LG KU970 Shine Review

The color of this phone series is entirely and only silver without the slightest trace of the black chocolates. Unlike them, brushed aluminum is used here for the front and back panel here instead the shiny and smooth plastic and the display frame is like a mirror, which the ladies certainly like. Unfortunately it is hard to keep it clean; fingerprints are easily noticed and you will have to clean it often. As a whole it has a solid structure, but its size and weight are not the smallest possible as you can see from the comparison below.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
LG KU970 Shine	3.9" x 2.0" x 0.5"	100 x 50,6 x 13,7	4.2	120
LG KG800 Chocolate	3.7" x 1.9" x 0.6"	95 x 48 x 15.2	2.9	83
Motorola KRZR K1	4.0" x 1.6" x 0.6"	103 x 42 x 16	3.6	102
Sony Ericsson W880	4.0" x 1.8" x 0.4"	103 x 46.5 x 9.4	2.5	71

Aluminum adds weight and makes it one of the heaviest stylish phones although it’s comparatively thin.

The battery lid stays in place and is easily opened when necessary, but the 800 mAh battery is hard to remove to change the SIM card.




Shine is convenient to hold and opening of the slider is a real pleasure. It is opened without effort and is supplied with one of the best spring mechanisms we have ever used. In the reverse direction (closing) the feeling is that pleasant, too.

The LG have succeeded in fitting a display of no compromise: it is with physical size of 2.2 inches and high-class standard resolution of QVGA (240x320 pixels). The display is not very bright but is rich in contrast and with saturated colors and fair size/resolution ratio.




Since this is a slider, the keyboard is separated in two parts. The soft buttons and the navigation scroll are on the upper slider immediately under the display. This scroll is an interesting solution since it differs from most phones using 5(4) direction buttons or joysticks. The scroll is three-directional only (up, down and press to confirm), but is accompanied by two buttons on both sides which sometimes are used as left and right directions. This happens when you need these directions, e.g., with the grid-menu or when looking at a picture with zoom. These buttons and the soft buttons are small, hard and difficult to press. Their motion can be felt since they are real buttons and not touch-sensitive as with the Chocolate.


The lower slider contains 15 buttons which are the digital keys, the two earpieces and a combined Clear/Back button. The last three are on the upper row close to the upper slider and that is why they are pressed somewhat difficult since your finger may touch the slider. There is almost no embossment between the keys and since they are of small size, they are not quite convenient. Adding the fact that they are flat and with almost no run, it is hard to feel where which button is. The whole keyboard is lit in dark blue underlight. They are seen quite well in the dark, but the right part of each key is less brightly lit. In the daylight when lighting is on, the letters on the keys are more difficult to see than when lighting is off.




Shine has four side buttons but the strange thing is that all four are on the right side with none on the left. The charging device/earpieces connection port is on this side, too, and the distance between the various details is very small. Only the camera button is protruding and can be felt (it is at the lowest part) while you have to look at the others to ‘hit’ them.




The lens of a 2-megapixel auto-focusing camera are located at the upper left part of the back panel. There is a small mirror and LED lightning next to it and the Schneider-Kreuznach branding is proudly placed below.

Since this is the 3G version of the phone supporting UMTS/HSDPA 2100 MHz, the 3G networks video chat camera is in the upper right part of the front panel. Another difference to the EDGE version is there is no memory extension slot.