LG GW620 review, Price, pictures, Details, model specifications
LG are not quite making Android headlines. Catching up with local rivals Samsung is obviously not the first thing on their mind. Not to mention that HTC are desperately out of reach. Alright, Android is not LG’s pet project but they’re not completely droid-phobic either.
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The company’s first Android smartphone is a good example of that. Released without much notice, it doesn’t put anything new on the table. The LG GW620 wasn’t meant to anyway. It stays focused on social networking and gives the company’s loyal users a taste of Android.
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Those who tried and liked the Cookie (in all shapes and flavors) are treated to a more substantial meal. On the LG GW620, Android is in a way served in dumb phone guise – to make loyal users feel at home and give the device some background and identity.
Good looks and friendly feel, the GW620 has the right feature pack to get you started on Android. It’s a midrange device for the young, and some of its shortcomings should be easy to forgive. Or shall we say – less noticeable from where the Cookie stands. The touchscreen should’ve been capacitive perhaps. And the Android version 1.5 must’ve made a lot more sense at launch (a couple of months back) than it does now.
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That aside, the LG GW620 is still a solid midrange offer – especially for upgraders coming from a feature phone. Reasonably priced and quite likely to be carrier-supported, the GW620 will treat users to a very practical side-sliding QWERTY keyboard, fast data support, Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth. There’s also an inbuilt GPS receiver, a digital compass and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera.
Key features:
- Affordable and easy to use touchscreen phone
- Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G (with HSDPA) support
- 3″ resistive touchscreen of HVGA resolution
- Friendly five-row slide-out QWERTY keyboard
- Android OS v1.5
- Accelerometer for auto screen rotate
- 5 megapixel autofocus camera
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver, digital compass
- Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
- 150 MB internal memory
- Hot-swappable microSD card slot (supporting card with capacity of up to 16GB)
- Standard microUSB port and Mass Storage mode
- Social networking service integration
- Dedicated music player key
- Office document viewer
- DivX/XviD video support
- Stereo FM radio
Main disadvantages:
- Android OS is limited to version 1.5
- Resistive touchscreen with poor sunlight legibility
- No video-call camera
- No Bluetooth file transfers
- No Flash support for the web browser
- No voice or Smart dialing
- Video recording maxes out at QVGA@30fps
- No option to play the FM radio on the loudspeaker
The GW620 keeps such a low profile that some might be unaware of the evolutionary gap between it and an LG GW520. This could’ve been a conscious choice though to motivate a smooth and painless transition. The platinum sales of the LG KP500 Cookie inspired a number of sequels – the GW520 is definitely part of the whole thing.
LG must’ve reasonably assumed quite a lot of their feature phone users would be willing to consider upgrading. And the GW620 is a solid option: a smart QWERTY messenger that will please the young, who are ready to give Android a try.
LG-style Android interface
The LG GW620 runs Android 1.5, which is getting a old, but at least has been retouched by LG. It’s not a complete makeover as we’ve seen on HTC phones with the Sense UI but it brings Android closer to what LG users are used to.
As usual, you get three homescreens to put widgets on, but at the bottom there are four buttons in typical LG feature phone style – dialer, contacts, messaging and menu. Another tweak to the homescreen panes is that they are looped – there’s no end point from which you need to sweep back. Good for navigation usually, but with just three homescreens it’s not a big deal anyway.
Messaging, how many email clients do you need?
The LG GW620 can handle all common types of messages with ease – SMS, MMS and email. Email support is excellent with support for Exchange out of the box and social media buffs will be pleased with the level of integration of that content as well.
Composing a message is a little frustrating as the text box only takes a single line of the screen, leaving you very little space to work with.
A press-and-hold on the text box gives you access to functions such as cut, copy and paste. You are free to paste the copied text into any other application like email, notes, chats, etc. and vice versa.
Image gallery looks nice
The LG GW620 has a pretty attractive gallery. The 3D effects and smooth scrolling contribute to a pretty good user experience in general.
Those 3D effects are reserved for Android 2.0 devices only, but LG have somehow ported them to ver. 1.5.
Media Player does DivX/XviD, plays music too
The Media Player app does what it says on the tin – and for the most part does it well.
