LG Encore Review

Introduction:

LG's last outing with the Vu Plus for AT&T wasn't all that awe-inspiring when you consider the fact that it didn't necessarily scream anything compelling with its average performance and expensive price tag. Instead of attacking the upper echelon of the feature category, the LG Encore GT550 is considerably more fitting from the manufacturer when you throw in its easier to swallow $49.99 on-contract price. Although this handset might look more like a fitting successor to the original LG Vu, since it's a touchscreen only device, let's just hope it can prove itself to be a decent modern offering.

The package contains:

Design:

The LG Encore can best be summed up as being an LG Vu Plus minus the keyboard because it literally incorporates a few similar design elements from that handset. Easily the first thing to come in mind when grasping the device is that it's extremely compact which doesn't take away from its solid construction; despite being crafted out of plastic. But don't let its choice of materials dissuade you because it has a sturdy feel to it which is complemented with the faux-pas metallic looking bezel outlining the handset. The gunmetal color scheme does add a modern look to it that easily makes it radiate as being a more expensive looking handset than what it's priced at.



You can compare the LG Encore with any other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Now one of the many reasons for the lower price tag of the Encore is due to its implementation of a 3” resistive touchscreen as opposed to the capacitive one on the Vu Plus. When combining that size with its resolution of 240 x 400 pixels and support for 262k colors, it proves to be adequate with its legibly sized text and acceptable looking colors. However, it's not the most viewing friendly device outdoors since it does lose some visibility with its poor viewing angles. Still, setting it to its maximum brightness and a quick shade with the hand will remedy that problem. As for responsiveness, it's actually pretty good, but still requires the occasional firm push to get it to do what you want it to do.


Three resistive touch buttons are built into the the display which makes the whole surface clean looking – these include the send, back/clear, and end keys. At a first glance, we didn't notice them when the device is turned off, but quickly realize they're there when it's powered on. To the left edge, we've got the microUSB port and skinny sized volume rocker which still has a good clicking feel to it.


While on the right side, we only have the dedicated shutter key and task menu key – the latter of which is extremely tiny in size. The deceptively hard to feel power button can be found alongside with the 3.5mm headset jack directly on the top portion of the phone. Flipping to the rear, we're presented with only the 3-megapixel camera with nothing else. Finally, you'll get access to the slot loading microSD card slot, battery, and SIM card slot by simply sliding off the rear cover.

Software/Features:

Laid out in the same fashion as what we saw with the LG Vu Plus, we are presented with three home screens which offer some level of personalization. The left most panel are for your contacts, the middle being a hub for all of your widgets, and the right one is for shortcuts to some common apps. Despite presenting itself with some widgets, laying them out is straightforward since they're all relatively sized equally in length – meaning that we just ended up stacking them on top of one another. Even worse, we find ourselves wondering why either AT&T or LG decided to implement the same main menu style found with the long forgotten LG Vu. Regardless of the reason, the platform does run fairly smooth with barely any wait when touching something on-screen – but still, it's long due for a major makeover.


You'll be limited to creating 1,000 contact on the handset, but there are plenty of specific pieces of information you can save to each – such as phone numbers, email addresses, and even birthdays.


Messaging happy individuals should more than find the experience on the Encore to be acceptable even though it's going to require all touch. Naturally, you can resort to using the typical keypad for your traditional process of texting, but with T9 enabled, you basically lessen the wait. When flipping it to landscape, we're greeted to the full QWERTY option which does feel rather cramped in space, but with some patience and practice, we soon found ourselves speed typing without much pause.


AT&T's Mobile Email is in effect on the Encore, as usual, so the whole process of setting up common email will be a breeze. After inputting our email address and password for Gmail, it managed to set it up properly. However, it'll require additional pieces of information, like server addresses, if it's not one a common one.


Since social networking is deeply ingrained into the minds and hearts of mobile users, it was only fitting to find iSkoot's AT&T Social Net app on board. It'll be the gateway to all of your social networking needs as it aggregates content from a variety of accounts.

If you prefer an instantaneous method of chatting with someone, aside from actually calling them, you'll have the pick of the litter of which instant messaging client to use. As always, you'll have either AIM, Windows Live Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger at your disposal.


