Recently, I bought this phone after using Nokia N72 for 40 months. Here are my views & thoughts as per my usage and experience with the phone till now. It’s been about 15 days since I am using this phone. For SPECS of the phone, Please see LG website.
LG Optimus one-P500:
To be frank, I have not been a fan of LG especially in the mobile phone segment and have been ignoring them ever since they have entered this space. However after reading about this phone on the internet with all the reviews and user opinions I had decided to buy this. Finally bought one about 2 weeks back.
*The LOOKS:
It’s not a crowd puller, has a very simple design & std look with a matte rubbery finish giving a feel of extra grip. However as they say ‘looks could be deceptive’, it’s very true for this phone! The phone feels very solid and is bit heavy as well (Not as heavy as N72).*
Android OS Version:
2.2, Froyo. And LG has said that they shall upgrade it to 2.3 gingerbread for Optimus one. Now that’s great news if the present features of this phone themselves do not sound great to you!
FEATURES: Now let us look into the features of the phone.
Keypad: There are 2 QWERTY keypads in this phone. One is the android one and LG has put its own keyboard on here. You have option for having a qwerty keypad or the traditional old numeric keypad in the portrait mode and can chose any. Definitely the QWERTY is bit congested in this view however on the landscape mode it’s very good. I have small fingers and I am very comfortable with the keypads. There are alternatives to download as well.
Call quality: It is loud enough & good. Even when on loud speaker it is clear enough without any distortion.
Connectivity:
Wifi: Able to connect w/o any problem and the speed is good.
3G: My carrier does not provide this yet. Have to wait for this for some more time!
GPS: Still trying to find out the ways to use this features in a better way.
EDGE: For all those GPRS users, please note that Android phones don’t work with GPRS (only some sites work). So you got to go for alternatives like EDGE, 3G etc. Gmail and yahoo mail setup is easy too.
Flash Player 10.1: Well, I am not mad about watching videos on the phones (youtube, metacafe etc). So I have no issues with this. Whether we have or not. does not matter to me. However the discussions are still on over the net about it(for those who are interested in knowing it)
Phone book: P500’s phonebook has unlimited space (till you run out of space in the memory) and lots of fields to update for a contact and the can be organized by First or Last name. Photos can be assigned to individual numbers in the phonebook. I am yet to find a way to create user groups here.
Smart dial is really good and work like a charm! The moment you enter characters using the numpad it starts showing all the names with that combination of characters and is really fast.
Call options: Call lists can hold any number of data I guess as I have all the data of the last 15 days. It allows you to send about 7 predefined text messages to a caller if you can’t take a call but explain why you cannot talk at that point of time. For me this is one of the very good features as it allows you to inform the other person about your current unavailability without rudely rejecting it!
Music: The default Android music player works well. Users have the option to sort music by artist, album, song title or playlist. The speaker output is good. I liked it. I have an iPod touch and its loud speaker is not as good as this one (I am not joking!!! My wife is a diehard APPLE fan and she agrees to this! But iPod is a personal music player and its in a different league altogether when you hear it with headphones). The music experience in loud speaker as well as head phone provided by LG is really nice. No distortion at higher volumes too.
Camera: 3 MP camera without flash & there is no capture hard button available. There are lots of options for camera & in day light the photos come quite good. Though I am not a fan of Phone cameras but I don’t have an option to buy a phone without a camera these days!
It has a macro mode and plenty of preset scenes and filters available, also full integration with Android’s social sharing options. Which means take a snap and put it on Facebook as soon as you’ve taken it!
Signal strength and Quality: Network reception and signal strength are great and I am pleasantly surprised with LG! It’s better than my Nokia N72! The signal strength was not much in the kitchen at my house for N72 but for this I have 75% of signal strength. The voice volume during a call is good.
And the speaker volume or the ear piece volume is good as well. I can hear very well even at a crowded place without any problems.
FM Radio: A normal FM radio which can be accessed only if you have the headset plugged in as it serves as an antenna (As in any other phone). I would have loved, had the auto scan feature worked well. When I click on auto scan, it should scan all the stations in the area and save it but sadly it did not work on this one. Not sure if any tweaking is required here. You can save up to 48 radio stations in this.
Battery: Since this has a 1500 mAh battery so it gives an extra time before you plug this to your PC or to the mains.
It takes about 150 mins to charge from 08 % to reach to 100 % of battery. Once full, the battery would drain in about 2 days and 10-14 hours without turning it off. I neither use Music nor radio too much in a day and I am not into too much Messaging. I use my phone more for calling and browsing (average use). But yeah, I do use the Bluetooth headset paired with my phone.
Connecting to PC: Connecting the phone to the computer is a breeze with the phone as the drivers
provided by LG turn the handset into a USB drive. Pictures, video and audio could be copied to the SD card and can be used without any hassles.
Interesting features:
The proximity sensor: This sensor will ensure the display is off the moment you hold your phone near your ears and lits it again when you finish your call. Very good one to save the battery charge.
I can search the applications using voice command (OS feature and not the phone). Voice search works fine when it understood what was being told.
No alarm if the cell is turned off. The cell phone has to be on to ring the bell L that’s unfortunately a sad one! So all you people wanna get up early make sure you set an alternate alarm about 5 min before this alarm to make sure that the phone is ON!!! Ha ha ha haha…what a crap!! Ignore it folks!
Final Verdict!:
All in all for the money that we spend and the options that this device provides is too good. And remember its 2.3 (Gingerbread) upgradable.
I would say its more than “value for the money” cell phone. I have not faced any problems with it till now. If I face any, I will definitely update the review as I have done to my other reviews as well.
LG has set the market on fire with this Model and it sure wont disappoint you in the mid range smart phone category. I am neither working in LG not am I a diehard fan of them…..but this device definitely is worth the money. So I would definitely recommend this phone.