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 Like the Chocolate, the LG Shine is a slide-design phone, and is very much intended as a fashion statement. Whereas the Chocolate was dark and mysterious, with its hidden touch sensitive keypad, the Shine positively sparkles with light and has a more conventional keypad.
The reason for the name "Shine", is that the phone is highly reflective, having a shiny stainless steel body and a large LCD display that turns into a mirror when not in use. It's definitely a cool-looking phone and one that will attract attention.
Appearance and design
Dimension: 94 x 51 x 14 mm; weight: 115g
The device itself feels sufficiently weighty for such a small phone - with its brushed stainless steel covering, it's little wonder. This helps to make it feel suitably expensive, but considering the small size and minimal thickness it's still a lightweight. The steel covering means it's strong, too - no chance of breaking this phone in two. The construction is perfect and the slide action is well weighted, revealing a gorgeous laser-etched keypad that lights up in blue. The front mirrored fascia is finished in tough plastic rather than metal (transparent metal is difficult to come by), and despite the delicate appearance of the front screen it's proven rather scratch resistant - despite my lackadaisical handling. The good looks of the handset don't stop at the exterior - the interface is particularly easy to use as well. Navigation is via the nifty scroll bar on the front of the phone, making navigation of the menus relatively easy. It can be a little imprecise at times - sometimes pressing down on the scroll bar to select something can result in moving the cursor to something else - but apart from this it's intuitive and nice to use. Keypad
The Shine's keypad is completely flat, so it can be difficult to work out which key is which, and it suffers from the usual slider phone problem of a lack of space for the bottom row of keys. Consequences of the fiddly keypad are that text messaging becomes quite cumbersome, and the ‘hang-up’ button is right there above the 3 button. On many an ocassion I have been in the middle of a long SMS message and pressed the dreaded red button, only to lose the whole message, and it’s doesn’t get saved to drafts either! Additional buttons
LG has also added a good scroll wheel to the device on the main body, just under the screen. This becomes your main navigational tool, and is an excellent way of finding what you want on the device. It makes a big difference to have this when, say, searching through your contact list. Although the scroll wheel isn’t perfectly refined, and you might inadvertently scroll a little too much every now and then, it is a welcome addition. You’ll quickly learn to love it. Two little buttons accompany the scroll wheel directly on the right and left, which effectively turn it into up-down-left-right scrolling pad when the software allows it. The scroll wheel is also a press-down button, which often acts as the main ‘select’ button. Other buttons lie along the right-hand side of the phone, where there is a noticeable lack of a ‘cancel-and-exit’ button which came in handy with the LG Chocolate. Now they’ve decided to hide it away on a slide-down keypad, which can be a little fustrating. Nevertheless, the camera and MP3 player now have their separate buttons on the side, which makes it much easier to quickly take a snap. Sizes, Ports and Slots
The right hand side has also the propriety LG interface for the charger, hands free kit plus headphones and USB connections. The connector itself is protected by a plastic flap which is flimsy to say the least. Unlike rubber flaps on other mobiles, this one acts like a hinge that once you pull out, swings around out of the way. It could easily be broken by accident. While it is commendable to have such a connector on the side, it could have easily been on the bottom and a slider cover used. The left side is untouched while the back has the 2 mega pixel digital camera Schneider-Kreuznach lens with mirror and flash LED. In all it is an unfussy layout for ease of use with one hand which works. Display
2.2 inch TFT, 240х320, 16.7 million colors
One thing you will notice right away is the screen having a mirror surface, perfect for those who wish to check up on appearances while being out. When in use the display lights up, dimming after a few seconds of inactivity. Bypassing this fashion driven addition you will be greeted with a 2.2inch TFT screen with a resolution of 240×320. I am unsure about the colour depth but it seems pretty similar to the Sony Ericsson W900 – Colours a vibrant with good contrast offered in the images. Camera
2Mpx, Flash, ZOOm
