LG VX1 / TM-520 - It *Could* Have Been Amazing
Written: Aug 02 '02 (Updated Oct 24 '02)
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Pros: Small, classic + cool style, excellent screen, 1xRTT ready, voice dialing/recording, excellent bang for buck
Cons: Ringer, message alerts, interface, text entry need refinement. Expensive accessories.
The Bottom Line: A few minor programming changes could have made this phone amazing, but unfortunately it's only 'very good.' If you like your late-model mobile phones, take a good look at this!
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| jucm's Full Review: LG VXI Cell Phone |
It was inevitable -- My mother started commuting and she wanted a cell phone for safety and to keep in contact with the rest of the family. I decided to give her my faithful Sanyo SCP4000 and pick up a new model for myself. Knowing I wanted a flip phone, I checked the listings for Telus Mobility, my Canadian mobile phone service of choice, and saw my choices were the Sanyo SCP5000, the first phone in Canada with a colour display, the Motorola V60 - stylish, European and expensive, and the new LG TM-520 - technologically advanced from a largely unknown (in North America) Asian manufacturer. It's known in the USA as the LG VX1.
A Small Update (2002/10/24): There was some confusion as to what exact phone this review talks about. I thought I made myself clear but some people were still confused. So here it is, plain and simple: This review examines the LG TM-520, which is the same as the VX1 except for some software differences (i.e. the software that allows for voice dialling.) These differences are described thoroughly below.
A Quick Flashback
Not too long ago, LG released the TM-510 flip-phone that received generally good reviews but was lambasted for its lack of an alphabetic phone book. It seems LG has listened to the criticism and released an improved model with an excellent technology upgrade: The LG VX1 / TM-520 supports 1xRTT!
1xRTT, you say?
The term stands for 'Single Carrier Radio Transmission Technology.' Basically, that means that this phone can communicate at 144kbps (compare that to a 56kbps modem) and supposedly conserve more of its battery. The greater speed allegedly allows better web browsing and voice quality plus greater network capacity meaning fewer dropped calls. 1xRTT is the first step on the upgrade path to 3G networks that will allow 'videophone-level' quantities of data to go to and from your mobile phone.
Style
The LG VX1 / TM-520 looks cool. The casing is a lustrous silver hue that won't show ugly fingerprint marks. This goes for the back of the battery as well. When opened, the mechanism snaps the cover open at only 40 degrees which is much smaller than the Motorola V60 (about 100deg) and the Sanyo 5000 (about 150deg.) Whether this is good or bad is a matter of preference - I like it because it allows me to flip the unit open more easily with one hand, thus making easy to handle and more stylish at once. This is why I disqualified the Sanyo 5000 in my search - it was too hard to open the unit with one hand! The chrome coloured side-buttons do pick up fingerprints but they look classy all the same. The outer LCD also has a ring of chrome around it, adding to the 'classic-cool' feel. The phone and battery are made in Korea and are very sturdy - the same goes for the antenna which does not feel like it will break every time I open it. The keypad is backlit but only bright enough to see in the dark (which makes sense.)
Turn It On
When you turn the phone on, it greets you with a pleasant chime-melody that can't be disabled plus the Telus Mobility logo. If the phone's ringer involves vibrating, the phone will vibrate on power-up as well. (This can be avoided if you hit 'end' at the right instant.) The inner LCD shows the time (if you powered on in a digital coverage area) plus the signal quality, battery level, and if applicable, the vibrate-ringer icon, message-waiting icon, and signal strength icon. The outer LCD will also show those icons plus the clock or 'missed call' notice if applicable.
Turning off the phone also plays a chime melody that can't be avoided.
Human Interface Device
If you buy a mobile phone, you'll obviously have to interact with it if you want to use it. I've been told that Nokia phones are renowned for being easy to use -- I've never owned one so I can't compare. But still I'm an unrepentant gear-head computer programmer and don't really care if one phone is a bit easier to use than the other.
Basically, the phone has two 'soft keys,' a left and a right, used for selection. The left soft key brings up a configuration menu where you can configure ringers, voice recording / memos, security, system connection characteristics, automatic features (one-touch, auto-answer, etc.) and the display screen. The right key accesses the phone book, calculator, games, scheduler, alarm and call history. The two groupings do make sense, and I find myself often browsing the left-key menu most often to configure each feature.
