LG Shine Touch

 

Available exclusively from Rogers for $29.99 on select three-year plans (or $249 for the contract free price), the LG Shine Touch takes, uh, "inspiration" from some familiar touch enabled smartphones, even though it's significantly lighter and smaller.

Hold the phone in your hand and it is as light as its aluminum and chrome enclosure suggests - almost as if the battery isn’t there. Most unit's side buttons are unobtrusively slim while the call begin and call end buttons on the face are recessed under the plastic touchscreen, giving the impression of touch-sensitive buttons, which they're not, they just feel that way.

The LG Shine Touch comes with customizable menus that work a lot like widgets, accessing the Internet via Wi-Fi or Rogers' 3G service, keeping you updated with Facebook, e-mail, the weather and various other "connected" services and social media trappings.

The phone is quite speedy at handling these widgets, though the 3" touchscreen is too small to organize and finger them effectively. If you're a neat-freak or OCD-ish in the least, the mess of colorful icons strewn haplessly around the device’s screen will likely drive you nuts.

The Shine Touch's 240 x 400 screen is pretty good for its class - indoors anyway; outside it's practically a mirror. Plus, its low resolution makes 3-megapixel photos taken with the built-in camera look washed out unless you view them on a computer monitor or whatever.

The screen also features tactile feedback, so it vibrates when a virtual button has been pressed - good thing, too, because the thing's not consistently responsive.

While The LG Shine Touch can access the Internet through both Wi-Fi and Roger’s HSPA network, the device's utility as a portable web browser is seriously hampered by its small, low rez display, a crummy browser and its virtual QWERTY that is clunky when held landscaped, non-existent when held portrait (with an alpha-numeric type pad as your only input for urls, keyword searches, etc.)

Then again, it you pretend that its not trying to be a portable web browser, but a small and compact phone with a bunch of other features, the Shine Tuch does okay.

It sports MicroSD expansion for music and photos, for example, plus a regular sized headphone jack, Dolby Mobile audio, built-in FM radio, Bluetooth and a surprisingly long lasting battery despite being in one of the lightest phones in the market today.

While the LG Shine Touch is really just smartphone wannabe, its numerous features do transcend its mid-level price point, sometimes convincingly, sometimes not.

Details
Reviewed: May. 19, 2010
Type: Smartphone
From: LG, Rogers Wireless


Pictures
 


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