Touchscreen aside, the music player is one of the main features. There is a dedicated audio chip to enhance the sound, a slider to instantly turn the device into a music player, a 3.5mm audio jack and built in speakers for music or the FM radio. With the Nokia 5230 XpressMusic you can download music at mobile broadband speeds, there is also the ability to transfer music to and from your device via a USB cable or Bluetooth. The 5230 has 70MB of internal memory but can be expanded to 16GB with a microSD card. Up to 33 hours of music can be played with a single charge of the battery.

Compare all Nokia 5230 XpressMusic deals

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More or less the same device as T-Mobile’s (and soon to be AT&T’s ) Curve 8520 , the 8530 differs a bit: it adds GPS into the fold and runs on EV-DO Rev. 0 networks. We’ve been putting it through our patent-pending stress test this week, so hit the break to check out our thoughts. Hardware Believe it or not, this phone is built surprisingly well, and despite weighing only 105g, the 8530 feels solid enough to make us feel confident that dropping it won’t result in tears .

The rubberized sides coupled with textured faux carbon fiber plastic battery cover provide for a nice grip, and there are no creaks and moans. The keypad is more or less the same keypad as seen on the 8300 Series and 8900 and is really easy to adjust to. Some people might be put off by the clickity-clack noises it makes while one types away, but we found this particular model to be much more quiet than the aforementioned devices. We don’t think we need to say anything about the camera other than its a fixed-focus 2 megapixel affair.

Okay, we lied, we do have something to say. Having a poor camera is bad, but having a poor camera with no flash seriously sucks. We mean, come on — even the bloody Pearl Flip had a flash. The one minor hardware issue we did have with our review unit is that the trackpad wobbled. This didn’t negatively impact navigation, although feeling it move and hearing it click with every movement of our thumbs started to really get on our nerves.

A/V Calls made on the 8530 sound pretty good, but we did notice the earpiece gives off more of a hiss than most handsets. The speaker, while a bit muffled and somewhat limited in range is quite nice considering the price of the phone and we were able to crank it up high without any complaints. Apart from the occasional YouTube video linked to in an email, watching videos isn’t something we’re really into with this device. We’re not only saying this because we’re afraid that Sergio Leone would rise from the dead and kick our butts for watching something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on a 2.5″ display, but because at that size QVGA just isn’t enough. Listening to music on the 8530 isn’t a bad experience (unless you use the included headset).

The multimedia keys on the top of the device are a nice touch and we like the fact that syncing music with iTunes and Windows Media Player is simple with BlackBerry Media Sync. We just have one question: why does the music stop when you activate the camera? Software and Performance What’s there left to say about the BlackBerry OS… It’s as polarizing as abortion. So instead of getting up on a soap box and turning this review into an essay, we’re going to keep this short. The Curve 8530 we received was running OS 5.0.0.337 and straight out of the box it had 114.18MB of 256MB free. All of the typical Verizon apps like City ID, V CAST Music/Videos/Song ID, VZ Navigator and Visual Voicemail come pre-loaded.

Overall the 8530 runs smoothy thanks in part to its 528MHz processor, but it did seem to enjoy freezing up on three occasions. By freezing we don’t mean the device crashed and rebooted; it just sort of sat there and did absolutely nothing for a good 10-25 seconds.

We’re not sure if we were pushing the device too hard or if the OS has some flaws that need fixing, so we’ll just have to wait until the first maintenance release is doled out by Verizon to see if that fixes the problem. How’s the browser, you say? It’s still pretty sucky, and what suckiness remains isn’t exactly helped out by the QVGA display.

Thankfully RIM is hard at work on its WebKit-based browser as you’re reading this, but until then all isn’t lost because there are quite a few decent third-party browsers such as Opera Mini and Bolt! that are ready and waiting to be downloaded. Final Thoughts We’re really torn about the Curve 8530. On one hand we think it’s a great little smartphone that will please a large number of people at the somewhat decent price of $99.99 on a 2-year .