You can also get quick access to the SMS (text messaging), call history, phonebook and web browser features through the shortcuts on the 4-way button. I find myself using the internet-access button the most to browse news web sites and check the weather forecast.
One very helpful feature (that many people truly hate) is the T9 text entry system. If you are entering a text message or typing in a web form, the T9 system uses the process of elimination to allow you to press one button stroke per key and finish the word for you. This prevents you from pressing 7 four times in a row to get an S. Some people complain that the T9 system usually gets the word wrong and they have to type everything in manually. By and large, I haven't experienced such troubles and say that the system almost always works as it's supposed to work, only getting a word wrong from time to time.
One unfortunate shortcoming of the text entry is the way it works with different groups of characters. If you are trying a message with a sequence of numbers, you'll probably switch from letter to number mode by pressing soft key 2. But after that, you have to laboriously cycle through symbol mode, help mode, and T9 mode to get back to text mode to let you type normal text again. Furthermore, the text entry system defaults to all lower case letters after you type the first letter of a message. If you press space, the following letter is lowercase as opposed to upper case. It's only a minor annoyance, but it still bothers me. The last text entry problem is that when you are typing a password, it should not default to upper case as the first character. This makes it hard to type passwords where the first character is lower case and may introduce problems with people unknowingly entering an upper case letter hidden behind the *** of a password field, causing frustration because they don't know why they can't log into an online service.
On the bright side, this phone was designed for easy web and messaging access. It takes only 2 keystrokes to launch the web browser or SMS messenger.
The workings of the phone book was one major drawback of the LG-TM510 - the entries were not alphabetic and instead displayed in the order they were entered. A phone's phonebook, regardless of the phone's brand or model, is basically a database with each entry carrying a name, the various contact numbers plus an integer primary key that uniquely identifies each record. Well designed phonebooks will totally hide the existence of the primary key and be organised by user-recognisable features like the contact's name. The VX1 / TM-520 is a step in the right direction because the phone book is shown in order of alphabetical contact names. The system is still unpolished because it asks for you to enter a primary key when you are entering contacts. You can just hit OK and accept the default, but it should just assign one automatically without troubling the user. Similarly, if you want to send an SMS message to someone in your phonebook, you have to select the contact by entering the primary key - there is NO way to select the recipient of an SMS message by the contact's name in the phone book. Again, LG should have made the primary key transparent to the end user and made all selection dependent upon the contact name. Lastly, the primary key is what's used for the quick dial options. If you want a certain person to have quick dial #6, then you have to change the primary key of whatever number currently has key #006 and assign it an unused key, and then change the desired contact's key to #006. This is silly and LG should allow a more intuitive method of setting up quick-dialling.
LG, are you listening?!? THE PRIMARY KEY OF THE PIM DATABASE MUST BE INVISIBLE AND 100% IGNORED BY THE END USER!
Some other good things about the user interface:
1. The games are great. Commanche as excellent music and it is actually challenging. It's hard to master because you have to use little keys on a cellphone keypad. The blackjack game has good animation and you can bet variable amounts of money and keep a balance that carries from game to game ... but the dealer seems to get good hands suspiciously often. Both games do have high score listings.
2. You can choose an escalating intensity vibration ringer.
3. The restrict mode allows all incoming calls but prevents outgoing & SMS/internet except to emergency and phonebook numbers.
4. The manner mode is quickly accessible with one key-press. This prevents all audio rings/tones/alerts and switches everything to vibrate.
Some final qualms about the interface: (again: LG, are you listening?)
1. The planner functions could be better - basically you can just add an event with a time/date (or specify that it recurs every day) and then you'll get the alarm you configured. I would have preferred to have seen something more elaborate with definable manner-mode times for each day.
2. The alerts for waiting messages are weak - I would have preferred some sort of beeper. All it does is give off some VERY quiet beeps - These beeps are SO quiet that I almost didn't hear them when I was testing the alerts (and thus listening for them) over the crickets on the quiet rural road where I was standing - plus it lights up the red light 'lamp' on the front and displays a 'new message' icon on the display. Suffice it to say, you have to look at the phone's display to see if you have a message.
