LG seems to be having a lot of firsts in the mobile phone industry this year. They were the first phone manufacturer to announce a dual core smartphone in the form of the Optimus 2X, as well as the first to produce a 3D enabled tablet. LG have also extended this 3D technology to their smartphones with the latest LG Optimus 3D, which will be the first phone to come with 3D technology included.

Unlike the Optimus Pad, the LG Optimus 3D does not require 3D glasses to function properly. Instead the phone operates on layered screens that give a slightly less effective 3D experience than the Optimus 3D's tablet cousin. However, there are not many people who would relish the thought of having to wear glasses just to operate their phone and if the technology catches on with the Optimus 3D this could become a more common feature in future devices.

The Optimus 3D comes with a 4.3" 3D enabled LCD capacitive screen with 16 million colors and a high resolution of 480 x 800. The screen provides its 3D effect through something called a "parallax barrier", an extra layer of visual information on top of the screen. Although this can work without glasses, the downside of this method is that you have to position the phone at certain angles for the 3D effect to be achieved. The Optimus 3D comes with a new interface, the LG 3D UI, which is placed over Google Android 2.2 (Froyo). Android will be upgradable to Gingerbread, and the Optimus 3D is powered by dual core 1GHz processors and PowerVR graphics acceleration.

The 3D features are not just limited to the phone's interface as there is plenty of 3 dimensional fun to be had with the phone's camera as well. The twin 5 megapixel cameras, which include an LED flash and features such as geo-tagging, provide you with the ability to capture stereoscopic images. You can also record 3D videos with the camera with 720p quality available. For recording standard 2D videos the Optimus 3D can provide a higher quality of 1080p. With an HDMI port and DLNA enabled Wi-Fi you enjoy recorded videos through the comfort of your home TV.

The Optimus 3D has a great online presence with 3G and Wi-Fi both on offer. The Optimus 3D comes with YouTube support and Adobe Flash 10.1 so that you can enjoy streaming videos from online. The phone also supports email clients such as Gmail and instant messaging services such as Google Talk, and comes with superb social networking integration for popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There are also plenty of entertainment options available with excellent music and video playback, an FM radio, a wealth of games and apps available from Android Market and up to 40GB of storage space in conjunction with microSD.

The LG Optimus 3D is the first smartphone to try and incorporate 3D technology and there are already people accusing it of being little more than a gimmick. While it is true that the technology may not be quite as it should be just yet it is still an innovative step in the evolution of smartphones. It should be remembered that having a camera or the ability to play music on a phone were once considered to be little more than gimmicks but have now become standard features of virtually all handsets. We will just have to wait and see if LG manage to do the same with 3D.