and the view view - and intuition were relegated to the redheaded stepchild status that maybe they always deserved this phone like any device has its small following of hardcore fans and as a mini tablet once again it does ok but despite the bones we try to throw it on the hole we think it's a bold experiment that ultimately failed an experiment that the rest of the industry can hopefully learn from in which LG already looks to be correcting we're much more excited about the company's future products than its past ones that is as long as there's no view 3 on the horizon that's going to do it for episode 3 of worst gadgets ever thank you for watching and if you enjoyed the video throw us a thumbs up leave a comment if you have something to say follow us on our various social media channels subscribe here on YouTube and stay tuned for more thanks again for watching we'll see you next time you