LG GW300 Review

Introduction:

It´s small things that make us happy and feeling good about life... or so the Wiseman said. In the dynamic world of modern communications and multifunctional smartphones, however, the situation appears slightly different. We all like to have the latest, most powerful devices that sometimes come with functionality that far too few people really need. With the current review we are neither trying to contest the advantages of having a proper web browser on your handset, nor make a cult of feature phones.  Let´s just have some good time in the company of the LG GW300 and its cool design.

Design:

The LG GW300 comes with a design that is best referred to as youthful. Does that mean that grown-up people would find it unappealing or unsuitable for them? Not at all. Anyone who´s not predominantly into cell phones in black and grey color solutions might like the GW300.



You can compare the LG GW300 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Did we mention the LG GW300 is aimed at people who text a lot? Well, we are doing it now. Thanks to the full QWERTY keyboard on its front side, the GW300 is a relatively wide handset. This has allowed the manufacturer to integrate a 2.4-inch display with landscape orientation. Its resolution is 320x240 pixels and it delivers acceptable image quality.

The buttons around the navigational pad have interesting design and it´s them, more than anything else that give the GW300 its youthful look. We are also quite happy to find out they are really easy to press. However, what’s more important is how the buttons of the QWERTY keyboard stack up? As expected, they are quite tiny and don´t have the slanting profile of the BlackBerry Bold  9700 or Samsung CorbyTXT B3210, meaning you would have to press them with your fingertips. It´s a good thing they all have pronounced travel and feel pleasing to press. Moreover, their backlighting is intense enough and you will be able to clearly see them in the dark. As a whole, we are quite satisfied with the keyboard, it even allows for fast text entry.



Another positive aspect about the design of the LG GW300 is the fact that the microSD slot is on one of the sides of the handset. The top side hosts standard microUSB port and 3.5mm headphone jack. Aside from the 2-megapixel camera itself, what you can find on the back is also a small mirror and oddly shaped opening of the loudspeaker that also contributes to the fresh overall look.



Let us emphasize once again that the LG GW300 is not suitable for anyone who happens to be into austere shapes and conservative color solutions. If you, however, believe that some red and blue won´t hurt and like handsets with front QWERTY keyboards, the GW300 is definitely worth your attention.

Interface and Functionality:

You can only see three contacts at a time in the phone book of the LG GW300 and this is somewhat uncomfortable really, but easy to explain with the landscape orientation of the display. Fortunately, there is a search pane at the top that´s handy to use along with the QWERTY keyboard.



Calendar, alarms, notes... nothing coming out of left field about the functionality of the standard applications of the LG GW300. However, we need to take a closer look at its texting and social networking capabilities, because that´s what the phone is all about.



Creating an email account is a pretty standard procedure – you have support for POP and IMAP servers and automated setup with popular service providers like Gmail and Yahoo! Unfortunately and for some reason, we were unable to use the email function of our unit.



A built-in application for the most popular social network service, Facebook, comes preinstalled on the LG GW300. It´s JAVA-based, of course, but feels enjoyable to use on the overall. It does a great job if you feel up to going over profiles, writing to online buddies, updating your status... you can even browse picture galleries and surprisingly, everything is carried out at an acceptable speed through the EDGE connection. Congratulations to the developer team of Opentech!



There are no other preinstalled applications for social networking, but you have an HTML browser that is, frankly, nothing to write home about, but will do the job if you need to visit Twitter´s mobile page. All attempts to load heavier websites lead to messages about insufficient system memory.



The LG GW300 is equipped with 2-megapixel, unpretending camera. Snapshots sport average amount of details, but colors look incredibly thin. The handset captures videos at the far too low resolution of 176x144 pixels and their best application would be to send them in MMS messages or watch them directly on the cell phone.





The GW300 is a relatively decent music player, thanks to the 3.5mm jack it´s equipped with plus the audio playback quality through an ordinary set of headphones (we couldn’t test the boxed pair) proved to be quite good indeed. Sound packs enough punch, bass frequencies are proper and... well, we´re satisfied with the phone. Its only disadvantage in this respect is the lack of support for microSDHC cards.



If you feel like watching videos on the 2.4-inch screen, just keep in mind you need to convert them to MPEG-4 with resolution identical to that of the screen, i.e. 320x240 pixels.

Performance and Conclusion:

Even though the sound through a pair of decent headphones is good indeed, the in-call quality is simply appalling. Everything is loud enough on our end, but there is annoying crackling with the volume going at full blast, meaning you would have to the decrease it with at least two steps. Even then, the quality is mediocre at best. Things are rather worse on the other end of the line, voices are so quiet and unreal, that you can easily confuse the caller with somebody else.

In moderate usage scenarios with a lot of navigating around various menus and screen brightness set to maximum, the battery of the LG GW300 (900mAh) gets flat relatively fast - in about two days, which is not enough for a phone like this really. What a shame.

The LG GW300 can by no means replace your smartphone, but is a great device for anyone who prefers texting to talking and likes to have access to Facebook anytime. We are also impressed at the music playback performance of the device. Unfortunately, these are pretty much all the advantages of the GW300. If you need a device with richer functionality, say better camera or larger screen, you will need to shell out more cash. The LG GW300 is just an affordable, likeable cell phone with decent QWERTY keyboard. Good alternatives are the Samsung CorbyTXT B3210, as well as the CorbyPRO B5310, which is equipped with a touchscreen and more features.

LG GW300 Video Review: