LG GD900 Crystal Mobile Phone

There are quite a few fashion centric handsets out there that employ some really trendy as well as technologically advanced motifs to boost sales. These handsets also cater to a certain elitist group of consumers who don’t often care about features as long as the handset itself is designed to be shown off. The GD900 Crystal is just such a handset. It offers plenty of very relevant features for the ‘today’s’ mobile users with one very stylish and seriously technologically unique feature which is its keypad. But is it worth its price tag? Here’s my experience and what I think.

Form Factor
The GD900 is one of the most unique handsets I’ve ever come across. At first sight it comes off as a simple button-less totally touchscreen handset, which is not something that LG doesn’t already have a lot of, but this is in fact, a slider with the very first and only fully transparent touchscreen keypad. The technology is absolutely brilliant! Not only does it function just like any other mobile keypad for messaging and dialing, but it’s also a very versatile touch sensitive surface that also supports multi-touch. There is of course the 3-inch capacitive touchscreen that also supports multi-touch as well. The touch sensitive keys may not have been the best idea though.

The only actual tactile buttons on this device are the volume/zoom keys located on the side and the camera key. The 8 megapixel camera with its LED flash is located at the rear and can only be activated when the keypad is down. This placement is also a minor issue since the keypad sticks out and can only be used for zooming in or out and serves no other purpose. Aside from the 1.5GB of internal memory the GD900 comes equipped with a hot swap microSD card that also allows for more space. A universal micro USB port is located on the other side, but thankfully the handsfree comes with a 3.5mm earphone socket although the bundled in-ear earphones are quite comfortable to use.

I think the concept is fantastic, although I believe the keypad is simply there to showcase an advancement in technology. The handset is quite capable without it. However the keypad does add a certain amount of class to the handset and could seriously accentuate your fashion sense, if that’s what you’re looking for.
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Features and Performance**
Interface
I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again, I am no fan of the S-Class UI and I think it has a lot of room for improvement. Sadly, the UI is the one problem I have with the GD900 and the prime reason why I‘ve rated it so low. The UI is sluggish in most instances. It takes a while to open the gallery, access the camera and the web browser is not too my liking. Pinch control for multi-touch isn’t immediate like in the iPhone or Zune and takes a few seconds to zoom in. I also think the idea of having the entire main menu section change orientation and not the rest of the features is ridiculous. You just end up flipping it from one side to the other.

While I liked the gallery section layout that allows you to select the kind of media you want to view and sort it by date or name, it’s very annoying that it doesn’t actually show you the names of the videos which means you have to waste time opening a file only to see its name. The onscreen keypads are easy to use and so is using the touch sensitive keypad. The problem is when it comes to messages and you’re using the slide out keypad, the send option is all the way at the top of the screen.

The UI is not well-designed and I didn’t like it. It may be very colorful and host quite a few features but it’s slow and sometimes not at all user friendly.

Media
The audio player is definitely one of the better features that the handset has to offer but the S-Class UI player has one minor flaw here - the progress bar can’t be used to forward a track. You’ll have to use the forward to rewind keys. It’s simple and uncomplicated. You can create playlists quite easily on the go and activate the Dolby Mobile feature with a single tap. It could have used a customizable EQ preset but there are presets provided which also include the BOBCAT Mobile sound engine. Audio quality is great. The tones are quite evenly balanced at a sensible decibel level.

The FM radio was a disappointment though. In areas that I usually get good reception, the auto-scan option picked up just a single station. I had to manually set the rest and reception was not too great. A voice recorder is also available for voice memos.

The GD900 comes preloaded with codec to support DivX and XviD file formats so you won’t need to convert most files. Just copy paste and you’re good to watch. The video player is a real pain though. It doesn’t have a resume play function or a feature to save a bookmark so you can pick up where you left off from a video. It does allow you to fit a video to the display since the display’s resolution is so high most videos appear boxed. A Movie Maker software is included to allow you to put together images and audio to create slideshows. There are quite a few settings that make it a fun application to play around with. The on-board image editor is very comprehensive and also offers quite a few settings to tinker with.
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Connectivity
The handset is well covered for connectivity. It’s 3G ready and can support HSDPA speeds up to 7.2Mbps. Regular users will have to suffice with EDGE and GPRS or even Wi-Fi for internet connectivity or for downloading emails (POP or IMAP). Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and USB 2.0 are also available. As I mentioned the browser is ok but it wasn’t to my liking. I didn’t like the way it formatted web pages. The multi-touch functionality didn’t help too much here except to zoom in and move the screen around till you find what you were looking for.

What the GD900 lacks is GPS capability, which is very odd considering handsets that cost a lot less are equipped with that feature and that’s become one of the more popular functions of a mobile handset. However in lieu of GPS LG has loaded the handset with all of Google’s services which include Google Maps, a YouTube client and access to eBlogger which incidentally is the only form of social networking the handset comes preloaded with. You won’t find a Facebook or Twitter or even a MySpace application anywhere at least the test piece I received didn’t have any nor was I able to find a suitable one for the device. I did like the fact that I was able to use the keypad as a track pad for the virtual mouse. It was quite handy.

Misc. Features
The handset comes with quite a few simple basic functions as well. Those include the more mundane functions like an alarm clock, a calendar for leaving reminders and creating schedules, a memo pad, stopwatch, Calculator and of course a unit converter. The multiple desktops have been assigned to host very specific features so you can use it for accessing media or contacts and other shortcuts without having to go into the menu or the shortcuts located at the bottom which makes one of the options redundant. The whole page dedicated to photo contacts may make accessing them a little more vibrant and a contacts shortcut is also readily available on all screens as the bottom.

LG has also provided quite a few motion-based games with the Crystal and all are unique and quite a lot of fun. There are also games that involve users having to actually interact with the handset like blow into the microphone to create bubbles or blow out candles.

Camera
The 8 megapixel camera comes with an LED flash and a few interesting features that include Face tracking as well as manual focus. White Balance, continuous shot, Macro Mode and ISO up to 1600 are also on board. The GD900 also has a secondary camera (VGA) located in the front above the display for video calling.

The image quality the Crystal is capable of delivering is really quite good. Colors do seem a little saturated but not enough for a lay person to point out. For the regular user the camera delivers quite well.

The Crystal also shoots video in a 720 x 480(D1) format. It doesn’t do all too well in extreme low light conditions but is not bad at all everywhere else.

Battery
My experience with the battery was a bit confusing. It seemed like the camera was the sole reason for draining the battery like a hole in bucket. Without using the camera I found I got almost two full days of usage which included a few calls and messages as well as internet browsing and music. The moment I activated the camera the bars began to vanish. Even videos didn’t have such a dire effect. Talk time alone averaged in at about 3 hours and 55 minutes which is not bad at all.

The Bottom Line
The Crystal is very well priced I believe, at Rs. 26,000. It offers a lot for that price with good multimedia features and fairly good battery life to use it all, all except the camera of course. But I still just couldn’t get passed the quirky, sluggish UI. I loved the design concept which is unique as well as stylish and definitely a step in the right direction as far as the technology is concerned. It’s one of the cheapest 8MP cameras available at the moment and the only major issue you’ll have to contend with should you think this is something you want, is the S-Class UI. As for its features it’s all good.