LG InTouch Max GW620 review

Android is doing a great job of captivating all the leading mobile phone manufacturers at the moment, and LG has entered the fray with its first Android based smartphone. LG has gone for a sliding keyboard and a smallish form factor, not a combination that is guaranteed to be successful, but in this case it works well.

The small chassis manages to provide room for a 3-inch screen. This is probably about the smallest you can get away with on a touchscreened smartphone, so LG just about makes the grade here. The keyboard offers five rows of keys – i.e. there is room for a separate number row.

The keys themselves look as though they should be very comfy and fast to use. They are separated from each other, individually domed and clearly marked. But there’s something not quite right in the design, and the keyboard needs to be prodded with fingernails rather than hit with the pads. Consequently it is a little slower to use than we’d like.

On the other hand, we do like the fact that shift key symbols on the number row match those found on a standard qwerty keyboard – all except the 2 key offering ‘@’ instead of ‘”’ and the 3 key offering ‘#’ instead of ‘£’. As is often the case with smartphones, to get the ‘£’ symbol you need to pop into the symbols characters set.

The small inverted T of directional arrow keys at the bottom right of the keyboard is also welcome.

The big problem in usability terms is the touchscreen. It is resistive, which means it needs a little more pressure than capacitive touchscreens for any effect to be achieved. We found it a bit less responsive than we’d like overall, and the short wait between tap and response meant we were never fully confident.

There are two touch sensitive buttons beneath the screen for Home and Back functions, and a hard button which calls up the context sensitive menu that exists in every application. Touch buttons can be a bit of a pain as it is easy to tap them when you don’t mean to. We tend to prefer hard buttons all round.

There are plenty of strong connectivity features here. The HSDPA supports uploads to 7.2Mbps, downloads to 2.0Mbps, Wi-Fi and GPS are present. A 3.5mm headset jack sits on the top edge.

LG has done well to add to Android in what is a very low cost handset. There are two looks, a standard Android one with three home screens and an LG style one again with three home screens but this time with a row of four shortcuts on screen to dialler, contacts, messaging and menu, with the main menu apps divided into groupings. Think LG S-Class user interface and you’ve got the idea.

There is also an app to sync with Microsoft Exchange and an email client which can handle up to eight different email addresses. More interesting to some, perhaps, will be Linkbook a social networking utility that can bring together information from different accounts. Currently it supports Twitter, Facebook and Bebo. We tried the former two and Twitter support is more fulsome than Facebook.

The camera shoots at 5 megapixels and benefits from a small LED flash. Face recognition will automatically tag photos if you’ve tagged them once. It didn’t seem to be on our review sample, though so we can’t comment on how efficient it is.

The keyboard may be a little underwhelming, as may the responsiveness of the screen, but LG has made some useful additions to Android and when it comes to brining Android to the masses this handset does exceptionally well thanks to its low contract price.

Price: contract
Web: www.lge.com

Essential Verdict
Performance: 7/10
Design: 7/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 9/10
Overall score: 8/10

Written by Sandra Vogel. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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