The LG GT540 is a curiously timed phone, launching six months after the GW620, but without a keyboard. Are there any other hardware additions to make it worthwhile? Read on and we’ll break it down for you in this part of our LG GT540 review.
Read the rest of our LG GT540 review
LG GT540 review
LG GT540 review: Android 1.6
While taken on its own merits, the LG GT540 is a reasonably built low-end Android phone, but it’s hard to enjoy when the LG GW620 is already on sale, and HTC’s Android 2.1 phones can be had for a only a few pounds more.
We’re in two minds about the LG GT540’s casing. On the one hand, we love the back. It’s made of a smooth plastic that’s easy to grip, but looks just like brushed metal, and refuses to pick up even the slightest hint of a fingerprint. It slides off easily too, but only when you want it to. The side buttons on the LG GT540 are well placed too, with a subtle volume rocker on the left, and on the right, a camera shutter on the right, and intriguingly, a Google search button. It’s actually quite intuitive to launch from here when you’re holding the LG GT540 in your hand, and the phone itself feels solid, and capable of surviving a tumble or four.
But the front and general design of the LG GT540 don’t sit well with us. While the tapered ends give just enough space for a 3.5mm audio slot on the top, they also leave the phone looking like an LG Viewty phone from yesteryear. It’s a bit ugly, and the physical buttons under the screen meanwhile are a mess. The menu and back buttons are touch sensitive and not very responsive: it’s all too easy to press the physical call reject button instead and lock the LG GT540’s screen by accident.
We’re also torn by the screen on the LG GT540. On the plus side, it’s HVGA resolution, unlike several low price Android phones we’ve seen recently (HTC Wildfire, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini), so app support won’t be an issue, and it’s perfectly crisp.
But the LG GT540’s screen is also resistive – the cheap touchscreen technology that’s better suited to stylus recognition than fingertip prods. You don’t get a stylus, and it means you can’t use multitouch gestures for pinch zooming as you can on many a Google phone. Perhaps more importantly though, it limits typing speeds a great deal: you won’t hit anything above what you would get on your old Nokia candybar phone with a 0-9 keypad.
That might not be an issue for those who only want to send the occasional email, but it does make the LG GT540 difficult to stomach for anyone who has used the excellent slide out keyboard on the LG GW620. We’d rather LG included it here, or switched to a responsive capacitive screen, and as such the LG GT540 feels like a bit of a step backwards.
The camera, too, is a step back from the GW620. You’re down to three megapixels (From five) and while that in itself isn’t a biggy, especially with plenty of software options on board, the lack of a flash is.
What we can’t grumble about however is the battery life. While you can all too easily burn through the HTC Legend’s juice in a day, we found that the LG GT540’s 1500mAh battery is good for two to three days on the trot – it’s perhaps even a tad better than the LG GW620’s.
That’s not enough for the LG GT540 to dislodge the GW620 from the top spot in our budget Android messaging phone pantheon, however. What might be, is the prospect of Android 1.6 and free Google Maps Navigation – more on that in our LG GT540 review: Android 1.6 post – but the trade off of slow typing without that QWERTY is a pain.
Read the rest of our LG GT540 review
LG GT540 review
LG GT540 review: Android 1.6
