LG GW520 is a refreshed, more polished and updated form of the not so old and very popular LG Cookie. The new LG phone features great connectivity, push email, large, touchscreen and full slide out QWERTY keyboard. Moreover, the LG GW520 has a built-in office document viewer, multitasking support and a 3 megapixel camera which makes it perfect for both business oriented people and those who prefer versatile multimedia support in their phones.
LG GW520 pros:
+ 2.8″ 256K-color TFT touchscreen (240 x 400 pixels)
+ Accelerometer for auto screen rotate
+ Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G (with HSDPA) support
+ FM radio with RDS
+ Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
+ 40MB internal memory
+ Hot-swappable microSD card slot
+ Standard microUSB port and Mass Storage mode
+ Pepped-up Widget interface with Live Square
+ Multi-tasking with a real task manager
+ Excellent touch optimized image gallery
LG GW520 cons:
- No Wi-Fi
- No standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Poor video recording at QVGA@12fps
- Camera with no auto focus or flash
- No DivX/Xvid video support
The design:
LG GW520 measures 106.5 x 53 x 15.9 mm and weighs 125.5 grams which is quite standard for such cell phones. The phone is made of high quality materials and makes a solid impression. The design is very simple and without unnecessary buttons, or ports. Thanks to the rubbery finish the LG GW520 feels comfortable at hand and it is fingerprint and scratch resistant. As always with touchscreen phones he front of the LG GW520 is dominated by the 2.8 display below which are three hard buttons. Yet, since the LG GW520 is a slider you can also make use of the full QWERTY keyboard with comfortable keys. The left side of the cell phone features the volume rocker, whereas the right side houses the microSD memory card slot, the camera key and the key lock. The top houses the microUSB port and the only thing on the bottom of LG GW520 is the mouthpiece. The back go the LG phone features the 3 megapixel camera lens together with a loudspeaker, but no flash.
LG GW520
Performance:
The LG GW520 handles making phone calls very well. There are no issues with signal reception or sound quality. The LG GW520 runs on the latest LG proprietary flash based interface which has quite nice animations and transitions. The overall performance of the interface is very good with smooth scrolling and very responsive actions. You can, of course, customize it a bit and add widgets to the homescreen. The LG GW520 comes with 12 preinstalled widgets and as it supports multitasking you can do a lot of things with this phone. The menu system is intuitive and thanks to the accelerometer it is easy to navigate.
The phonebook in the LG GW520 can store up to 1000 contacts. You can group contacts, assign personal ringtones and pictures and provide much information in appropriate (14) fields.
The messaging with the LG GW520 is a real pleasure. You can use the touchscreen with a virtual keyboard or the full QWERTY keyboard to write you MSM, MMS and email messages. Setting up an email account takes just a few seconds and you are ready to go. The maximum file size for outgoing email attachments is 2.2 which should be quite enough to send photos taken with the LG GW520. Moreover, the phone can opes the office document files and has a Facebook Java app.
Multimedia:
The image gallery on the LG GW520 is fast and allows for browsing the photos in the landscape and portrait modes. You also get a image editor but who would want to use such a thing on a mobile phone?
The music player on the LG GW520 may work in the background and it shows album art and has a few equalizer presets. You can browse your music library by artist, genre, album and so on so you get all you can expect from a music player.
The LG GW520 also features an FM radio with RDS and memory for up to 50 radio stations.
The video player is just sufficient with nothing special like DivX or XviD.
The camera in the LG GW520 is capable of taking 3 megapixel photos 2048 x 1536) with fixed focus and of flash so you can forget about nightshooting. The camera interface is simple so you will not even have to look at the manual. The image quality is quite good. The photos are sharp, but not oversharpened, with acceptable noise level and good colors. The video recording in the LG GW520 is rather poor with QVGA resolution and 3GP file format.
The LG GW520 comes with a good web browser displaying web sites on the phone like a computer would on a large screen. Both scrolling and zooming are fast and the only thing about browsing the net with LG GW520 that we didn’t like is the lack of Flash support.
LG GW520 full QWERTY keyboard
Conclusion:
All in all, the LG GW520 is a very good phone considering its price and the array of features. It has some features for everyone: good connectivity and office document viewer for businessmen and great music player and good camera for teenagers.
Selected LG GW520 features and specifications:
- Network
GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900
HSDPA 2100
- Screen
TFT, 2.8 inch
Full Qwerty keyboard
- Memory
1000 entries: with multiple contact storage entries
Expansion slot: microSD (TransFlash) up to 8GB
Data Service & Connectivity
GPRS Class 10
EDGE Class 10
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
HSCSD
Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP
USB v2.0
Ringtones
MP3, Polyphonic
Vibration
- Camera
3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels
Video recording
- Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion
Stand by time up to: ?
Talk time up to: ?
- Others
SMS, MMS, Email, IM, Push Email
WAP 2.0, xHTML, HTML
Voice memo
T9 text feature
Music player: MP3, MPEG4
Other recently reviewed cell phones:
