LG DoublePlay review

Innovative phone with two screens falls flat in daily use

LG DoublePlay
Double the keyboard, double the displays

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LG doubleplay

The DoublePlay offers just a 5MP camera, and the image quality isn't great. Snap a photo, and the DoublePlay produces a slightly blurred image lacking in color and detail. Pictures taken in outdoor sunlight look quite a deal better than inside, but neither were worth writing home about.

Bring the camera inside and the colors tend to look washed out and a bit dim. That's a problem when there are so many adequate cameras on smart phones - and the rift will just deepen now that phones like the HTC Titan II on the horizon.

Sunlight

Bright outdoor scenes looked better than indoor photos, but they still weren't fantastic.

LG doubleplay

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Gameboard

Indoor shots, even with background lighting, looked dim and grey.

LG doubleplay

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People

Some outdoor shots produced heavy noise - though at least part of this could be racked up to temperamental ultra-bright shooting conditions.

LG doubleplay

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The LG DoublePlay has surprisingly few camera options on the software side. The scenes modes are paltry – basically, a few indoor and outdoor settings but nothing that made a huge difference.

Scenes mode provide a negligible value beyond the basic auto setting. There wasn't a huge difference between the auto mode and the sunlight mode for outdoor shots.

LG doubleplay

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Fortunately, the shutter speed is reasonable. On the DoublePlay, the shutter is responsive and clicks almost instantly. Switching between modes is also faster than expected, which is helpful when you want to quickly switch over to video mode.

You can't tap the screen to focus on a subject, but you can enable a face tracking mode. There is also a Macro Focus mode (but not a Macro Scene mode which adjusts the focus and other settings).

John Brandon
Contributor

John Brandon has covered gadgets and cars for the past 12 years having published over 12,000 articles and tested nearly 8,000 products. He's nothing if not prolific. Before starting his writing career, he led an Information Design practice at a large consumer electronics retailer in the US. His hobbies include deep sea exploration, complaining about the weather, and engineering a vast multiverse conspiracy.