The Battery

LG says that the NOVA screen on the Optimus Black "reduces power consumption by 50 percent during general indoor use compared to a conventional LCD [display]." Though we could not perform formal tests on the Optimus's 1500mAh battery, its battery burn rate during my testing looked promising. I charged the battery completely, and then commenced testing--which involved using various aspects of the phone, including battery-intensive tasks like HD video viewing and shooting video. The testing regimen included an overnight of pure standby time as well. But 24 hours later, I still had 63 percent of the battery left. Relative to many other smartphones I've tested, that's very good.

Call Quality

To test the phone's voice-calling chops, I placed several calls to land lines from a busy street. The people I called said that my voice was loud enough, but sounded a little bit remote and hollow. The voice I heard coming from the ear speaker on the Optimus wasn't quite loud enough even with the volume cranked up. The phone's noise cancellation seemed to work well, however; the people I called said that they could hear the traffic noise (which was moderately loud to me) only slightly and that the phone seemed to be separating that noise from the sound of my voice and suppressing it.

Bottom Line