At the upper end of LG's smartphone roadmap sits the L9, It's bigger than the L3II and the L5II but also sports a great build quality, has acres of features and plenty of muscle under its well-appointed hood.

Size does matter
Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the L9 is its size. Sporting a 4.7" IPS display, the L9's screen had great viewing angles and was sufficiently bright to be viewable outdoors. Being a qHD display also meant the display was great for viewing photos.

Speaking of photos, the L9's camera performed well in daylight conditions but performance dropped in low light conditions such as dusk or dawn or dim rooms. That said, its 5 megapixel camera was pretty feature laden, with autofocus, touch focus, a 15x digital zoom, face tracking and a panorama mode. There was also a bunch of custom settings ranging different scene modes, ISO options, white balance settings, some lame picture effects.

Specs n Stuff
In terms of day to day use, the L9 managed to power its way through a full day and a half before demanding a connection its bundled charger.

This was largely due to its Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery and the CPU were a pretty energy efficient combo.

Where other smartphone vendors have tended to ladle copious amounts of customisations on top of Android, LG's UI felt pretty transparent and minimal. The upshot of this is that in use, the L9 was a pretty fluid and snappy with few to no lags.

In terms of connectivity and sensors, about the only thing missing on the L9 was a kitchen sink. All the goodies we've come to expect on a high end smartphone such as NFC, WiFiDirect, GPS, Compass, FM radio were all present and accounted for.

Verdict
Given its larger size and feature packed spec, I was also pleasantly surprised by just how lightweight and thin it was in the hand. This said, the L9 was also reassuringly solid with minimal flex, lacking that Tupperware feel of similarly specc'd devices. With plenty of features, a decent screen the L9 is a good choice for power users on a budget.

L9 specs
Size: 122 x 64 x 9.2 mm
Display: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 480 x 800 pixels, (4.7")
OS: Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, LG Optimus UI 3.0
Camera (rear): 5 MP
Camera (front): VGA
Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA, 3G cellular, Bluetooth v3.0
GPS
4GB of built-in storage expandable via a microSD slot
microUSB port
NFC