3. The ringer is TOO QUIET! [note: see update below] The ring comes from the same speaker as the voice-earpiece and if I close the phone and cover it with my hands, you can't hear the ringer in a quiet room. In fact, I think the vibrate-alert on maximum strength is 'louder' than the ringer. Fortunately you can set it to ring & vibrate so you get the high and low frequencies plus the tactile sensation. I heard of one guy who added a small bit of rubber to the earpiece to keep the phone a crack open and make the ringer much louder. I would prefer to have a loud single-tone ringer like the Nokia 3390 as opposed to the CMX MIDI a quiet ringer with complex polyphonic classical pieces and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." [update: I found out that the ring when the flip is closed is louder than the ring when actually sampling the ring tones. It is still fairly quiet and probably too quiet to be easily heard in a very loud and busy shopping mall. Also, when the flip is closed, the ringer is ALWAYS on the highest volume regardless of the ring volume chosen, but it's not annoyingly loud.]
4. There is no setting for instantaneous ring + vibrate for an incoming call - you can set it to vibrate 1-3 times and then ring, but you can't get an instantaneous ring unless you turn vibrate off totally. I would have preferred that they allow you to specify that there should be n vibrations before a ring where n could be negative for 'ring-before-vibrate' or 0 for simultaneous instantaneous ring & vibrate.
5. You have to enter the phone's password not only to disable, but to enable the restricted mode!
Audio Features
It's time for the USA residents to listen up! There is one major difference between the Canadian LG TM-520 and the USA LG VX1. The Canadian version has voice dialling and voice memo recording. The USA version does not have it. Maybe it was a marketing decision and they thought the reduced price for less features would make more profit than a higher priced unit with more features.
For people looking at the Canadian model, I'll say that the voice dialling is very reliable and has never failed to recognise my pre-programmed commands. The sound quality for the voice recordings is good enough for voice but not music. One great thing is this phone can do is record phone conversations; Two days ago someone was giving me complex directions over the phone for driving to a certain location. I hit the record key and it was all saved automatically for playback. Very handy indeed!
The Hardware
LG has built a gorgeous phone with respect to the physical hardware. I already talked about its excellent 'classic + futuristic' feel. Now hear this: The screen is excellent. On most phones, you can't see the screen when you're wearing sunglasses. On this one, the visibility is excellent with or without sun glasses, in the shade or in direct bright sunlight. At night the green backlight gives perfect visibility but it's no long-range headlight like many other candy-bar phones. Also, the display is BIG - you can get seven real lines of internet text display which dwarfs the Motorola V60. This, plus the high cost are why I did not buy the V60.
I noticed something 'odd' - the vibrator in the phone is actually behind the screen! This isn't bad or good - just unexpected. When testing ringers, you'll have the phone open and they will sound deceptively weak because of this. If you've got the phone on a belt clip (which, by the way, was included in my phone's standard kit) the front of the phone is closest to your body for radiation-level compliance purposes. This helps you feel when it rings.
The reception is excellent. On the train to work, there were some dead regions with my Sanyo 4000, but I never totally lost the digital network with the LG. Furthermore, the analogue quality is excellent as well - previosly, no phone I had seen could get a connection in the basement of my home. This one can pick up a shaky analog signal. Well done, LG! Furthermore, the call sound quality (in digital areas) is as good as a landline for the sender and receiver. Again, LG has done their homework with the hardware.
The battery life is good but not great. I can get along for 3 days before charging. This with ~13 hours digital standby plus 30-40 minutes digital airtime per day.
Remarks
The way I see it, LG has done some excellent work with the hardware, with the exception of the ringer. A few software changes to the phone book, ringer configuration, text entry and menu would have made the phone MUCH better.
It seems Telus has decided to work the way McDonald's does - they don't make much money on the burger but instead have huge margins on the fries and drink. The Telus salesperson really pushed me and tried to convince me to get the CAD$30 'deluxe' hydrofoam carrying pouch. Their headsets range from CAD$30 to $140 and the high capacity battery is $120. Ouch. I'll just take the burger, thanks. (Actually, I eventually caved in and bought the pouch because it offered better protection from scratches.)
Conclusion
This phone completely humiliates the Motorola V60 - that is, unless you absolutely need a loud ringer or strong audio message alerts. The LG offers better technology, better (in my opinion) looks, easier flip-open-ability, and a lower price than the V60.
It's a great unit for people who like to keep up with mobile phone technology, but probably should be passed for less expensive and feature-rich models by people who just want to make a call or two.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 180
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Epinions.com ID:
jucm
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Location: Canada
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 19 members
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The world is a conspiracy. You either know it or are part of it.
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