The only problem is that you can get something like the BlackBerry Tour 9630 with a better keypad, display, camera and international support for a few dollars more, if even that (we found a bunch of online retailers offering both the 8530 and 9630 for free on contract this morning). Of course the “upgrade” to the 9630 would come at the price of Wi-Fi and that oh-so-sweet optical trackpad. So what’s our final word? Go the your local dealer and take the Curve 8530 for a spin. If you like it, great. Go nuts and buy it. But if you don’t, by all means get something else. Just don’t say it’s not a capable smartphone.

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When Microsoft finally launched Windows Mobile 6.5 earlier this year, there may have been lots of fanfare, but there was little honest excitement. After a tepid showing at MWC in Barcelona followed by the proper launch this October, no one was exactly up in arms over the OS, though support from the big M’s partners was characteristically plentiful. Still, there was nary a ray of light to be seen in the otherwise bleak and basic landscape of handset offerings… until the HD2 came along. In August of this year, HTC showed off what seemed to be one of the few Windows Mobile devices capable of generating honest enthusiasm. The massive, full touchscreen device boasts impressive specs: a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a generous 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 capacitive WVGA touchscreen display, a 5 megapixel camera, GPS, and lots of other bells and whistles. But the centerpiece here isn’t the hardware, it’s HTC’s totally revamped user interface, Sense , which doesn’t just hide Windows Mobile 6.5 — it all but zaps it out of existence. Sadly for Microsoft, that’s the most enticing part of this equation. So, is the HD2’s new face enough to quell the bad vibes of Windows Mobile and make the platform seem viable again, or is that a challenge which takes more than just a coat of paint? We’ve taken a hard look at the phone… so read on to find out.

Hardware

The HD2 is a magnificent monster. It is a hulking, intimidating, massive slab of a gadget. If you think the device looks big in photos, it’s nothing compared to how it seems up close. Yes, the HD2 is large — some might say too large — almost less a phone and more a tablet. We don’t happen to fall into the camp that has complaints about a device of this size (the whole thing measures 4.74-inches up and down by 2.64-inches across), in fact, we love the bulk and surface area of the HD2. Of course, not everyone will feel as affectionate about the size as we do, and even though the phone is a svelte 11mm (0.43-inches) thick, the sheer vastness of the handset might be a turnoff to some; to be fair, small-handed folks might have trouble getting comfortable with their grip. The industrial design of the device itself is perfectly at home with its contemporaries in the smartphone space, and the metal and glass unit comes off feeling like a kind of large, first-gen iPhone (minus the gaudy bezel). It strikes just the right middle ground between sophisticated and ostentatious — and we think it’s a winning mix. (Scroll down to continue)

The basic layout of the HD2 is uncluttered and uncomplicated, providing only a few hardware buttons, and leaving the rest of the navigation up to that beautiful screen. On the front of the device are a set of standard hard keys: phone, home, a Windows key, back, and end. Around the left side is a thin volume rocker, along the bottom is the micro-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack, and the backside reveals an oddly protruding camera — it really stands off the rest of the phone. In all it’s a handsome and useful mix, but given all this real estate, a ringer on / off switch and dedicated camera button would have been welcome inclusions.

Internals

Much fuss has been made about the guts of the HD2 — mostly due to the inclusion of the heavily hyped 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a first for HTC. We won’t lie; this thing blazes. For a WinMo device (or any device, for that matter), the HD2 is one of the most fluid and snappy that we’ve tested. Applications open up like whip cracks, scrolling through menus in the graphically intense Sense UI is buttery smooth, and the overall speed of the phone feels accelerated compared to its competitors — especially in the Windows Mobile space (including HTC’s other offerings). Aside from the ‘dragon, the device sports 512MB of ROM, 448MB of RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, an auto-focusing 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, a microSD slot (supporting up to 32GB cards), a 3.5mm headphone jack, plus an accelerometer, proximity sensor, and light sensor on-board. To say it’s stacked is an understatement; hardware-wise, the HD2 joins the ranks of devices like the Droid, N900, and Liquid in the new class of high-end smartphone.

