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LG's G2X is the American version of the Optimus 2X, which has already been released in Europe. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Along with the Motorola Atrix, LG’s G2X is one of the first dual-core smartphones powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor to hit the market. Our first impression after getting our hands on it: Two cores really are better than one.

As soon as we picked the phone up and started scrolling through the app menus, the phone’s speed was immediately noticeable. Switching back and forth between different menu screens was speedier than ever. Playing the Halo-like pre-loaded app “Nova” was a super smooth experience, as the game ran with minimal choppiness while handling some fairly intense animations.

What’s worrisome, however, is the relatively small amount of RAM that comes in the G2X. With such a powerful processor under the hood, we’re a bit surprised the phone only comes with 512 MB of RAM installed. That might not prove to be enough for future resource-hungry apps and games. For now though, the phone ran the games we played like a charm.

Instead of rolling its own custom user interface, LG went with a stock version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) for the G2X. Frankly, not having to deal with another manufacturer’s skin is a big plus for us: Interfaces like HTC’s Sense or Motoblur just feel chunky compared to the bare-bones version of the OS. And although it’s not running the latest version of Android (Gingerbread) quite yet, it’s slated to receive the OS update sometime this summer.

The 4-inch capacitive touch screen displays color brilliantly, and the 8-megapixel back facing camera takes some of the best camera phone shots we’ve seen yet (not to mention that 8 megapixels is one of the highest smartphone camera resolutions on the market now). A 1.3-megapixel front facing camera comes ready for video chat using T-Mobile’s QikTM app.

HDMI output on the phone allows you to connect it to a flatscreen, so you can watch 1080p video from your phone. The camcorder also supports 1080p video recording, and DLNA means wireless playback on compatible devices.

The phone comes with 8 GB of internal storage (a relatively small amount if you’ve got a big music library), upgradable to 32 GB via microSD card slot.

An interesting quirk: the phone’s power button is on the right-hand side of the top edge. If you’re right handed like I am, it can be a bit disorienting to reach for a button on the left-hand side that just isn’t there.

T-Mobile’s network performance on the phone was adequate, though left us wanting. T-Mobile markets its HSPA+ as “4G” — a term which has grown murkier in the recent past — with “theoretical peak download speeds reaching 21 Mbps and peak upload speeds of up to 5.7 Mbps.” Our average over two days of testing in the San Francisco Bay Area was significantly less than that optimistic “theoretical peak,” with download speeds in the 3.5 to 5.5 Mbps range, and upload speeds anywhere from 0.2 Mbps to 1.8 Mbps. 4G coverage was spotty at best outside of San Francisco proper, and the phone dropped two of the ten or so calls I made over the weekend.

Dual-core processors are hot this year. Motorola’s Atrix was the first to drop in February, and HTC’s dual-core Sensation 4G is scheduled for a mid-May release in the U.K. And as recently as last week, reports suggest that Samsung may produce a dual-core smartphone offering by next year.

Will the dual-core trend continue? If the speed of the LG G2X is any indication, we sure think so.

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