LG Intuition 4G LTE review

The Intuition sports the LG Optimus Skin on top of Android's 4.0.4: Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, which feels much less intrusive than the similar offerings from other manufacturers, like the HTC Sense interface. As such, it also offers less functionality on top of Ice Cream Sandwich, but we're not lamenting the loss of features we rarely use. The Optimus Skin adds some new widgets, functions, and 3D animations while you're in the home screens.

Unfortunately, the system won't let you turn the device horizontally during home screen functions, which is peculiar given the tablet-esque design. It might be considered a minor nitpick by some, but when you're touting the usage of your device to replace a tablet, it seems like you'd want to emulate that experience as closely as possible.

Otherwise, there are a lot of personalization options presented here, both in the Optimus Skin and in the standard ICS package. It won't take you long before you customize it to your liking. In a nifty addition, the phone supports Near Field Communication, and comes with two stickers containing embedded NFC chips that you can place at home or at work. You can set the phone to read these tags, and instantly set your phone to the state you want: a completely different home screen layout, different sound settings, and so on. While not a necessity, it's a nifty "Gee whiz!" feature.

The design of the device is large enough to have required the inclusion of a "One-handed keyboard" feature, which is supposed to allow you to swipe the keyboard to the left or to the right, allowing you to type with one handed, or one thumb. But what proved to be more frustrating than actually typing with one hand / thumb was swiping the keyboard in the first place. It took nearly a dozen swipes for us to get the keyboard to move, as it kept thinking we were trying to type something.

Oddly, the phone comes with a "Rubberdium" stylus that matches the design of the device. Nice, but there's absolutely nowhere to put it. It'll be the very first thing you lose within moments of opening the box. It's not necessary for input, so it's puzzling as to why LG even included it in the first place.