Display

As we said before, the display is really the centerpiece of the HD2. The combination of the size and resolution makes a significant impression when you first reach for the phone, and that feeling doesn’t wear off quickly. The display is thankfully capacitive and multitouch (a hand-rolled concoction from HTC, not available in Microsoft’s stock WinMo 6.5 build), and looks tremendous whether under low light or in sunnier conditions. We wouldn’t say the outdoor performance was mind blowing, but it’s certainly easier on the eyes than lots of its rivals, and the size of the display helps with general clarity in less than ideal situations. In terms of color and contrast, the HD2’s screen is a champion. Images and video looked saturated but not drenched, and blacks seemed superbly deep to us. On the touch front, the HD2’s display seemed ultra-responsive to us when zooming through pages. What was particularly nice was using HTC’s impressive on-screen keyboard in portrait mode on the phone. Right out of the gate we had no problems entering text quickly and accurately, and the girth of the phone coupled with the super-smart predictive text input made tapping out messages a breeze. With a UI as heavy on the visuals and touch interaction as the Sense Experience, you expect a lot from a screen, and the HD2 certainly delivers.

Camera

The HD2’s 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash is only part of the cameraphone experience; software factors in heavily, too, and HTC has loaded up the device with its own special blend of camera / photo management apps. At the outset, we felt that the device was capable of really solid picture-taking, offering more than adequate standard shots and decent macro with excellent focal lengths for the small lens. We ended up with a handful of nice images — the focus time was

sufficient, and while the color balance seemed a bit mismatched to our subjects, it wasn’t a show stopper by any means. In general, the camera performed dutifully, and seemed on par with many of the HD2’s contemporaries. We can’t say that’s a consistent feeling we have about this camera, however, due to the incredibly buggy experience the software provided when trying to capture video. Switching to video mode caused the device to stutter into the secondary functionality with a not-so assuring hiccup and jump. Once we were able to actually shoot, what we saw on-screen was a laggy, jerky mess. The refresh rate was abysmal — perhaps 5 FPS. We experienced similar problems when going from dark to light settings with the still mode, but nothing like what we saw when shooting video. The real insult happened once we completed shooting; when trying to play back the video, not only did it never load, but it crashed out the app and forced us into a nice Windows Mobile error screen. The experience was a quick and painful reminder that no matter how pretty the window dressing is here, HTC has staged its fashion show in a building that should be scheduled for demolition.

Coincidentally, some HD2s in the field are afflicted with a strange issue causing the images to come out with strong pink casts, and admittedly, our unit did have an odd hue in some shots; HTC has yet to determine whether this’ll require a hardware or software fix, but for the sake of current owners, we’re hoping it’s the latter.

Speaker / earpiece

The sound on the HD2 was certainly more than passable. We wouldn’t say it was Droid-level clarity, but HTC has done an admirable job of equipping the phone with a solid, loud speaker, and a decently clear earpiece. We mainly tested the unlocked device on T-Mobile, which handled calls well, and there was little-to-no distortion or noise for both sending and receiving. The speaker had no trouble handling our conference calls (of which there have many lately… hello redesign), and all callers reported clear signals from our end. Generally there was little to report of note, suffice to say that the HD2 held up well in tests, and certainly can’t be knocked on sound quality.

Software

Ultimately — as most avid readers of the site are probably thinking — the HD2 questions aren’t really about the hardware (impressive though it may be). No, the questions you likely have about the HD2 concern the software side… more specifically, HTC’s Sense Experience UI and its marriage to the newly (kinda) minted Windows Mobile 6.5. This is where the phone ultimately shows its true colors, and where we think the meat of this review lies.

