LG OPTIMUS ONE
The P500 is LG’s attempt to conquer the affordablesmartphone segment. At one point of time , the Korean handset maker waspumping out too many handsets into the market that we could barely keep trackof. But over the last 1 year , the company has decided to launch fewer phonesaimed at specific sections of the market. The Optimus One is one such attemptto fight back into the smartphone market. The specs of the phone look quiteinteresting considering the price point of the phone. In this review lets takea in-depth look at how LG has succeeded in delivering a great android phone.
Box Contents
§ LG Optimus One P500
§ 1500 mAh Battery
§ 2 GB microSD Card
§ USB cable
§ AC Plug
§ Stereo headphones
§ Manual
The first thing onewould notice about the phone is the metal bezel around the phone which is mostlymade of plastic. On the front you would find the 3.2 inch capacitive displaysporting a resolution of 320×480 pixels.The display is not super responsive butit does the job . Seems like it’s made of plastic and not glass but we are finewith it. Below the display you have backlit keys for menu , home , back andsearch. The home and back button are slightly raised. LG thinks that these arethe most used buttons and gave it special treatment – great move. Above thedisplay you have the LG branding and the earpiece.
LG has gone for a slight user interface skin forthe Optimus One, but it's only a minor set of visual tweaks and nothing like asintrusive and overwhelming as some other manufacturer's Android customisations.
The Home screen has been slightly modified, featuringan HTC Sense-like curved docking area sitting at the bottom and shortcuts tothe phone, contacts, apps, text messaging and browser.
If you want to customise this little area, youcan change those shortcuts to whatever by opening the app drawer, pressingmenu, selecting 'move icon'; you can now drag your application to the bottomdocking area if you happen to never bother with messaging.
LG has put its own keyboard on here, inventivelynamed the LG Keyboard. It's very similar to the stock Android keyboard, withnumbers and special characters inconveniently hidden away on a second screen,which you access by pressing a key. The keys are needlessly tiny, making typinga bit of a chore.
It's a poor effort, to be honest. There's a hugenumber of alternate keyboards out there on the Android Market doing a much,much better job of handling text input than either LG's option or even thestandard Android 2.2 keyboard.
One thing LG offers that's of use is wordprediction, which guesses what you're trying to type and pops the results up ina cramped little grey bar. It's a pretty ugly solution, but it does shave a fewseconds off those important text messages about dinner and football.
You also get the option of a traditional oldmobile phone numeric keypad, complete with predictive text, just like in theold days. This is actually a better option if you remember your numeric typingskills, thanks to bigger keys that are easier to accurately hit than on theQWERTY layout.
One of LG's more user friendly Androidcustomisations is the addition of Categories to its app drawer. It's notactually that thrilling, simply giving users a a way to group apps by theme inthe app listing.
So if you want to bunch all your various Twitterapps or games together under one heading to make finding them easy, you can.It's a nice way to keep track of things and a clever technique to minimisescrolling fatigue if you're prone to filling up your phones with apps.
The Optimus One also comes with a configurableselection of Home screens, in that you can decide if you want five or seven ofthem. It's nice to have the option, especially if you're not all that intowidgets and find the full seven Home screens a little intimidating.
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