Cheap? Hardly, just another one of my phone experiences.
Written: Jan 25 '09
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Pros: Design, MP3, camera, call quality, display
Cons: Battery life, quality
The Bottom Line: Don't bother with this phone. For about the same price, you can get a better phone with a better battery. Fun while it lasted.
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| shadowsassy's Full Review: LG CU500 Cell Phone |
Instead of extending for two years with T-Mobile to get a new phone, I opted for the "lightly used" CU500 off of E-Bay. At $69.99, it seemed to be a good phone at a good price. CNET reviews, feature list, it all checked out fine. Then things got worse.
Design:
As with most 2006 phones, the CU500 attempts to mimic the Motorola Razr. And it does a pretty decent job. The casing is shiny black, a welcome relief from the usual silver and the exterior display is absolutely stunning. Included on the front, beneath the external screen, are three handy keys for listening to music.
On the side, about a third of the way down, is a volume rocker, which comes in useful during a call. However, it has no effect while the phone is closed.
Beneath the volume rocker is a soft key. While the phone is closed, this button enables you to take a picture or video using the external display.
The camera is on a circular "ball" suspended between the screen hinges. As a result, the camera can rotate 180 degrees.
Inside, the phone has a bright, but not especially colorful, 65k color screen. Keys are par-sized, yet easy to dial by feel. The top part of the screen is taken up by a monster speaker, leading to excellent speakerphone quality.
The battery is quite unique: it also serves as the back cover, yet is easily removable. Under the battery lies the miniSD card slot, a pain to access and an even bigger pain to remove, as the card will lie plush with the phone and require long nails to remove.
Features
The CU500 has a laundry list of features, including camera, MP3 player, video streaming, 3G, real web browsing and others. Text messaging is also included, and is easy to use with the predictive text entry, although the dictionary can take some getting used to.
The camera is sufficient, as is the video quality. Not really suitable for Youtube videos (all the videos I uploaded were rated three stars for low quality). There are plenty of settings on the camera and even a photo editor for editing undesirable photos.
The MP3 player is good, maybe not enough to replace your iPod, though it does include some clever visualizations. These also appear on the front display with the phone closed. Audio quality is decent through the large loudspeaker.
Call Quality
Call quality is excellent, no complaints. No echoing, muffling, reverb or otherwise.
So I know what you are thinking. How could I hate a phone that I have talked so well about? Well, let's not forget that one governor over everything else.
Battery Life
Atrocious. Period. Averaging only 1 hour talk time with a NEW BATTERY and 2 hours of texting, I had to eventually take a charger with me everywhere I went. Within 10 minutes of taking it off the charger, the battery would begin to drain. I purchased a new battery for $20 after a month and that bought me 2 hours talk time and 4 hours of texting. I left it on standby all day and got half battery drain.
Then I realized that the 3G mode turned on drained the battery.
Unfortunately, not enough to make a difference when I turned it off.
Quality/ Durability
The initial quality appeared decent, and I was right. To some extent.
After a few months, the phone refused to send a text message unless fully charge, a period of 15 minutes after disconnecting from AC. That's nice, why not just die after 15 minutes, assuming you aren't going to work anymore? After that, it began randomly powering off every time I tried to read a message. Sorta like when your car stalls for no apparent reason. Finally, the fiber cable went out, leaving huge dark spots on the screen. After my new Samsung T629 arrived, I decided to be mischievous and drop it in the toilet. Low and behold, it still worked, despit the speaker going out.
Bottom Line
Don't bother with this phone. For about the same price, you can get a better phone with a better battery. Fun while it lasted.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 70
Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy
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Epinions.com ID:
shadowsassy
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Member: Alex Johnson
Location: Fullerton, CA
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 0 members
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