If you don’t know (and honestly, you don’t?), HTC has moved on from its TouchFLO interfaces into decidedly more mature and sophisticated territory with Sense. Instead of simply skinning some of the elements of Windows Mobile, the company has eradicated major parts of the OS, created a handful of really dense and useful applications and utilities, and added functionality like multitouch pretty much throughout the OS. The Sense Experience is based on a simple use paradigm; the lower part of the display is lined with small icons — shortcuts to applications and widgets — on a potentially endless, scrollable list, while the majority of your view up top is used to display the application or widget itself. The widgets are either self-contained programs, or hook into more in-depth apps, usually activated by a single tap on the main content of that particular view. Because the Sense UI is shared by both Windows Mobile and Android now, not all of these applications will seem completely fresh. For instance, the company has bundled its Twitter client, Peep, with the HD2 (as on the Hero / Eris), as well as the geotagging photo program Footprints, and has skinned the mail, message, and homescreen views with Sense’s polished style and functionality. The home view is of particular note; HTC has created a combo clock, weather report, calendar notification, and application launcher which is not only really useful, but incredibly attractive. One of the really jaw-dropping points of the phone is its animated weather displays in this view, which take over the entire display with rainstorms, lens flares, and banks of clouds moving in from the screen edges. It’s a delightful — if totally useless — example of just what this platform can do.

But it’s not just the surface stuff that’s gotten an upending here — HTC has gone to the trouble of fully revamping or removing basic components of Microsoft’s OS too. To begin with, the on-screen keyboard has been replaced with HTC’s variation, a multitouch, word-guessing whiz that makes most other virtual keyboards look like bad punchlines by comparison. We’d say that HTC’s QWERTY is probably the nearest competitor to Apple’s iPhone / iPod touch variation at this point, especially on the HD2, which allows for a wide, comfortable typing experience whether you’re in landscape or portrait. Not only is the keyboard responsive and smart with corrections, but the Snapdragon CPU (and we assume solid code) helps keep lagging down to a minimum… though we did see some lag at points (more on that in a bit). Generally — it’s an impressive and easy-to-use touchscreen keyboard, and probably one of the best and most essential improvements to Windows Mobile.

The company has also totally replaced the dated and depressing Windows Media Player with its own solution — a robust, visually enticing app that not only handles media about a thousand times better than Microsoft’s version, but could be said to compete with (or best) Apple’s mobile media tools. The music player includes its own variation of Coverflow (again, a welcome parlor trick), and allows navigation of your library through a system nearly identical to the main and contact screens. On the photo and video side, HTC provides a flipbook in the widget view, and a browser almost identical to the iPhone’s slide and view functionality… replete with multitouch gestures like pinch to zoom. We dare you to try that on a Pure or Imagio.

Another area where HTC has radically changed Microsoft’s default experience is in the phone / dialer / contact component; here the company provides a much more thoughtful and attractive alternative, integrating contact lists, messaging, the dialpad, and search functionality with the common slider navigation found in the UI at large. The phonemaker has also fully replaced Microsoft’s calendar with a version of its own that’s been rolled, and retooled all manner of odds and ends on the device, including the task manager (an old habit for HTC) and wireless networking — in fact, most of the settings on the phone have been restyled for Sense.

In addition to all the basic improvements and tweaks, HTC also swaps out Internet Explorer for its own customized version of Opera Mobile. In our experience, the browser performs far, far better than the stock option, but still isn’t quite up to snuff in comparison to Mobile Safari, Maemo 5’s Mozilla-based browser, or the Pre / Pixi WebKit variations. In fact, while Opera seemed really solid, we’d say that even the Android browser outclasses it in basic rendering and smoothness. On the flip side, if you don’t mind Internet Explorer 6, the included native browser offers Flash support out of the box, but the experience was a bit of a mixed bag for us. Honestly, we don’t know what the fuss about Flash on smartphones is right now — none of them (not even this one) seem really powerful enough to handle it in a comfortable way. Between the two options here, we’d pick Opera over IE every time — Flash or not.

