| LG LX550 Expert Reviews |
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LG LX550 -- by Joni Blecher Follow me on Twitter--August 28th 2006 |
| Full Review |
| The LG Fusic will likely appeal more to youngsters who want a cell phone that comes with its own sense of style. Yet, its rubberized keypad and durable feel is quite intriguing as well. Initially, there’s a lot to like about the LG Fusic cell phone, it’s customizable, compact and comes in white. Plus, it has decent battery life even when you spend a lot of time playing tunes. But once you delve into using all the features, namely picture and music, you quickly realize you’ll need to subscribe to Sprint’s Power Vision service to make the most of this cell phone. |
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| Call Quality |
Calls and speakerphone: Call quality on the LG Fusic cell phone is decent. We could definitely hear callers fine although we did experience cut-outs during conversations when two people tried to speak simultaneously. Speakerphone quality didn’t offer a huge improvement either. Callers were immediately tipped off whenever we used this feature and had a difficult time understanding us during conversations. As a result, we needed to repeat ourselves often. On the plus side, this cell phone is loud. We typically kept the volume set at medium and rarely used the side volume keys to make it any louder.
Audio quality: Songs played back on the Fusic come through loud and clear either through the cell phone’s built-in speaker or included stereo headset. However, we should note that songs we downloaded from Sprint’s music site did sound slightly better than MP3s we saved on the included storage card and played back on the cell phone. |
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| Ease of Use |
Menu/Phonebook: The menu system on this LG cell phone may appear straightforward initially, but upon closer inspection organization of apps and features is a bit suspect. E-mail and messaging options are in the right place and simple to master. It’s just when you try to get better acquainted with the cell phone’s features things get a bit odd. For example, there’s a Media Player menu but the only available player is a Channel Listing (which you can use to preset FM radio stations). Of course, in order to use this feature you need to connect to the Internet from the cell phone. Similarly, under the My Content folder there’s no listing for the memory card. Instead, it’s the place where you’ll find downloaded content such as Games, Ringers and Screen Savers, but no music. On the plus side, storing names and numbers (you can store five phone numbers, three e-mail addresses, note and web site address for each contact) is extremely straightforward.
Camera/Video: The LG Fusic isn’t just about the music. This cell phone also sports a pretty good 1.3-megapixel camera, which we found is fairly sufficient when it comes to snapping pics. Overall, picture quality is pretty good and we did find that the camera is better at capturing the essence of people instead of scenes. The camera application does have its share of photo-centric tools such as flash, self timer and color tone, which can be used when snapping pics or recording video. Another nice feature is that you have the option of recording short or long videos – this functionality isn’t available on a lot of cell phones.
As mentioned earlier, to make the most of snapping and sending pictures on-the-go you’ll need to register for Sprint’s Picture Mail service, which requires you to get online. Finally, since the lens is located on the back of the LG cell phone you can be sly about taking pictures without attracting too much attention.
Music: Ah, sweet, sweet music…or so we hoped. We thought a cell phone that’s all about playing music and has a 32MB storage card (you can store about 6 songs on the card) in the box would have the music player a little better implemented. First, it’s not exactly easy to find the Music Player. If you choose the Music menu you are taken immediately to Sprint’s Music Store where you can purchase and play music that you’ve downloaded from the site. One plus is that if you purchase a song for the cell phone from Sprint’s Music Store you can go to the company’s designated web site and download a copy of the song to your PC.
The actual player settings are a bit slim, so don’t expect to do much to enhance music played on the Fusic. Like the LG Chocolate, it does have audio options such as Rock, Flat, Concert, 3D Surround. But these extra effects don’t make a difference. If you want to play music you bought from Sprint you’ll have to log onto the music site to play them back. But if you want to play back music stored on the memory card in the cell phone’s external slot, that’s a different story entirely. You first need to find the music , then your best bet is to playback MP3 files that you created from an existing CD.
Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to easily pair the cell phone with a Motorola Bluetooth H500 headset and even a Dell PC running Windows XP. Call quality was perfectly acceptable using a Bluetooth headset. |
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| Design |
Look and Feel: At first glance, you might think the Fusic is a toy cell phone instead of an actual working model because of its playful exterior. But it’s clearly not a toy, though it could survive child’s play with aplomb. One of the nicest features about the LG Fusic is that it’s customizable out-of-the-box. The royal blue faceplate on the front of the cell phone is removable and included in the box are three additional faceplates (hot pink, black, and green); this gives you a total of four faceplates from which to choose. Changing the faceplate is super easy.
While the cell phone is on the slim and compact side (making it better suited for people with smaller hands), it’s insanely easy to find in a bag since it’s bathed in a shiny white plastic. Additionally, the large internal and external displays are fairly bright making it easy to see in most lighting situations – especially direct sunlight. Since the internal screen is not indented (as is the case with the external display) it does tend to attract face grease in a similar fashion to that of the Motorola Razr.
Keypad: The keypad on the Fusic is not for those with larger fingers. The white backlit keys are decidedly smaller than those found on most cell phones. However, the rubberized covering on them make the keys easier to grip. There was another oddity we found with this music phone – there’s no clear, dedicated key that launches the music application. There are, however, two dedicated keys to launch the camera application. We would have preferred if one of the camera keys was a dedicated music key. On the plus side, there is a dedicated speakerphone key – we’re big fans.
When the cell phone is closed, there’s an iPod-esque wheel on the cover designed to help manage playing music. As is the case with Verizon Wireless’ Chocolate cell phone, the external buttons work just like a four-way navi-key and they even make a really cool clicking sound when you touch anywhere on the button pad. |
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| Battery Life |
| The LG Fusic has a few battery saving features that help extend battery life on this cell phone. When we used the Power Save Mode (it dims internal and external displays after 30 to 90 seconds) depleting the battery was a chore. Heavy phone users who make a ton of calls and send/receive loads of text messages daily will need to recharge the cell phone every three to four days. More moderate users will be able to last close to a week before needing another charge. If you are a light user, making just two to three 10 minute calls a day and light texting, the LG Fusic cell phone will last about 10 days. However, if you prefer not to use the Power Save feature and tend to listen to music a lot on this cell phone you can expect battery life to dwindle dramatically faster. |
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LG LX550 Expert Rating
