 LG GW 300 phone
Theo Boshoff
A bit too limited
The LG GW 300 phone is obviously more for the teen market, focussed more on text messaging, than on features for high-powered, always connected users.
It is, however, sad that only Facebook is supported in terms of connecting with friends and family through social networking. This is really not great in a world where there are so many social networking services to choose from.
The Facebook app also does not support Push functionality. This is good and bad. It means you can keep data costs in check by only downloading feeds when you have the money and are not bombarded by updates every time someone posts something. It is bad, however, because you do not get the latest updates and posts as they happen – so if it is for a user who wants to be in the know, it might not be the best choice for a phone.
 It has a four-row QWERTY keyboard to enhance the texting experience for users and make it faster to type longer messages than with a phone sporting a regular numeric keypad and has a kind of BlackBerry smartphone shape. However, it offers less functionality than a smartphone, but for the younger crowd, who it is aimed at, it offers enough. It doesn’t have 3G or WiFi connectivity.
The 2.4-inch 256K-colour TFT screen sporting 320 x 240 pixel resolution is adequate, but not fantastic. The 2MP camera is a fixed focus camera and bit of a letdown, with no extras such as a flash, so don’t even try taking pics in dark places. It is capable of video recording, but the quality is really not the best and should rather be avoided.
It does have Bluetooth capability to connect headsets and such, but also features a standard 3.5mm audio jack to add wired headphones when listening to music.
Onboard memory is small, with only 15MB, but it has an external memory card slot, supporting the microSD format and support for up to 16GB.
A good thing though, is that the phone only retails for about R1 500.
|
