The Good: The Voyager also known as the VX10000, is one of LG’s first touch screen phones to target the US and includes a more iPhone-like interface based on that of the Prada phone; users can place calls, play AAC/MP3/WMA music, and take 2-megapixel photos almost exclusively from the screen. It offers a generous features set that includes EV-DO support, V Cast Mobile TV Bluetooth, a top-notch Web browser, and an integrated GPS application. And if that’s not enough, its call quality was excellent.

The Bad: The LG Voyager VX10000’s camera lacks such extra options as a flash and Wi-Fi, and its photo quality was below par. The touch screen can be clunky at times, and the streaming video quality and EV-DO connection speed were sporadic.

The Bottom Line: Though we had some minor complaints here and there, the Voyager’s sleek design, generous feature set and excellent performance make it the best LG messaging and multimedia phone by far. What we like most about this phone is the improvements LG has made to the Verizon Wireless interface. Verizon Wireless believes, that users like to learn an interface and then find it useful on the next phone they buy. We don’t buy it. Phones are improving too fast, with too many new features every season, and users want a phone that makes sense. Maybe it made sense to bury the touted HTML browser under the “Get It Now: News and Info” submenu in the past, but now, that’s the last place we’d look.

The LG Xenon is clearly LG’s premier announcement at CTIA this year, but the LG Neon deserves a closer look too. Like the Xenon, the Neon has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and is meant to be a messaging device. It has a nice display and is slim and lightweight. The keyboard only has 3 rows instead of the 4 rows on the Xenon, so it’s slightly more cramped. Still, the keys are well-spaced and have a bumpy texture for easier texting. On the front of the Neon is a navigation array complete with the two soft keys and four-way directional pad.

Features of the LG Neon aren’t as advanced as the Xenon’s. It still has the 2.0-megapixel camera, music player, and stereo Bluetooth, but you won’t get 3G and it only supports tri-band GSM. Pricing and availability of the LG Neon are still unknown, though we’re sure we’ll find out shortly. Why LG decided not to make all of the functions of the Neon accessible via touch screen is a mystery to me.

One of the newest additions in category of smart phones by LG: The new LG Versa. Versa is great in design and offers some great functions as well. Speaking of the features of the mobiles, let us go inot the details of what the mobile has to offer. To begin with, let us start about one of the best feature of this mobile which is design. LG Versa is well designed and crafted to almost perfection. The screen and the entire mobile may have a slight resemblance with LG Dare but to be honest, it is better. The screen is 3 inches wide and offers a great resolution of 480 x 240 pixels, supporting over 262,000 colors. The screen is not too much reflective and is nicely built. The size of this mobile is 4.2 x 2.1 x 0.5 inches and it weighs around 3.8 ounces only excluding the keyboard. Thus, regarding design, LG could not have had managed to design a better looking set than this one.

The internal memory of LG Versa is 310 MB(shared) and there is also room for expandable memory. Presence of Bluetooth, stereo mode is a plus point of the mobile. Again, the web browsing LG Versa offers is also great since it has flash enabled web browsing feature and it really looks nice. GPS technologies are also one of the finer aspects of LG Versa. They are great and provide accurate information regarding the global positioning. However, there is another disappointing feature of this mobile, which is the camera.

LG Xenon is one of the latest mobiles by LG that is going to be released soon and the world is actually waiting for that moment. It was rumored to be released around the Christmas season last year, but sadly it did not turn out to be true.

The LG Xenon also comes in with full QWERTY keyboard and offers a range of features in it. The keypads are small in size but they are perfect to type and do not cause any problems there. It includes a great mp3 player which offers great quality sound. It supports expandable memory upto16 GB which is also one of the better points of this mobile. The shared memory of the mobile is 80 MB. It has in built HSDPA which gives a speed of 3.6 Mbps. Along with this, GPS, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth are also compatible with this mobile. The battery life of this mobile is good but does need recharging more often. The talk time of the LG Xenon lasts for 4 hours and the standby time is 264 hours which means an average battery in it. It also includes some additional features like threaded text messaging along with an option of instant messaging; high speed surfing and mobile e-mail, quad-band GSM and others.

The smartphone is taking the industry by storm and there’s no doubt about it. Almost each and every leading cell phone manufacturing company of the world seems to continue this trend offering smartphone of a wide range one after another. In such an attempt, LG, one among the world’s popular electronic companies, finally launched their first ever smartphone that runs on Microsoft Windows. LG GM750 is what they gave name to it. Just as HTC Touch 2, LG GM750 is window-based, accompanied with the up-to-date 6.5 version of OS. However, you’ll not see the standard face of the OS as the S-Class interface, designed by LG, will replace it.

LG GM750 supports up to 16GB of MicroSD memory card and this is why it’s possible for you to upload almost everything that you have got if it is LG GM750 that you’re carrying in your pocket. This cell phone features Wi-Fi and built-in GPS as well, making it more an appealing option to give a try. Also, GM750 features Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB interface, Fax/Data feature, EDGE, GPRS, WLan, HSDPA, HSUPA, and accelerometer.

We first saw the LG Watch Phone last year at CES 2008, but it was behind glass and no one was allowed to really see how it all worked. This year, however, LG plans to break it out of the display case. At the LG press conference a few minutes ago, they demonstrated a real working prototype of the watch phone and it looks to be a real must-have for the spy wannabe in your life. It has a touch-screen user interface (!), three side-mounted buttons, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and even a full-blown music player. It’s water resistant, and it’ll feature 3G HSDPA, which leads us to think it may come to AT&T some time this year.

