The Attention Seeker

Weighing a good 128 grams, the LG GW525 is more on the bulky side. It has a

2.8” touch screen display and a slide out QWERTY keypad. The auto rotation of

the display from the portrait to the landscape mode and vice-versa is quite fast

and impressive. The touch screen is quite interactive and responds well to even

the slightest touch.

The phone has the volume controls on the left and the other side has the SD

card slot, the unlock button and the camera shutter key. The phone has a 3MP

camera that performs quiet well, though it lacks a flash. It takes good images

in all lighting conditions. The phone allows a good amount of shots and editing

styles, which makes experimenting with images fun. The videos are good too, with

no amount of graining visible.

The home screen has two options, one which allows you to customize the

widgets and place your favourite ones on the screen and the other one is the the

LIVESQUARE menu that has avatars as visual alerts. There are icons for people

whom you made contact with through the day and clicking on the avatars would

take you to the message they have sent or allow you to call them instantly. The

concept is innovative and works towards making things easy for the user, but the

catch here is that the icons are too small and anyone with large hands will have

a hell lot of problems in working with the widgets (Women, however can depend on

their long nails, what will men do?!!).

The LG GW525 has a 40 MB internal memory which is expandable upto 8GB via

microSD cards, which gives you a scope for enjoying the good image and sound

quality the phone provides. The voice quality in case of regular calls,

recordings, music player and the radio is quite good.

Then there is the 7.2 Mbps HSDPA which is just for name's sake, as we don't

have 3G and the Push E-mail facility, is also rendered almost useless because of

the lack of Wi-Fi. This feature is then only for those people who are subscribed

to the Internet on the phone from their service providers and is useless for

those who don't.

Another flaw and that too a big one in the GW525 is its battery. It just does

not stay for anytime longer than 24 hours, and that too at normal usage. Heavy

usage brings this to a much lesser time span. Another missing element is the

stylus. It would have made messaging a heaven lot easier since the onscreen

keyboard is not too user friendly.

Overall, the LG GW525 is a decent phone but there are a lot many competitors

who are better in looks and provide better features as well. The Nokia E71 comes

around the same price point. However, if you want to get the experience of both

a touch screen and a QWERTY, the GW525 can surely be checked out.

Arpita Mukherjee