The LG Encore packs a decent mix of various apps to keep you busy, but some will require subscriptions – which naturally turn people away if they're not interested. Some of the included apps are AT&T Navigator, AT&T Radio, Where, Loopt, YPmobile, Wikimobile, My-Cast Weather, PicDial, AllSport GPS, and MobiTV. If that's not enough to satisfy your needs, then you can play any of the following demo games like Tetris, I-play Bowling, Ferrari GT, Diner Dash Flo, and Brain Exercise.

Multimedia:

Sticking with a stationary focused 3-megapixel camera, we were happy with the images it's able to capture outdoors as they were filled with good detail and colors – though, they looked darker in tone. When taking it indoors, there is a slight drop in fine detail which makes the whole shot look fuzzy. On the other side of it, colors had a blue tinge to them when taking shots in artificial lighting. Nevertheless, the quality it's able to muster is probably going to be more than satisfactory to the needs of customers using the handset.




You can forget about about trying to shoot videos with the Encore because the quality is pretty much forgetful. To our display, it's able to record at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at a rate of 11 frames per second. Needless to say that they're pixelated and very choppy looking – plus it didn't help either when recorded voices sounded screechy in tone.

Taking a cue out of the Vu Plus, the Encore employs the same exact music player – which isn't to say a bad thing. Rather, it's more than functional at its core since it displays the album cover, song information, and on-screen controls. Obviously, the music will continue to play if you exit back to the home screen thanks to the music player widget. In addition, there are 6 Dolby equalizer presets which will fine tune the quality of the audio to cater to its specific genre of music. When placed on the loudest volume, the handset produces some strong, sharp, and clear tones which doesn't strain at all.


The video watching experience is a bit of a bummer since we were only able to load a video encoded in MPEG-4 at 320 x 240 resolution – and that's the maximum size it'll accept. Adding insult to the experience is the fact that playback is painfully slow and riddled with choppiness – something that ruins the overall experience.



With only 32MB of internal memory, it'll present you with a pickle if you're going to be shooting lots of photos. Luckily, it has an open microSD card slot which will be more than agreeable with accepting cards up to 32GB in size.

Data/Connectivity:

Just like the last LG handset we reviewed for AT&T, the LG Vu Plus, the Encore has quad-band (850/900/18000/1900 MHz) GSM and dual-band (850/1900 MHz) UMTS connectivity. Albeit, it drops the 7.2 Mbit/s HSDPA speeds of the Vu Plus in favor of 3.6 Mbit/s HSDPA speeds.

At this point, the experience of most AT&T feature phones in the web browsing department are similar thanks to Opera Mini being the default one. Pages load in a decent amount of time and is automatically rendered for use on a mobile handset – meaning that text is automatically adjusted to fit the length of the display. Although scrolling can feel like a monotonous process because of the resistive touchscreen and lack of kinetic scrolling, it doesn't deter from the overall good experience it's able to provide.

Performance:

The earpiece on the handset produces some mind deafening tones that'll make it very easy to hear, however, there is some noticeable static sound in the background which is evident when it's completely silent. Additionally, our callers did sound muffled on our end, but we were still able to make out words thanks to the loud earpiece. Granted, our callers did say that our voice did sound natural in tone. But when using the speakerphone, voices were muffled sounding and muted – so it makes for a challenging experience.

When testing out the LG Encore, we didn't experience any droped calls or gradual changes in signal strength in the greater Philadelphia region.

Using a 900 mAh battery, we were a little unimpressed with the 4 hours of talk time we achieved out of the handset. In contrast, the LG Vu Plus with the same sized battery was able to achieve 5 hours of talk. The manufacturer has the Encore rated for 3 hours of talk and 240 hours of standby time.

Conclusion:

There's no arguing that the biggest thing going for the LG Encore is its inexpensive pricing at $49.99 – making it a lot more forgiving than the $149.99 LG Vu Plus; especially when it functions equally. Naturally, its design does exude a handset that should be priced more, but it easily stands tall amongst other similar handsets in the same boat. With its compact and modern looking design, combined with a decent performance, the LG Encore GT550 should be a worthy option for just about anyone. Sure it may not have the blazing high-end specs of other handsets, but it's nonetheless charming enough to exude one.

LG Encore Video Review: