LG Glimmer Review

Introduction:

Following the current trend for touch-sensitive phones, the LG Glimmer is the first non-smartphone for Alltel Wireless to incorporate a large 2.8” touch display and sliding numeric keypad to attract consumers that might be swayed into buying a similar device elsewhere, such as the LG Voyager, and Vu, or even the iPhone. It has an upscale appearance thanks to its monochromatic charcoal gray exterior and brushed metal battery cover.

The Retail Package includes:

• LG Glimmer phone
• 800mAh battery
• Wall charger
• 3.5mm adapter
• Stylus
• Leather pouch
• Screen protector
• User manual

A data cable is not included, but any microUSB cable can be used with the device.

Design:

The Glimmer is constructed mostly out of charcoal gray plastic around the display, sides, and keypad, with the exception of the metal battery cover. Because of this, it has a very solid feel, more so than the Venus, but comes at the cost of weighing 0.7oz more. This extra weight can easily be felt while the phone is in your hand or pants pocket, but is still less noticeable than the Voyager. Located on the right side are the microUSB port, 2.5mm headset jack, as well as the camera button and volume rocker, with the hold button being on the left side. All external buttons operate well, provide a good “click” response, and are easy to feel with your finger. The 2MP camera and flash are located on the back, next to the hidden memory card slot. It only accepts up to 4GB microSD cards, and is inconveniently positioned under the battery cover, but does allow for hot-swapping without having to turn the device off.





On the front is the 2.8” diagonal 240x400 pixel touch-sensitive TFT display with 262K color support. As with other LG phones that incorporate a touchscreen, the one on the Glimmer is pressure sensitive, meaning that you can use your finger, the included stylus, or even a pen cap as the input method. It operates well and has a useful calibration setting to increase accuracy, but does not allow you to adjust the sensitivity level directly. The display is bright, with good contrast and sharpness, so that images and text will look their best under normal lighting conditions. However, while used in direct sunlight, the display is dark and unable to be viewed, which is also true for most phones today. This is unfortunate, as the display is the main means of operating the device and should be viewable regardless of the surrounding lighting conditions.


Sliding the phone open and closed is easy, as the mechanism is spring-loaded and provides fluid movement. Once opened, the Glimmer reveals the internal 16-key dialpad, which can be used for entering phone numbers or typing messages. It is easy to use, as it offers good tactile feel, with raised separators between the keys and a bright white backlight.

Interface:

The user interface on the Glimmer has been optimized for use with the touchscreen and is closely related to the LG Prada, Viewty, and Vu. The home screen shows various status indicators across the top, such as the signal strength, Bluetooth, SD card, battery level and the current time. Located near the bottom left of the home screen is the shortcuts arrow, which will bring up a list showing 8 commonly used features, but the user can replace each one with 18 other selections. Directly below the shortcuts arrow are icons for the main menu, dial pad, messaging, and contacts.

The main menu is logically laid out into four sections: Phone Options, Multimedia, Tools, and Device Settings. It is easy to navigate between these sections, as it uses tabs along the right side of the screen. There are no included menu themes per se, but does allow the user to select between four different font styles (Gothic, Serif, Joy, and Script) and sizes, background style color schemes (Black, Blue, Pond, and Metal) and menu icons (B&W or Color). This actually allows for more personalization by the user than simply selecting a preloaded theme.

Phonebook:

The phonebook will allow up to 500 contacts to be saved, each with their name, 5 phone numbers, 3 e-mail addresses, group, memo, web site, ringtone and picture. When saving a contact’s phone number, it will allow you to have multiple mobile, home, work, and fax numbers per person. Once a contact is saved, you can then assign them to one of the 98 speed dial locations. Accessing a saved contact is easily done by pressing the phonebook icon on the bottom of the home screen, which will bring all of them up in alphabetical order. You can then choose to scroll through the list, or type in the person’s first or last name, which will automatically begin a search.

Pressing the phone icon located on the home screen will bring up a 12-key dialpad for entering a number to call. We did not experience any problems using the touch-dialpad, as we did with the Samsung Glyde, and were able to use it consistently, instead of the internal mechanical dialpad. However, it is the consumer’s choice as to which one they prefer using, but there is a “cool” factor in using the touchscreen to call someone.

Finding the speaker-independent Voice Command feature can be rather tricky, as it is located in the tools section of the main menu, but can be added by the user to the shortcuts menu. We would have rather of seen a dedicated button for this located on the dialpad or side of the phone. Available commands are Call Name or Number, Voicemail, Missed Calls, Messages, and Time & Date. The most useful of these is the Call Name or Number, which allows you to speak the name of a stored contact or the digits for the phone to dial. This feature is very useful while in a car and can also be used in conjunction with a Bluetooth earpiece. In most environments, the Voice Command had almost no problem understand the names or numbers that we wanted it to call, but some errors did occur while in noisy environments such malls and stores.

Organizer:

When launching the Calendar, it begins by showing you the current month with the date highlighted in yellow. From there, you can move forward or backward one month at a time by pressing the left and right arrows at the top of the screen, select a month or year by using the drop-down list, or type in a specific date to go to. Once the desired date is reached you can add an event, including the Start Time, Name, Repeat, Alarm, and Tone. After an event is saved, it will notify you by playing the designated tone and by displaying the alert information on the screen.

Separate from the calendar are three independent alarms and one quick alarm. The standard alarms allow you to select the desired start time and reoccurrence, while the quick alarm only allows you to set it for 10, 30, or 60 minutes from the current time.

The phone comes with 128MB of internal memory, but is partitioned between different applications and features on the device. Only 37MB are available for multimedia files, such as images, sounds, and videos. Reserved memory shows that it can store up to 400 messages in the inbox, 500 contacts, 300 calendar events, and 20 memos. Luckily, the Glimmer also supports the use of microSD memory cards, but only up to 4GB in size (not SDHC cards). This will provide most consumers with enough space for MP3 music files and saving images and videos from the camera.

Messaging:

It is not considered an advanced messaging device, since it is not a smartphone and lacks a QWERTY keyboard, but does allow for simple text and pictures messages to be sent and received. Text messages can be entered by using the touchscreen or the slide-out dialpad with T9 predictive entry. Picture messages operate the same way, except that you can attach a picture stored in the phone’s memory or microSD card to send to another phone.

Unfortunately, it does not come preloaded with an instant messenger program or e-mail application. However, Alltel’s Axcess Web home page does allow you to use the WAP browser for accessing Yahoo, GMail, AOL, and Windows Live E-Mail accounts.



Connectivity and Data:

The Glimmer is a dual band all-digital device that operates on the 800MHz and 1900MHz CDMA Alltel Wireless network and is capable of roaming on the Sprint CDMA network. Non-voice data, such as Web and E-Mail, are transmitted using the 3G EVDO Rev 0 network, but will default down to the slower 1x Digital while roaming.

Bluetooth version 1.2 is supported and allows for up to 25 pairings. Supported profiles include hands free, headset, advanced audio distribution A2DP/AVRC, object push, dial up networking, file transfer, basic printing, and phone book access. When paired to our Jabra 250v and using it for calls, we were able to get up to 25 feet of static free performance, and with the Motorola HT820 and S9 we were able to get up to 30 feet of stereo music without static.

There is a built in microUSB port to allow for a PC connection, yet the cable is not provided in the retail package. With the phone set-up as USB Mass Storage and connected to a PC, you can directly access the microSD card for copying music, picture, and videos. However, this can also be done with a traditional SD memory card reader.

The Glimmer could made use of an HTML browser for the large display, as one is used on the LG Voyager, Viewty and Vu, but unfortunately comes with a standard WAP browser provided by Openwave Systems. It will connect to Alltel’s Axcess Web home page, which provides links to tones and pics, news, email, socialzone, sports, weather, and entertainment. There is also an address bar to manually enter in other WAP and HTTP sites. While in an EVDO coverage area, most WAP site will load in under 10 seconds, with HTML sites taking 30 seconds or longer (PhoneArena took 45 seconds), but they will not display and format correctly for the screen. Because of the limitations of the browser, we cannot recommend it for people who are interested in viewing normal web site while on the go. A better choice would be a phone with a full HTML browser. However, we were able to use the WAP browser without problem with the Mobile YouTube site and stream videos directly to the phone.

Multimedia:

Located on the back is the standard 2MP camera with flash. The application only takes 2 seconds to load and can be launched through the main menu or directly by pressing the camera button on the right side of the device. You can choose to use the use the entire display as the viewfinder (wide view), but it causes images to look horizontally stretched. Because of this, we prefer using the standard mode (normal view) to preserve the 3:2 aspect ratio. Since the camera lacks autofocus, there is only a 1 second delay in capture an image. However, another 8 seconds is used to save the image, and each time it asks if you want to save to card or to phone and then asks if you want to upload the image to the Axcessmypics.com web site. You can disable the “Axcessmypics.com” message, but even though you select “Save to card” in the settings, it will still ask you for the save location each time. Due to this time delay, we cannot recommend the camera for people who are looking to take several pictures within a few seconds.

Outdoor images have good detail and sharp edges, but colors have a tendency to look oversaturated and darker than they should. We also noticed that interior images have a problem when using the auto white balance, which causes them to have a yellowish hue. We were able to correct this by manually selecting the Tungsten or Fluorescent white balance setting. The flash is considerably weak, providing only 4 feet of usable range, and due to the slow shutter speed, images taken with the flash are often blurry.


