What's Behind LG's Sweet New Phone?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Anand
I saw this over at Engadget today, it's a video of what many are assuming will be the next-generation Chocolate by LG.
Two things stuck out about the phone; first, its form factor. It's unusually long for a smartphone, but I do remember at least one more example of an unusually long smartphone:
The phone above my iPhone in this pic is actually a mockup of a Moorestown based device that Intel has been showing off for a while. Could the new LG phone be the first Moorestown based smartphone?
The answer is unfortunately, no. Despite the similarities in design to the Moorestown mockup and despite the ridiculously fast UI, there's no Moorestown in this phone. The video lists the phone as coming out in 2009 and Moorestown isn't arriving until 2010. Chances are that this new LG phone is using a SoC based on ARM's Cortex A8. While I don't think it's impossible for the Cortex A8 to deliver such a smooth UI, it is just far more believable that Moorestown could do it.
The second thing that stuck out is obviously the phone's awkward shape. The extremely long phone has a 4" screen, something called an "Active Flash UI" , touch screen keyboard and an active camera UI that lets you smoothly apply filters to your viewfinder before you take your photo (hooray).
Intel and LG do have a good working relationship, but the fruits of their collaboration won't be seen with this phone. That being said, if the video isn't a blatant lie, that's one sweet looking phone.
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T2k - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
Say thank you to the criminal called former FCC boss Kevin Martin, altair boy of Cheney, ex-right hand of "DICK" - he's truly a PoS character, a totally unscrupulous corrupt scumbag.His predecessor Power wasn't much better either but Martin went over the edge and completely destroyed the FCC - he should be charged for numerous federal crimes.
It's our completely corrupt, rotten, crooked market system, nothing else - these 2-yr contracts are RIDICULOUS, complete nonsense.
Also it is simply illegal to block me, the owner of the phone, to use another SIM card.
If I don't pay my bills they got the early termination fee, that's it. Phones should not be locked at all, period.
psonice - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
It looks good, but it also looks like a promotional mock-up rather than a real phone. I very strongly suspect that the UI won't run quite so fast, and it won't look quite so good too. And my faith in samsung actually making a decent 3d UI that doesn't venture into gimmicky or get in the way now and then is pretty low.Still, if they get it to work reasonably smoothly and get the basic apps right, it should be a good phone.
It does look VERY long though.. I'm guessing the screen will be almost as long as the iphone's case, plus there will be the strips on each side. For me, that puts it a bit past phone size, more like a small communications based tablet. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd even go for something a bit bigger if it's powerful and portable enough.
This reminds me of the old palm T3 PDA design though - why don't more companies copy that? It had a 3.5" screen that was part-covered by the bottom of the case, and the case slid open to show the whole thing (making it small (roughly iphone sized) when closed and really tall like the samsung when open). The benefit was simple: big screen, big buttons at the bottom, small device.
Rolphus - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
I don't believe that's a realtime example of the UI. Looking at the Wall-E clip, I'd say the whole thing has been sped up by a factor of 2 or so.I'm also staggered by how many little details are harvested from the iPhone. I guess if you're going to copy a UI, you might as well copy a good one.
T2k - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
I'm always amused when Americans really think iPhone brought anything else than responsive UI to the table... you gotta take a walk down memory lane and check out all the EU and Asian phones from the past decade.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
Word, and this is why I have a problem with Anand reviewing cell phones unless he fully understands the market. It's very hard for a lot of Americans to grasp the entire cell phone market with so many international phones. It's one thing to understand CPU architecture and be able to compare with ARM devices and x86 chips, but it's another to understand the market itself and what's out there. Let Engadget and Gizmodo take care of these things.max347 - Monday, July 13, 2009 - link
Actually looking for phones right now. It seems I can't find anything with wifi/3.5mm/WM6 that isnt the size of a baby's fist.T2k - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
As others said watch out ofr the hardware if you go with WM6 - I';e had MANY WM phones, beginning with v5 and my current X1 hands down wins in every feature or task thanks to its fastest-ever hardware onboard (it's still the reigning fastest WM phone king on the market I believe, latest HTCs simply match it) and Sony's lever X-panel system (by now I literally stopped using anything other than panels.)It is NOT, however, without hiccups - unfortunately WM is inherently a crappy OS, regardless of MS' efforts -, "did it register my click or not" moments but they are greatly exaggerated in WM6 reviews and they are especially ameliorated by SonyEricsson's brutal hardware in this world phone (all bands and flavors of GSM and 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA supported but here, in this Corporate States of America you won't get too much use of it on AT&T's utterly pathetic, previous-gen speeds they dare to call "3G"...)
Did I mention it has even higher screen resolution - 800x480!!! - than your widescreen NTSC DVDs? It's sweeeeeet...
Comes with a 4GB microSD but I got a 16GB Class 6 microSD card under $70...
I'm running WM6.5 - a free upgrade for X1s, slated for Fall release - and it's a quite a lot faster than WM6.1, it makes sense to wait.
There are EXCELLENT panels available, PointUI's Home 2 is THE BEST multi-page home screen, period.
Ah, another good news: Skyfire (WM5-6 browser) is available for download and it comes with FULL FLASH SUPPORT built-in!
Latest Opera Mobile betas are also shaping up very well.
If you say no to WM6 I would say you should probably go with the Pre - it's brand new but already a very-well rounded package and it will just get better (or Palm will die, period.)
Of course, it's only good if you don't travel abroad a lot, otherwise you better wait for its GSM incarnation -another thing slated for Fall release.
Now if you want ALL systems - VZ/Sprint + full GSM/HSM/HSDPA support - in a very potent package then (people will kick me to death here for this) I would suggest to take a look at RIM's Blackberry Storm. Yes, the Storm - I just bought one for someone else and I'm highly impressed: it used to be a slow buggy PoS touchscreen smartphone and with the last two sw/system upgrades it's completely transformed into a highly competent, touchscreen , multisystem world phone with thousands of apps already available.
Do your homework: Amazon has its own promo selling the Storm for $49 (w/ 2-ys VZ contract, of course)!
Since iPhone is not even a multitasking phone, let alone its closed nature I would not recommend unless your only purpose is to listen to music - you can do it on any aforementioned phone, without even using the retarded iTunes syncing crap -, watch stupid YT videos and not be able to tether it to your laptop nor send pictures to other cell phones.
crispbp04 - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
You want the Touch HD. Get it imported from australia (the telstra T8285).The BEST phone on the market. I loaded a custom windows mobile 6.5 rom (Dutty's on xda-developers)
All my iphone friends have phone envy.
It has wifi, 3.5mm headphone jack, 3.8" 800x480 HD screen!! (iphone is 3.5)
Its a nice phone stock but if you load a custom rom on it, it is godly
T2k - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link
It's an Xperia clone - HTC is the contracted mfr behind SE's X1 - without the X-Panels or Xeria's elegant look and solid casing.If you want the best WM phone you ought to buy the Xperia, trust me. :)
Ryanman - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - link
Trust me when I say that getting a WM6 phone will be one of the worst decisions of your life. I dealt with a WM6 phone for more than a year. It could do NOTHING quickly or correctly. Texting was slow and buggy, the phone buttons were too sensitive and hung up on me whenever I put a phone to my face, and installing things was a chore. You'll be stuck with solitaire and a chugging UI the entire time you're saddled with that terrible software.You have the Pre, the G1, and the iPhone. Pick based on what carrier you have and never look back.