LG Optimus L3 II review

The LG Optimus L3 II is one of the cheapest smartphones around. It’s the most basic model of LG’s inexpensive Optimus L range and you can get it from just £90 SIM-free. Although it's cheap, it runs an up-to-date version of Android, 4.1.2 Jellybean.
It’s quite short and stocky, and its bulk makes it feel much heavier than its 107g weight. We didn’t mind this, though, as the extra heft makes it feel more durable and better made than its flimsy, plastic pop-off back might suggest. Its curved corners make it very easy to hold, too, and it’s small enough to use comfortably with one hand.

It’s not the fastest smartphone we’ve ever seen and we experienced a slight jerkiness when scrolling through its various menu options and when we opened up apps. It’s certainly slower than what we’d normally expect from a 1GHz single-core processor, and it showed in our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks. It completed the test in 2,306ms, which is quite sluggish compared to most other budget phones.
It’s not particularly good for playing 3D games either, as we couldn’t even install our usual 3DMark graphics benchmark tests. It will still run games like Temple Run 2 and Angry Birds, but anything more taxing is likely to produce a significant slowdown in frame rate.

The Optimus L3 II's 3.2in screen also made web browsing quite frustrating, as it only has a tiny 320x240 resolution. We had to zoom right in on desktop web pages to make the text legible, and even then there was a slight delay in the text becoming clear enough to read from its mass of blurry pixels. Zipping through image-heavy pages wasn’t one of its strong suites either, but at least its responsive touchscreen alleviated the pain a little with smooth pinch-zooming and finger-scrolling gestures.
However, the low resolution also means using standard Android apps isn't as comfortable as it could be. For example, reading email or looking at the calendar, isn't as good as on phones with higher resolutions.

The screen’s overall image quality is fairly average. Solid blacks weren’t particularly deep and colours lacked the rich vibrancy of slightly more expensive phones. It also had fairly low contrast, but flaws like these are easily forgiven considering the L3 II’s price.
With such a small screen to power, we had hoped this might translate into a longer battery life, but its 1,540mAh battery lasted just 5 hours and 58 minutes in our video playback test with the screen set to half brightness. This would be a poor score for any phone, even at this price, and we’ve seen other budget handsets last over 11 hours under the same conditions.
Typing was more problematic. With so little space available, the keys felt a little cramped. We were still able to type relatively accurately, but typing at speed produced a lot of mistakes. We liked the main layout of the keyboard, though, as we didn’t have to access a second keyboard layout to get numbers or different types of punctuation; instead, just hold the relevant letter key down to access the number or punctuation character you want.

LG hasn’t made too many alterations to the operating system, but we wouldn’t expect much customisation at this price. Besides, stock Android is so good that customisations can often ruin the entire experience. There are five home screens and its drop-down quick setting buttons can be rearranged and customised to your liking, but strangely this doesn’t include its main settings. Instead, it’s relegated to a tiny button below the brightness settings, which is much less obvious.
The L3 II’s 3.2-megapixel camera was equally disappointing. Even in bright sunshine, our outdoor shots came out looking quite cool and dull, and there were great swathes of each photo where the pixels blurred together. It fared better indoors, but any increased sharpness soon dulled when it tried to cope with lower lighting conditions. Recording video was equally blurry, but we were pleased to see that its voice recognition feature worked without a hitch, allowing us to take photos with our voice instead of having to hit the on-screen shutter button.
There's no denying that the LG Optimus L3 II is very cheap. At just £90 SIM-free, it's one of the cheapest phones that we've ever seen. However, we'd suggest caution, as the small screen size, low resolution and sluggish processor all count against this smartphone. Spend a little bit more money and you can get a much better smartphone, such as the Budget Buy-winning Huawei Ascend G510.

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Samsung Galaxy Young review

The Galaxy Young is one of the cheapest Android phones we've seen. At £90 on O2 prepay, it's not quite as much of a bargain as the ZTE Kis, which is currently £45 on Virgin prepay from Argos, but it's certainly the cheapest phone we've seen SIM-free.

You get a good-looking phone for your money, which feels well made. We like the soft-touch plastic on the rear, which is similar to that of the Galaxy S3 and S4, and the silver sides manage to make the phone look classy rather than tacky. The Young is a compact handset, with a small 3.3in screen, but is a relatively chunky 12mm thick. We liked the extra thickness, as it meant we could keep a firm grip on the handset despite its small width and height.

Like many budget phones, the Young has a 320x480-pixel screen. For Android to look its razor-sharp best we like to see a minimum of 480x800 pixels, and the Galaxy Young's text is slightly on the blurry side. There's also a significant amount of grain, but the screen is certainly usable.

The Young runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. We’re used to the latest versions of Android running as smooth as silk, and the operating system runs well on the Galaxy Young - at least on the surface. The app tray comes up quickly and the animation to flick between app trays is smooth, but it's when you open an app that the limitations of the phone's single-core 1GHz processor start to show.
In the Chrome web browser, the BBC News website took nine seconds to render, while most dual-core smartphones can render the page in five. Scrolling around pages is far jerkier than we're used to, and there's a second or so delay between tapping in the address box and the keyboard appearing. The Maps app is also especially slow, especially when new tiles are loading, which makes scrolling around a chore.
The slow performance is backed up the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark; the phone completed the test in a very slow 3,203ms. The phone's slow speed does give it one particular advantage; good battery life. In our continuous video playback test, we saw nearly nine hours from the Young's 1,300mAh battery.
Core phone functions such as messaging are less of a problem. There is a bit of a delay between pressing a key on the on-screen keyboard and the letter appearing, but accurate typing is helped by the keyboard's sensible design; each key is small but spaced far apart from the others, so fat fingers don’t struggle with the screen's low resolution.

We were impressed with the phone's five-megapixel camera, which managed to resolve a surprising amount of detail from its three megapixels in outdoor shots, and compared favourably with the Samsung Galaxy S3's camera, which we tend to use for our reference. However, like the S3, the Galaxy Young struggles with exposure in bright conditions, meaning that the sky is more likely to be a bleached-out white than something with texture and clouds. Photos taken in low light show plenty of noise, but again, are reasonably impressive considering the phone's low price.

Not bad on the detail front, but the camera struggles with exposure in bright conditions
The phone's slow speed does give it one particular advantage; good battery life. In our continuous video playback test, we saw nearly nine hours from the Young's 1,300mAh battery.
It's difficult to rate the Galaxy Young. On the one hand, you won’t find a fully-featured Android 4.1 phone for less SIM-free. On the other, it's slow to the point of frustration at times. We'd recommend picking your carrier in advance, then buying a better handset with a prepay subsidy, such as the great-value Vodafone Smart III.

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