This is a sponsored post, commissioned by The Tech Kaiju. I acknowledge that I have received some form of compensation for this post. However, I further admit that this compensation has NOT affected my opinion nor judgement of the units that were lent to me.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me start by saying that I managed to get my hands on review units of the Ninetology U9X1 and the LG Optimus G Pro for one week. I picked them up last week and will be reviewing them as I go along. Right now they’ve been in my hand for slightly over 24 hours, and active for perhaps a little under that. So what can you expect?

For the spec sheet, here’s the Ninetology U9X1 and the LG Optimus G Pro, provided by CNet Asia. As you can tell, I’m not big on specs. What I’m big on is how well the phone performs and how well it fits into my lifestyle.

So how’s the initial impressions so far?

For both phones:

• OMG THEY ARE SO LIGHT!
  In comparison to my Sony Xperia Pro, both the U9X1 AND the LG Optimus feel much lighter. In fact, they feel almost weightless. Which leads me to my second point:
• Terrified of dropping them
  Anyone who knows me knows I’m pretty much butterfingers, which is why durability is a very big thing for me. So far I’ve not dropped the phones, and I hope that never changes.
• They are both black
  I’m sorry, but I’m the kind of person who wants my phone to be COLOURFUL. I don’t really like black or white phones, at least not for myself.
• FAST
  Joel is showing his age, so these two phones which are still quite new, are very fast in comparison.

For the LG Optimus:

• It is HUGE!
  The LG Optimus dwarfs the U9X1, which means it cannot go into my pocket. It also means that the power button makes more sense on the side than it does on the top. Thanks to its size, I’ve resorted to carrying it around in a tiny bag instead of throwing it into my pocket.
• It’s fairly heavily-skinned and missing quite a few “must have apps”
  I’m surprised that it didn’t come with Facebook and Twitter preinstalled, but on another note, I’m glad it didn’t.
• The swiping keyboard is pretty functional
  It isn’t going to blow Swype or Swiftkey out of the water, but it does its job well.
• Camera is decent
  The photos I took looked a little blurry till I realised I forgot to switch on the “Intelligent Auto” setting

For the U9X1

• Easy in the hand
  Though it’s just as light. It fits better in my pocket though, and it took to my Pebble and bluetooth headset quite easily.
• WHY ARE THE BUTTONS ON THE SIDE?
  Let’s just saw that I switched on the phone by accident when trying to open the back cover. This happened almost every single time.
• Camera does horribly at macro shots
  While the camera’s quite decent, it fails completely at taking close up shots when the flash is turned off. I don’t know why. The camera does pretty well if I focus it, switch off the flash and then take the shot, but if I switch off the flash, touch to focus and then attempt to take the photo, it becomes blurry.

Need to sleep, so will write more tomorrow. 🙂