Android Central - The Spectrum is a solid phone for Verizon, but the highly skinned user interface is starting to look a bit cartoonish. The display is a strong positive, but yet again we're left waiting for the promised upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Droid Life - It’s not all bad for the Spectrum though. In fact, if you read all of the bullet points above, we actually rank most of the aspects of the phone pretty high. The camera is acceptable, LTE is always awesome, the screen is absolutely gorgeous, and the battery life isn’t all that shaky. At $199, this phone is at least worth a quick look if you are not quite ready to toss out 3 Benjamins for a smartphone. A third party launcher could rid you of LG’s skin for the most part, and if LG does get it together and update this phone to Ice Cream Sandwich quickly enough, it could be a decent player.
The Verge - The LG Nitro HD succeeds in spite of its UI skin because it has great hardware, a great display, fast LTE speeds, and only a few other phones on its network that can claim the same. Even that phone was a pretty blatant imitation of the Galaxy S II, though, and frankly, I wish LG had stuck with that strategy — the Spectrum’s a much more unique phone, and not in a good way. It works well, and its internal hardware is impressive, but it still has a terrible UI skin, plus ugly buttons, an awful back, crowded ports and a poorly placed speaker. None of those problems can be solved with a root or a launcher app. Considering all that, plus its seriously steep Verizon LTE competition — the Galaxy Nexus, Rezound, and the Droid RAZR, to name a few — I can't think of a single reason to buy the Spectrum.
Evolve - A next-gen Android smartphone or R2-D2? Hard choices. Watch this odd, yet amusing commercial for the new LG Spectrum.