The default view shows you the list of videos on the memory card. The player interface is simple and easy to use – it offers the playback controls and automatically switches to full screen when you tilt the phone.
Music player is still the same though
Selecting Music on the main menu (or pressing the dedicated Music key on the side) launches the default Android music player. Again, it’s an odd choice considering they’ve taken the time to add a skinned Media player. Anyway, the functionality (the lack of it mostly) is the same.
The core functionality is all there and the looks are mostly fine but there is still some catching up to do before the best in class are matched.
You can sort tracks by artist or album or you can browse them by playlists. The now playing user interface – though very sleek and more comfortable – doesn’t offer too many new features.
FM Radio
The LG GW620 is equipped with an FM radio in addition to the music player. Its interface is simple – there’s a tuning dial and you can save as many as 48 stations as favorites.
Pretty good audio quality
Despite being on the quiet side as fat as headphones volume is concerned the LG GW620 has pretty decent audio output.
The cut-off extreme bass frequencies are probably our only (not quite significant) grudge against it with the rest of the readings being very good (distortion levels) to excellent (stereo crosstalk, noise levels and dynamic range).
Camera is heavy-handed with compression
The LG GW620 is outfitted with a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera and a LED flash.
The camera interface got a complete makeover and it’s almost a one-to-one copy of the camera interface on the LG Viewty Smart for example. That has its good and bad points.
The interface is pretty simple but still finds room for some of the essential functions on the screen. Selecting the auto-focus mode, the flash mode and the exposure compensations is a single tap away. The controls on the left can be hidden to free up space in the viewfinder.
Video recording
The video camera on the LG GW620 performs quite poorly. It shoots QVGA videos at 30 frames per second, which doesn’t sound particularly exciting. However the compression is too heavy and the videos don’t usually make the full 30 fps. Overall, the clips are good for MMS only.
Great connectivity, except the poor Bluetooth support
The LG GW620 offers the full connectivity package. It covers the basics with quad-band GSM/EDGE but also offers speedy connectivity over 3G with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA.
For local connectivity, there’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 (just the headset profile though, you can’t send or receive files). The GW620 features a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, microUSB and a hot swappable microSD card.
There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack so you can plug in your favorite pair of headphones.
The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth switches come in handy when you need to quickly turn on or off either wireless connectivity option. A switch for GPS and even an Airplane mode toggle would have been great additions.
Syncing your data couldn’t be easier – it’s just that you mainly sync with the Google services. For those of you who prefer desktop syncing with Outlook or Outlook Express, the Moxier Sync app comes in handy.
A good web browser, but lacking Flash
Great web browsing has been an undoubted Android strength since day one. The LG GW620 is hardly an exception here and even benefits further from the hardware QWERTY keyboard.
You don’t need to click anything to enter an address – just hit a key when you are not filling a web form and you can start typing.
Organizer well stocked, office document reader preinstalled
The LG GW620 comes with the usual set of organizing apps. We are starting to see a positive trend among recent Android-running handsets to have a document viewer preinstalled, rather than making the user download one.
The app in question is Quickoffice and it supports viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and PDF but only their Office 2003 versions. This time you don’t need a dedicated PDF reader but you still have to get the paid app for editing.
Google maps and GPS navigation
The LG GW620 comes with a built-in GPS receiver. It got satellite lock in a minute and a half even without the A-GPS on, which is a pretty decent achievement.
Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and of course makes an appearance on the LG GW620 as well. Its voice-guided navigation version, the Google Maps Navigation is available only in the US, the rest of the world is in no luck here.
Android Market gives you loads of apps
LG GW620 comes with Android 1.5 and the older version of the Android market. The changes are purely cosmetic so it’s not much of an issue. Of course the Android version number is somewhat limiting here but there are still thousands of apps available for download.
The structure of the Android Market is quite simple – featured apps on top and below them, three sections (Applications, Games and Downloads). There is also a shortcut up there for initiating a search.
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تعليق بواسطة dental hygienist — 2010/04/13 في 5:57 PM
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تعليق بواسطة LG Models — 2010/04/16 في 3:02 PM