All of these improvements are really handsome and obviously quite welcome, but when push comes to shove, what really matters is the phone’s performance. So, does Sense make Windows Mobile 6.5 a great OS? Does it circumvent or fix some of the obvious shortcomings of the aging platform? In a word… no. While there are many cases on the phone where Sense corrects issues that Microsoft’s mobile operating system has right now, there are also many places where plain-jane Windows Mobile rears its head — and that thing ain’t pretty. Obviously HTC couldn’t go about rewriting every app out there to play nice with its UI, but once you dig down into certain areas of the phone, you get that creeping feeling that you’re not in Kansas anymore. Not anywhere close. Look, we’re not asking for much, but when you’re using Excel, it would be nice to be able to use the accelerometer functionality to get a landscape view — instead, that kind of natural, familiar movement isn’t present at all. In other areas, it’s just the plain clunkiness of WM that ruins the experience; sure, the new homescreen and its staggered icon arrangement are fine, but take a look at the file browser, or even Outlook, which is what HTC’s nice (though not very functional) mail widget dives down into. It reminded us most of looking at the Palm OS at the end of its lifecycle. And that’s not good.

Another issue — one we encountered more than we would have liked while working on this review — is that the phone itself actually can be quite unresponsive and sluggish at times, both within the Sense interface, and while using straight-up Windows Mobile apps. To be honest, that was quite a surprise to us, as we figured that regardless of the underlying OS’s age, throwing the kind of horsepower the HD2 has at it would solve most issues. Instead what we found is that despite the power, Windows Mobile (and HTC’s UI) still exhibit the kind of major slowdown, stuttery screens, and outright freezes that would drive many users up a wall.

In particular, we experienced lots of starts and stops when waking the phone up from sleep — even the slide-to-unlock function didn’t work sometimes — and when jumping into and out of apps when we had already loaded a few up. HTC claims that the device will auto-kill background processes when memory is getting too full, but it really didn’t seem to be putting anything away while we were working. We also saw lots of lag when trying to get Peep to update, loading up emails, and (gasp) quite a bit during those fancy weather transitions; we would blame it on the network, but we were on WiFi the majority of the time, and c’mon — a slow data connection shouldn’t freeze your phone anyhow. We had issues while browsing and listening to music at the same time; the track playing would actually cut out sometimes and the browser would hang during a page load. And you know that awesome keyboard we mentioned earlier? It is really great, except when it starts to lock up for no reason at all. We had some frustrating moments trying to tap out a message as the phone went into ice mode, struggling to finish sentences as the keyboard response was far behind our actual taps. Now we’re not saying this was the norm — it definitely was not — but it happened enough to make us pause at the thought of making something like the HD2 our full-time device.

To be clear, the phone was perfectly snappy and usable the vast majority of the time, but some of the slowdown and lagginess we saw was upsetting, and a little too commonplace for our liking. It’s obvious that HTC has a beast of a UI here (we mean that in a good way), but sometimes it can feel downright beastly.

Battery life

As with most smartphones we test these days, the HD2’s battery life was sufficient, though not by any means breathtaking. On an average day of use, we could power through till evening without need a recharge, though if we were on the phone a lot, we found the drain to be fairly noticeable. We got the overwhelming impression that WM 6.5 isn’t perfectly optimized for data-heavy devices like the HD2 — phones getting constant emails, IMs, Twitter updates, and pulling down robust webpages. Still, the device held up decently in our tests (it didn’t strike us as terribly distinct from something like the iPhone 3GSs battery performance), and given the gigantic screen and 1GHz CPU, that’s pretty heartening.

Wrap-up

In the auto industry, there’s a concept known as coachbuilding by world-renowned firms like Bertone, Zagato, Karmann, and Fisker — a nearly century-old boutique industry of brilliant designers and craftsmen taking existing vehicles from big manufacturers and turning them into beautiful, customized works of art. The end results are almost always more stunning than the starting point, a testament to the spectacular creativity, talent, and flexibility of both the coachbuilder and the stock car’s components.

