the best phone Verizon offers
Written: May 14 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
|
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
|
Pros: small size; great battery life; sturdy construction; stylish; menus are intuitive
Cons: cannot alphabetize phone book; manual not especially helpful; T9 text entry sometimes a pain
The Bottom Line: An excellent phone - costs a bit more than a base-model phone but definitely worth the extra expense.
|
|
|
| mjb2's Full Review: LGIC LG-TM510 Cell Phone |
I recently switched from Sprint PCS to Verizon for service reasons and chose the LG-TM510 as my new phone. I must admit I bought the phone largely on looks, but also because it looked pretty solidly constructed. I paid $149 for it directly through the Verizon Wireless website, but I've heard that it can be found for $120 or so through various retailers.
Calls come through very clearly through both the built-in earpiece and a hands-free device. The phone fortunately does not produce that digital "I'm-in-a-tunnel" sound that sometimes is a problem with wireless — though that may be more a function of the Verizon service than the phone itself.
Perhaps the nicest thing about the LG-TM510 is that the menus and features are easy to figure out by yourself. This is a good thing because the manual that comes with the phone isn't especially helpful — at least I didn't find it so. But regardless, the menus are intuitive enough to make it easy to figure out how to perform most standard functions, like changing the ring tone and volume, key volume, voicemail and text message management, voice memo recording, auto call forwarding, and so on.
All of these standard features are included, along with a few extras that are a nice touch. The built-in calendar and event scheduler is easy to access and use, and has come in handy already. They also threw in a calculator function and an international telephone country-code list, both of which are easy to use and very convenient.
One feature I'm ambivalent about is the T9 text-entry system, which attempts to recognize words you enter on the keypad (e.g., if you want to enter the word "hello" you can do so merely by pressing 4-3-5-5-6, rather than the more cumbersome 44-33-555-555-666 you normally need to enter to cycle through the multiple letters assigned to each number key). Though I'm sure this feature can sometimes come in handy during text messaging, it's a little inconvenient because the phone often thinks it knows the word you're trying to enter but ends up guessing wrong (sort of like that annoying 'Office Assistant' feature in Microsoft Word, which hinders you more than it helps). The main problem is that you must disable T9 each time you enter text — maybe I'm just not used to the feature yet, but for now it would be nice to have a means to disable it more permanently.
The phone book feature is easy to use, especially when entering new names. I especially like the feature that allows you to categorize each new entry as a home number, mobile number, office, fax, pager, etc. so you don't have to specify as such in the name of each entry (e.g., you don't need to waste space putting "Joe cell," "Joe home," "Joe work," etc.). The only thing I don't like about the phone book is that there's no way to sort the entries alphabetically. I'm not sure why that feature couldn't be included, but it would've been nice.
These are really my only complaints with the phone - the important things, such as battery life (3+ hours of talk time, in my experience), call clarity, brightness of the screen, etc., are all fantastic. I especially like the placement of a mini LCD on the outside of the phone, so you can see who's calling you even when the phone is closed. The phone's small size and weight are great, as it's small enough to be convenient but not so small that you'll lose it easily.
Overall, this is a great phone and in my opinion definitely worth the few extra dollars you'll pay if you choose this over a base model. It has most of the features you could want (aside from voice-activated dialing, which I could easily do without) in a small size and a sturdy package.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
mjb2
|
|
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 6 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.