LG Xenon GR500 Review

Performance:

Call quality on the LG Xenon GR500 was a decent experience with most conversations through the phone being easily understood. Although, there were times when voices sounded almost hollow with some slight background static noise. On the other end, callers said that they had no problems hearing our voice. Using the speaker phone also produced some distortion when there was silence, but we were still able to hear callers perfectly when placed on the highest volume. Callers did say that there was a slight echo when we talked and our voices sounded a little bit on the low side.

The Xenon is rated for 4 hours of talk-time and about 264 hours of standby. Surprisingly, those specs are better than the Vu which had a slightly larger battery. While testing out the phone, we had the brightness of the screen set to the highest setting. We managed to get out over 7 days of normal use before the battery was completely drained.


Conclusion:

So here we are again with another QWERTY phone. It works pretty well as a touch screen phone and as messaging device. The small form factor of the Xenon is great when pitting against larger ones like the Samsung Impression or AT&T Quickfire. With the inclusion of a widget based home screen and an eclectic mix of personalization options,  the LG Xenon GR500 does make some improvements over the Vu all the while retaining a similar design. It may be enough for some to consider buying, but it just does not warrant anything revolutionary. If LG bumped up some of the specs of the phone such as the camera and fine tuned the new interface; it could have been a stellar device for the U.S. market. Luckily though, it gets the job done in terms of being a good touch screen and messaging phone.