What does any of this have to do with the HD2, you ask? Well, in the world of coachbuilding, the designer always starts with a great car — always. No exceptions. You need a great canvas to make a great painting, so to speak, which is why cars from manufacturers like Ferrari are frequent targets for the business. That’s where HTC continues to go wrong: they’ve proven time and time again that they are the Pininfarina of the phone world, but they’re building their masterful works of art around the technological equivalent of an ‘84 Caprice. You can only hide so much, only conceal the phone’s true underpinnings so well.

The HD2 pulls this smoke-and-mirrors magic trick more convincingly than any WinMo-based HTC before it. That’s not up for debate — it’s a fact — and for folks who want to stay on the platform but want to run as far away from the stock experience as possible, the HD2 is the answer. Actually, you could say it’s “the answer” for Windows Mobile 6.5, period — this is easily the best WinMo device ever made, with world-beating hardware and a spec sheet that’d make any geek drool. Ultimately, though, it’s going to take a thorough revamping of the core to make even the best “coachbuilt” WinMo-based HTC phone an easy recommendation, and that requires a commitment on Microsoft’s part that we haven’t yet seen. Will we get there before competing platforms — like HTC’s Android stable, for instance — take over? Only time will tell.

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On the bottom of the phone there is a black area that is used for finger and thumb swipes. At the middle of the are you will find a small ball (metallic). The ball looks like a trackball but it’s just a button used to call the cards user interface.

The screen is a touchscreen, with the same resolution as the iPhone, 480 x 320. The colors are clear and bright as can be.

Check out more photos of the Palm Pre below (Click to enlarge).

Why the Palm Pre could be an iPhone Killer? Watch Palm Pre video below

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Touch screen phones combining a QWERTY keyboard are becoming more common nowadays. This offers consumers a wider range of capabilities which appeal to text messengers. The LG Vu has been around for quite some time now on AT&T’s lineup which gave the Prada-like appeal to U.S. consumers. Building upon the success of the Vu, the LG Xenon GR500 tried to take it to another level by offering a QWERTY and updated interface. All the while, it retains similar dimensions to make it a compact device without adding too much bulk to its frame. It is targeted those who want a QWERTY and like the ease of navigating via touch screen, but it not the successor to the Vu which is a little bit more stylish appeal.

The package contains:

• LG Xenon
• Charger
• USB Cable
• Quick Start Guide

Design:

We’re glad to see that the size of the LG Xenon GR500 to be similar to the Vu in terms of overall dimensions even with a slide-out QWERTY. This is great because you would generally see an overall size increase when additions are made to an existing device. Corners are rounded with a chrome border outlining the outside of the phone that gives it a nice contrast. Although the blue plastic material used for the body of the Xenon does not feel as cheap as the Vu, it feels durable due to the added weight (3.81 oz). And you won’t notice any bulge if you place it in your pocket because it almost has the same thickness (0.62”).

One of the few things that the LG Xenon GR500 scales back on this phone is the screen size. The 2.8” resistive touch screen has a resolution of 240×400 pixels with 262k colors. It’s quite responsive and we did not find ourselves to be constantly pressing something to perform an action. Colors are pretty well differentiated, although black levels are nowhere close to what some recent AMOLED screens produce. You can see whatever is on screen clearly when we placed the brightness to the highest setting even in direct sunlight.

The three buttons found below the screen are the send, end, and task manager menu button. They are flush with the surface, well sized, and have a good tactile feel making easy to press. Turning the volume up or down can be accomplished by the volume rocker which is found on the left side. Holding down the volume down key will place the phone on vibrate mode. You can lock the Xenon to prevent random button presses from occurring with the key on the right side. The dedicated camera button and microSD card slot are also located on the same side. We’re glad to see that LG decided to go with a microUSB port for charging and connecting to a computer. It’s even better because the USB cable packed in the box can charge the Xenon through a computer or plug adapter. On the back, you’ll find the 2-megapixel camera with an LED flash and the speaker phone next to it. Finally, removing the back cover reveals the battery (950 mAh) and SIM card slot.