We’ve just got more details about the watch phone. It has tempered glass, a high-quality metal casing, and is around 13.9mm thick. The touch screen itself is 1.43 inches diagonally, and features LG’s Flash interface. Features include voice recognition, Text to Speech so it can read out text messages, and stereo Bluetooth.

The glossy black front with shiny metal accents looks good on the LG KC550 while the matte rubber finished at the back of it helps handling and adds on to the good looks.  The glossy front is, however, a smudge magnet.

The phone is still a triband phone, and that’s just sad. However, the signal reception of this phone is good, and you will not get disconnected every now and then in areas of lower signal strength.

The KC550 sports a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with a power LED flash and a self portrait mirror. It’s capable of capturing images with a maximum resolution. The camera uses Schneider-Kreuznach certified optics, and is protected by a sleek shutter with a stylish brown metallic accent.

The KC550 has a 900 mAh battery which can take up to 3 days of moderate usage with just a single charge.

Specifications:

2.4-inch colour display, 5MP autofocus camera, 1GB memory card bundled, loudspeaker, FM, MP3 Player.

The KE770 is the second phone in the shine series from LG.  It’s a candybar; “sleek and shiny” is the best way to describe it.  At 9.9mm, it’s slimmer than the motorola L9 phone (on which it is modelled). Built from stainless steel with no moving parts, the KE770 excludes the built-to-last feel.

When the display is in inactive mode,the mirror-finished display screen can be, well, a mirror. The well-lit, flat keypad is a joy to use, with distinct tactile feedback. The navigational keys are well-spaced-out and free from the glitches you’ll see on the KE970. The Call End button is placed near the top and to the side; it also acts as a power down switch-strange placement,we’d say,but effective for one-handed operation.

The volume control buttons,camera/MP3button, and USB connectors are on the same side. Internal memory s 70MB, which can be increased via the micro SD card. The memory slot is placed below the battery, and it isn’t hot-swappable.

The 2MP camera with the photo-assist light and self-portrait mirror is on the back of the phone . The camera is similar to the one on the KE970, and the performance is similar, too. Indoors shots lack tonal accuracy,and are often overexposed. Outdoor images retain tonal accuracy but lack crispness.

Music quality is not really great,but given that it isn’t touted as a music phone,we’d say the music capability is reasonable. There are no external playback control. MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3GP, and MPEG4 are supported, but files need to be copied to the right folder on the phone -else the media player can’t search through to them. Video playback is just about okay-it is seriously limited by the screen size.

The phone has good bundle of applications: MS office file viewers, PDF readers, a health chart,and a data wallet. The phone also support the lost mobile tracking system(LMTS). You’ll also find regular applications such as clock,calculator, games, and more.

Signal reception was good ,but voice clarity could do witha lot of improvement-especially that of the speakerphone. The volume is too low,and it crackles as well. Flight mode figures,and that’s a plus. Battery life is around a day and a half with nominal usage.

Aprice of Rs7,990 means the KE970 is a good buy if you are looking for a sleek, cool-looking phone. If you’re planning on using multimedia features on a regular basis ,we’d suggest you look elsewhere.

The LG KE970-also known as the shine- is aptly named , because  the first thing you notice about the phone is the brilliant shine from the brushed stainless-steel body. Even the main display is mirror-finished, and when the screen is inactive ,you can actually use it like one!

This tri-band phone is based around a slider design. The slider mechanism feels smooth; opening the phone takes just a nudge.  Build quality is good, and the phone is comfortable to hold. The (largest 2.3-inch high-resolution display looks brilliant indoors;however, it pales outdoors-this can be attributed to the glossy screen.

The volume control button are on the right along with the shortcuts to the camera and music player. To use the memory card slot, you need to remove the battery cover, but it is hot-swappable. The phone’s 50MB of internal memory can be augmented using micro SD cards.

The keypad is flat but ease to use because the individual keys are large. The navigation keys aren’t the best we’ve seen, though.  The rocker in the middle scrolls though the menu and can be pressed to activate the menu. The adjoining keys allow horizontal movement but they are small and tight-uncomfortable, we thought.

The 2-megapixel camera, though good, cant match the ones on entry-level sony ericsson models such as the K550i. The auto-focus system requires delicate use of the dinky shutter release key; a little clumsiness, and you’ll see blurred, washed-out photographs. Tonal accuracy isn’t that great either; the photos are generally overexposed. Outdoors, the camera fares better,and the colours are more natural. Video recording is strictly okay; it is limited by resolution and fps.

Music on the KE970 was good; the phone handles MP3, AAC, and ACC+.  The inline control with 3.5mm jack allows you to connect different pair of earphones, though the bundled pair is okay. With our reference bose in-ear phones, the volume level was good and the quality crisp,but there is still room for improvement.

PhotoID, bluetooth, mobile e-mail, USB mass storage, and a document viewer for MSword, excel, powerpoint, and PDF are some of the other notable features.

On the performance front, the phone is snappy, with no apparent lag in the user interface. Signal reception is good; however,voice clarity could have been better. With nominal use, the phone goes two days before the low battery alarm pops up.

The LG KE970 is a stylish phone, and is resonably priced at Rs 11,900-if you can put up with the operational glitches and the extra bling.