Camera Options:

• Flash: On, Off
• View Mode: Normal View, Wide View
• Resolution: 1600x1200, 1280x960, 640x480, 320x240
• Quality: Fine, Normal, Economy
• Memory Storage: Phone, Card
• AxcessMyPics Reminder: Enable, Disable
• Self Timer: Off, 3 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec
• Multishot: 1, 3, 6
• Brightness: 0-11
• Night Mode: On, Off
• White Balance: Auto, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Sunny, Cloudy
• Color Effects: Color, Mono, Negative, Sepia, Aqua
• Templates: On, Off
• Shutter Sound: Sound 1-4, Say Cheese, None

Videos can be recorded at maximum of 320x240 resolution and up to 1 hour in length when a memory card is installed. Watching a recorded video on the phone is best, due to the smaller screen size. Once they are transferred to a PC, and viewed at full-screen, you can see how low quality they are, but are still good enough for posting small YouTube videos.

The music player is very simplistic, as it does not have a lot of bells-and-whistles that other devices may have, but does perform its job quite well. It is capable of listing music by All Songs, Playlists, Recently Played, Artists, Genres, and Albums. Once the song begins playback, the display will show the current track information, as well as icons for rewind, play/pause, and fast-forward. There is also the option to minimize the player to the background. This way you can perform other functions while the music is played, such as sending and reading text messages, accessing the WAP browser, and even taking a picture with the camera. This is a very useful feature and we would like to see it available on other phones. The only area of disappoint regarding music playback is that it uses the earpiece speaker, which greatly limits its quality and volume. However, using a stereo Bluetooth headset or wired earbuds will provide you with a more enjoyable music experience.

Alltel’s Axcess TV program is more closely related to Sprint’s TV service than Verizon’s V Cast, since it is capable of streaming live TV via an EVDO connection directly to the phone. There are a total of 43 channels available, but only 7 of which are live TV broadcasts (MSNBC, ABC News, Fox Sports, Fox News, Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet). The remainders are pre-recoded programs, just like V Cast. Since it relies on EVDO for streaming the video, the image quality is lacking and only supports 176x144 resolution and 15fps. The pales in comparison to Verizon’s Mobile TV service, which operates on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO network and is capable of streaming live TV with 320x240 resolution at 30fps. Regardless, this feature is only designed as a temporary means of entertainment, as most people would not consider watching hours of TV on a phone’s small screen.

Software:

As with most Alltel phones, the Glimmer uses Qualcomm’s BREW format for applications. One of the most useful is Alltel Navigation, which is used for GPS guided directions and cost $9.99 per month. It is equivalent to Verizon’s VZ Navigator, except that the user interface is less graphical and doesn’t look as refined. We were able to use Alltel Navigation around South Florida without problem, as it offers 3D maps and voice guided directions, but lacks the accident re-routing that is on VZ Navigator. There are also options to search and find local gas station prices, restaurants, banks, hotels, movie theaters, malls, clubs, hospitals, and post offices based on your current GPS location. Additional applications and games can be downloaded for a fee directly through Alltel.

Performance:

Both the reception and call quality on the Glimmer were excellent during our testing. We had no problems maintaining a strong signal in South Florida and were able to place and receive calls while traveling into fringe areas. Call quality through the earpiece speaker was also noticeably better than we experienced with the LG Venus and Voyager, as it did not create any distortion, even at high call volumes. People that we called on a landline also agreed that the Glimmer produced good sound quality, with our voice being clear and lacking any interference. The only time we noticed some distortion was when using the speakerphone and raising the volume past medium.

The included 800mAh battery is rated to provide up to 3.5 hours of talk time or 7 days of standby time on a full charge. During our testing, we were able to achieve 4 hours of continuous talk time by fully charging the battery, dialing a landline, and keeping the Glimmer connected until the battery was depleted. Standby time was a lousy 3 days and was measured with the battery fully charged and the Glimmer turned on (yet unused) until the battery was depleted. For those individuals who require more talk and standby time between charges, we would recommend installing an extended battery.

Conclusion:

Overall, we are pleased with our experience while using the LG Glimmer, as it offers numerous features in an attractive and upscale device. The large 2.8” touchscreen is accurate and easy to use while operating different menus and applications. The call quality and reception are both excellent, and the music player offers the ability of playing music in the background. We would have liked to of seen the implementation of an HTML browser and a higher quality camera, since other LG phones offer both. We recommend the LG Glimmer for anyone who is currently an Alltel customer and is looking to upgrade, but will not likely get people to change from their current service just to be able to purchase it, due to the competition of the Voyager from Verizon, Vu and iPhone from AT&T, and Sprint’s upcoming Instinct.