The LG Optimus 2X had been leaked around the internet for a couple of months under the name of the LG Star and looked set to be one of the most promising new handsets of 2011. The Optimus 2X offers some pretty impressive hardware features and most noticeably comes with a dual core processor, which is no doubt the reason behind the 2X moniker.

The Optimus 2X will ship with Android Froyo (2.2) but is upgradable to the latest Gingerbread (2.3), which has just been introduced on the new Nexus S Google Phone. While many had assumed that the Nexus S would be the first handset to introduce the dual core processor to mobile phones this was not the case and so the honour falls on LG’s latest flagship. The NVidia Tegra 2 chip should offer smoother web browsing and virtually no screen lag when multitasking.

Joining the ranks of the Nexus S and the earlier Samsung Galaxy S the new Optimus 2X comes with a very spacious 4″ capacitive screen, featuring WVGA resolution and over 16 million colours. From what has been made available so far this seems to be a very impressive display, which will easily compete with the market leaders. The Optimus 2X also comes with a Gyro sensor, which works in a similar manner to an accelerometer but opens up all dimensions for gesture control. Rather than just being able to turn from portrait to landscape this Gyro sensor will allow you to turn the phone in any direction to provide some sort of functionality and will be most likely be put to best use with a whole barrage of games and apps.

The LG Optimus 2X comes up trumps compared to its main rivals in the camera department with its 8-megapixel camera, which comes with an unparalleled 1080p HD video recorder. There is also a secondary front facing camera for video calling which is 1.3 megapixels (compared to the standard VGA that is usually offered). With HDMI you can also output 720p video directly to your TV to enjoy a more cinematic experience and with 8GB internal storage and a further 32GB available through microSD there is plenty of room for budding movie directors to play around with.

As an Android handset the Optimus 2X also comes with excellent support for a host of Google features including Google Search, Google Talk, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube. There is also excellent social networking integration for the likes of Facebook and Twitter and other messaging options available through email and threaded SMS.

For the past few months the phone industry has been dominated by the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S and while it is too early to tell regarding the latest Nexus S it seems that the LG Optimus 2X is the most likely contender for pushing itself to the top of the smartphone market as the must have phone of 2011.