The LG Shine is equipped with a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and picture quality generally is decent. There is a lot of graining as expected but at 1600×1200 it will suffice for taking recognisable pictures. The light for the LG Shine it seems has to be activated manually via the menu causing it to stay on constantly and there is no option to have it flash when taking a picture. The menu covers the usual suspects. Taking a picture is simplicity itself and the phone does not require being open. There is a dedicated Photo button on the right hand side to activate it and taking pictures can either be done via the same button or by depressing the scroll wheel. The auto focus takes around a second and then the image is taken at quite a slow shutter speed so you need to have steady hands to avoid blurring or enable multi-shot. Menu
The operating system it seems is proprietary and not open like Symbian - To a power user like myself I hope that LG will make it easy for companies to develop software for their phone as such applications do add value. However I suspect that the market the LG Shine is aimed at will not care so much. The default theme is a clean one and makes use of the integrated Flash support. The standby menu however could be improved upon as it sits in the lower middle of the screen, obstructing any nice wallpaper image you might have set. Also there seems to be no way to customise parts of the shortcut menu either to your own preference so it forces LG’s layout upon you. Scrolling up with the wheel sends you to the SMS menu but only to the Inbox and Voicemail option, no “Create new Message” which I find odd. When people want to send a quick SMS to someone they have to go through a longer process than needed. Scrolling down lets you select the phone profiles such as silent, general, outdoor etc which is also an odd choice. I say this because how often does a user change profiles in a day? Most phones simply have a one button hold to activate “Silent mode” for example on the keypad which is sufficient enough. By giving profiles such a high priority on the main menu without any kind of customisation I find is a waste and poorly thought out. The left key is a shortcut to your contacts of which is a good idea and the right key enables your Favourites menu. Here you can select up to nine customised shortcuts to any item which makes up for the lack of control over the other items. When using the scroll wheel though it is not very responsive but I presume this was done on purpose to prevent accidental movement when pressing the scroll wheel down to confirm things, which does happen. The main menu itself is well laid out and clear in its use with a design highlighting the purpose of having a scroll wheel on a mobile phone. Other small things include the contacts as it defaults in displaying the surname and then first name, but does not give the option to reverse that for those who are used to that setup. A major annoyance is the texting process as well… Imagine you are writing out a long message to someone and you accidentally press the “Hang up” button… Wave goodbye to that text! There is no “Save to Drafts” prompt as soon as you hit that key. Again it can be solved from a firmware update and hopefully the final release model will correct it. One amusing quirk I found with this phone is the dialling graphical styles that you can choose when inputting numbers. All of them are not suited and unprofessional for such a high quality mobile phone in my opinion. While it can look attractive to have all the numbers in different colours, have them animated as balls etc I feel that it does not match the phone itself and ruins the experience rather than enhancing. Instead a much slicker interface should have been used making more use of the internal Flash support to match the quality finish and look of the LG Shine.
Imaging
2 Megapixel Camera
Flash
Digital Zoom
Photo Settings
Photo Album
Video Record
Video Player
Video Gallery
Video Settings
Picture Wallpaper
Screensaver
Themes Display Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
EMS (Enhanced Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
Email
Predictive Text
Sound
Music Player
MP3 Ringtones
Polyphonic Ringtones Entertainment
Java™ Games
Embedded Games
Downloadable Games Organiser
Calendar
Alarm Clock
Calculator
Phone Book
Stopwatch
Timer
Notes
Vibrating Alert
Connectivity
USB
Bluetooth™
GPRS
Network
Tri Band Technology (GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)
Internet
WAP Browser
XHTML
Memory & Talk Time
1 Gbytes Memory
3 Hours Talk Time
280 Hours Standby Weight & Size
115 g
98 x 51 x 14 mm Pluses
Beautiful design
Mirror face
Scroll wheel
Battery Life
Speaker volume and quality
Flash support Minuses
Main menu customisation
SMS niggles
Poor MP3 software
Call volume could be higher Conclusion
In all the LG Shine does many things superbly and gives off the right impression. With a few operating system tweaks, some better themes and better software it could be a serious killer mobile. Instead it ranks highly and would be a mobile to look out for if you are in the market for a simple and elegant mobile. |
