LG GW520 Review

LG mobile phones have a generally excellent reputation, which makes the release of the very disappointing LG GW520 puzzling. It’s a touchscreen phone that aims to be many things, but unfortunately does none of them well.

About the only thing the GW520 has going for it is a pull out QWERTY keyboard that’s excellent to use, although sometimes sluggish in response. However, that’s let down by a surprisingly small screen, just 2.8”, not enough to compete in this market.

The phone does have auto-predict for numbers. That can be useful, although most people will have frequently-called numbers stored in their contacts. Those contacts appear on Livesquare, accessed by swiping the home screen, and are represented by avatars – a sweet idea, since they’re grouped in a park, but overly cute for most adults.

Anyone wanting to access Facebook regularly will enjoy the Facebook app that’s situated on the home screen, but those wanting other social networks will be aggravated, as it’s impossible to add apps, so forget MySpace or Twitter.

There’s also a Push email app, but it needs to be constantly in the foreground to work, so it’s actually not a great deal of use, and setting up other email, even where possible, is a very convoluted process, and more than most people will want to do.

It’s a pity that LG has done so little to make this phone very useful and it has been widely slated in mobile phone reviews. Yes, it’s mid-priced, but that’s not an excuse for a less than average handset.