Samsung’s success with its Galaxy S devices — with around 5 million pieces sold — has surely taught some lessons to some manufacturers, including its local rival, LG. Following what Samsung did, LG also looks pretty set to us to impress with … guess what, Android high-end devices.

So which device LG is trusting upon to ramp up its smartphones line-up with a bang. Well, none other than the LG Star, which we saw only recently, rumored to launched with android 2.3 Gingerbread in the Q1 2011. The new leaks of the LG Star have popped up and these really reveal very much we should discuss with our dear readers.

First of all, there is NEW UI — every manufacturer seems to love their signature printed device-wide on their phones, these days even when there is no such need — which it’s being said borrows features from Samsung’s TouchViz UI and HTC Sense (the widgets part of the latter).

As for the update in Specs, one of the new pic highlights ‘HDMI’ printed on one of the ports of LG Star (above pic), making us believe that it will indeed support HDMI, quite obvious though — every high-end android device we are seeing these days sport this.

That apart, there is a new Quadrant score too on the block, of 1759 (above pic), which is impressive and it puts LG Star even beyond the Nexus One and Droid X on the same benchmark. But let’s not over-emphasize it since Quadrant score doesn’t mean too much as it seems. Moreover, LG Star features a dual-core Tegra 2 processor from nVidia which we think would run better when the phone is released (as we’ve heard) with Gingerbread, although the latest screenshots of the testing LG Star device are in Froyo. So expect the score to better itself, unless LG succeeds in slowing the device with its ‘what seems to be’ very deep custom UI.

The LG Star was supposed to be packing in android in its pure form, that is, stock android OS, with minimum customization. But going by the latest pics of the device, it surely has been tweaked a lot, very much like what TouchViz did to Galaxy S. Man, we don’t like this fact very much, since we thought a plain android OS android phone combined with Tegra 2 processor would really rock. Look at Galaxy S now with all those tweaks, the device is damn slow, even on Froyo, and Samsung struggles a lot update it.

Why we are linking LG’s custom UI — which we think will get a name soon — to Samsung’s TouchViz? Well, check the pic with a pulled notification bar (above) where LG has put the 5 shortcuts at the top, a copy of what Samsung’s TouchViz does. Also, the app drawer is represented by the fourth icon on the fixed tray at home, labeled as ‘Menu’, again a replica of TouchViz where Samsung has used the term ‘Applications’.

So, what do you think of yet another solid hardware with solid custom UI atop, even with android 2.3 (as we know!)? let us know in comments.

Via Phandroid