You can find the four row QWERTY keyboard by sliding the phone from left to right. It’s a little cramped with no spacing in between each rectangular shaped keys, but they do provide a decent tactile feel. The navigation keys on the keyboard can’t be used to guide through the menus except to move the cursor when typing text. There are a bunch of dedicated buttons found on the QWERTY to quickly launch certain applications such as the phonebook, IM client, mobile e-mail, and web browser. We did not have any problems using the keyboard, but people with larger fingers may find it too small.

Software and Features:

At its core, the LG Xenon GR500 has the same interface that is found on the Vu with some additions to the home screen. It’s still not as good looking as the new S-Class interface that LG uses in their European counterparts. There are three icons on the top portion of the display that changes the layout of the home screen. You’ll find the contacts list, launcher for you favorite applications, and the default home screen. Widgets have become a staple; and the Xenon is yet another phone to make use of them. There are a total of only six widgets that you can drag onto the default home screen.: the analog clock, media player, memo pad, picture viewer, calendar, and world clock. Although not quite as polished as the TouchWiz interface found on Samsung phones, it gets the job done by giving it a personalized look. There isn’t too much room on the screen for all the widgets to be on at the same time; so you’ll need to pick and choose wisely. When placing one onto the default home screen, it has this jerky movement as you drag it. There are four icons on the bottom side of the display that are stationary. Pressing them will get you to your phone dialer, address book, messaging, and main menu. Once you select the main menu icon, it will give you the tabbed interface found on the Vu. Some animations are accompanied after you press a tab, but its nothing fancy looking about it. Navigating through the menus will be a breeze for just about anyone without any sacrifice in experience. Some applications will run only in landscape view like the mobile email program.

Somewhat less than some other similar phones, the Xenon can save up to 500 contacts. We were a little disappointed to see that you can’t store other pertinent information when you make a new contact. You’re only limited to a handful of things such as two phone numbers, an email address, and a short memo.

One of the main draws of the phone is its keyboard for messaging. Typing up a message can be completed by using the generic virtual keypad with or without the aid of T9 predictive texting. Unfortunately, there is no option for a virtual QWERTY if you place the phone in landscape. It’s not too much of a problem because the QWERTY does a fine job. The only problem we had with it was the lack of a shift button which means you have to constantly press the caps button instead.

Just like other non-smart phones we’ve seen recently, you’ll be able to set up specific email accounts. Providers such as Yahoo, AOL, and Windows Live Hotmail are some of the big names supported on the phone. If your specific provider is not listed on the application, such as Gmail, you won’t be able to use it.

Camera and Multimedia:

We were hoping to see LG upgrade the camera on the LG Xenon GR500, but it is stuck with the same 2-megapixel one found on the Vu. The interface is a simple one with four icons on the right side used to view the album, take a photo, turn on/off the flash, and options menu. You can modify some items such as the image size (320×240, 640×480, 1280×960, 1600×1200), brightness, color effects, and white balance. Images taken in low lit areas came out with bland colors, fuzziness, and poor detail. We were expecting photos taken in well lit outdoor areas to produce better results. Unfortunately, colors were still not reproduced accurately with a slight haze over the image.

We were hoping to see LG upgrade the camera on the LG Xenon GR500, but it is stuck with the same 2-megapixel one found on the Vu. The interface is a simple one with four icons on the right side used to view the album, take a photo, turn on/off the flash, and options menu. You can modify some items such as the image size (320×240, 640×480, 1280×960, 1600×1200), brightness, color effects, and white balance. Images taken in low lit areas came out with bland colors, fuzziness, and poor detail. We were expecting photos taken in well lit outdoor areas to produce better results. Unfortunately, colors were still not reproduced accurately with a slight haze over the image.

