LG Intuition Review

By Rob Boggan

Sales of smartphones have exploded over the years and there appears to be no slowdown in sight. Tablet sales have also exploded in wake of consumer demand for data consumption increasing daily. With these two portable devices being sales cash cows for the time being, it only makes sense that we’d love to see a smartphone and tablet combined right? Way way ahead of it’s time, the Dell Streak was the first of it’s kind, offering a 5 inch display on top of a completely vanilla (stock) version of Android. Then came the Galaxy Note, the first tablet/smartphone hybrid to actually garner massive success, and attract a pretty solid following in the process. Now we are facing a slew of tablet/smartphone competitors, from just about everyone from HTC, to LG. Speaking of which, LG actually was second to market with a tabletphone, which aims to knock the reigning champion Galaxy Note off its throne and gain some notoriety of its own. Does the LG Intuition have what it takes to dethrone the Galaxy Note? Check out my review of the LG Intuition.

OK, so first things first. Wow this thing is flipping awkward. Not awkward as in “Wow, this is a big phone” awkward, but more like “holy s@*#, they put a screen on a book” awkward. I grabbed the Intuition out of the box and was immediately taken aback by not only the size, but the design of the handset. It literally feels like you’re holding a small hard cover children’s book in your hand, only this book comes equipped with a web browser and camera. Size aside, the handset is crafted almost like one would expect an LG handset to look lately, with a solid black frame and high gloss finish on the front, and a flat plastic carbon fiber design on the back. The external buttons sport a flat finish and match the finish of the rear of the handset itself. At the top of the Intuition rests the charging port, and a button to launch the “Quick Memo” app for easy note taking, and screen shot functionality. Volume buttons are separated and relegated to the side.

I don’t want this to be a comparison piece to the Galaxy Note, but at the same time, in regards to this type of device I feel the bar has been set. With that being said, the battery life is so much worse on the Intuition than the Note it is almost heart breaking. With pretty average use by me (Gmail, heavy Twitter, heavy Facebook, YouTube), I could barely get the battery past 4 hours. This is well below average smartphone battery life and extremely below anything you’d get from a tablet. Add that to the fact that the battery is sealed into the device, and you have a sure fire guarantee that you’ll need to be around an outlet.

Running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the Intuition packs plenty of features to make this device relevant for the coming months and even beyond. One thing that I was a little weirded out by was the fact that this device was the first device I’ve seen that is running ICS and has four touch panel buttons on the front of the phone. Aside from that, the phone ran smooth with no lag or stutter, and we’d have to imagine that was largely in part thanks to the Snapdragon S3 processor inside this puppy.

The Intuition rocks an 8MP camera for taking photos and videos on the back, along with a 1.3MP camera on the front for self portraits and video calls. The cameras were actually one of the bright spots in this device as they work pretty well. The main camera on the back takes pretty solid photos in both outdoor and indoor lighting conditions. With most of the stills that we took, there was no issue of over or under saturation, and while I won’t say that this is the best camera I’ve used on a smartphone, it’s far above average. Within video mode, users can shoot home made vids in either 720 or 1080p and the video turns out well but audio is a different story. Most of the time with videos that we took, the audio sounded a bit like we cupped our hands over the mic or was really quiet. Very weird. Phone calls worked beautifully across Verizon’s LTE network and phone calls sounded clear and crisp across the headset.

All in all, the LG Intuition isn’t a terrible phone by any means but it has a long way to go before it could ever be considered a legit competitor to the tablet phone throne. In fact, With the Galaxy Note II literally days away from launch the Intuition will sit down into 3rd place behind the new Note, and OG Note. Available right now from Verizon Wireless, if you have an extra $199.99 to plunk down, the Intuition may just be the device for you. As for us, we’ll be sitting back waiting on the Note II.