LG premiered its F Series hardware just before Mobile World Congress this year, but at the time only revealed the Optimus F5 and Optimus F7. The F Series is designed to offer 4G LTE phones at a variety of low price points, and Sprint has chosen to stock an F Series phone not shown during MWC, the Optimus F3.
If you’re familiar with LG’s nomenclature, then you’ll know the F3 model number indicates this is a relatively basic device, and sure enough the spec isn’t the highest you’ll find. However, it does have a few surprises which make it unique on the market. The main difference between it and its peers is the addition of Google TalkBack, an accessibility feature for the visually impaired, where instructions, guidance, and text is all read back to the user. TalkBack comes enabled as standard, making it easy to use right out of the box.
Continuing with this theme is the Accessible Education ID pack, which comes ready to install on the Optimus F3, and provides several educational apps, in addition to simplified web pages with particular themes, all designed to assist students with print disabilities. Finally, the phone’s home button has been modified to provide customizable, multi-colored alerts, to help make sure deaf users don’t miss notifications.
Otherwise, the Optimus F3 is a regular smartphone. It has a 4-inch IPS touchscreen with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel camera, and of course, 4G LTE connectivity. The phone also comes with NFC, a video call camera, a microSD card slot to add to the 4GB of internal memory, Wi-Fi Direct, and it runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. LG has also added a few of its own software tweaks, including Q Translator, QuickMemo, and Quiet Mode.
Sprint has priced the Optimus F3 at $30, but only after a $50 mail-in rebate, plus a two-year contract. A silver and a purple version will go on sale on June 14 through Sprint’s online store, while retail outlets will be getting the phone during the summer.