Videos recorded on the Xenon had similar results to the photos. The maximum video capture resolution is 320×240; making it useful for MMS. For some odd reason, audio from the video had a slight buzzing noise to it. The Xenon is a video share capable device, but we were unable to test this feature out.

Three different audio players can be used to listen to music – you can use the widget based player, music player, or audio player. The music and audio players utilize a similar interface displaying the artist, track name, and a time lapse bar. It is pretty easy to use with three icons on the bottom used to reverse, play/pause, or forward a song. The only difference is that the music player will display the album cover while the audio player will have a visual equalizer running as the song plays. Additionally, exiting out of the audio player will cause the music to stop while the standard music player will continue to play. Finally, the widget based music player will run in the background and also have a bar style equalizer running. You’ll find the usual set of AT&T music programs such as MusicID, XM Radio, and Make UR Tones on the phone.

We were impressed by the video playback on the LG Xenon GR500. After loading a movie trailer clip in 320×144 H.263 format, we watched in amazement how it played perfectly and without any slow down. The quality was equally impressive with great detail and color levels. The audio produced from the speaker was vibrant and audible. The accelerometer will turn the video in either portrait or landscape view if you rotate the phone. The interface is basically the same that is found with the music player. You can even take a snapshot of any part of a video and save it as a photo or set it as your wallpaper.

Internet and Software:

The LG Xenon GR500 is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and dual-band UMTS (850/1900 MHz). You’ll be able to make phone calls if you take it out of the country, but does not support 3G access overseas.

Checking out web pages on the phone was a breeze thanks to its snappy web browser. Mobile sites load up very quickly while more complex sites like ours loaded up after a minute. Once it has completely downloaded everything, you can scroll smoothly in any direction. Pages are rendered correctly like what you would see on a computer. You are given an overall page view of a web site at first, but can zoom in by pressing the associated icon on screen. Additionally, you can open up two different windows and alternate between each. There wasn’t much slowdown when scrolling through longer sites, but you will notice the phone start to lag if you have both windows loading up large sites at the same time. You’ll be able to change the settings to an optimized display for single column viewing to eliminate the need to scroll horizontally.

For travelers on the go, using AT&T Navigator will provide good turn-by-turn directions while offering plenty of local points of interests. The Xenon’s IM client allows you to choose from AIM, Windows Live Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger. Just with other recent phones, you can jump back to the home screen while the IM application runs in the background.

Out of the box, the LG Xenon GR500 comes with 74MB of free memory out of 180MB. Fortunately, it supports microSD cards with capacity of up to 16GB for memory expansion.

Performance:

Call quality on the LG Xenon GR500 was a decent experience with most conversations through the phone being easily understood. Although, there were times when voices sounded almost hollow with some slight background static noise. On the other end, callers said that they had no problems hearing our voice. Using the speaker phone also produced some distortion when there was silence, but we were still able to hear callers perfectly when placed on the highest volume. Callers did say that there was a slight echo when we talked and our voices sounded a little bit on the low side.

The Xenon is rated for 4 hours of talk-time and about 264 hours of standby. Surprisingly, those specs are better than the Vu which had a slightly larger battery. While testing out the phone, we had the brightness of the screen set to the highest setting. We managed to get out over 7 days of normal use before the battery was completely drained.

Conclusion:

So here we are again with another QWERTY phone. It works pretty well as a touch screen phone and as messaging device. The small form factor of the Xenon is great when pitting against larger ones like the Samsung Impression or AT&T Quickfire. With the inclusion of a widget based home screen and an eclectic mix of personalization options,  the LG Xenon GR500 does make some improvements over the Vu all the while retaining a similar design. It may be enough for some to consider buying, but it just does not warrant anything revolutionary. If LG bumped up some of the specs of the phone such as the camera and fine tuned the new interface; it could have been a stellar device for the U.S. market. Luckily though, it gets the job done in terms of being a good touch screen and messaging phone.

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