LG Crystal GD900
Maxabout Review
World's First Handset With Translucent Keypad
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Photos
LG GD900
The GD900, which LG debuted at the GSMA World Congress, is claimed to be the world’s first phone with a transparent design handset. According to LG the new GD900 will prove that stylish design can be achieved not only with the use of vivid colors, but also by revealing the handset in its purest form. The sliding keypad of GD900 is translucent, a world’s first. The keypad is though the only transparent part of the handset. The rest of the LG GD900 is quite normal. It also comes with a Bluetooth headset, the LG HBM580, in matching blue, silver, and transparent attire.
Main Features Of LG GD900 Crystal
- Unique see-through alphanumeric touch-sensitive keypad
- 3" 16 Million color TFT touchscreen
- S-Class Touch UI
- 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
- Wi-Fi
- 8 megapixel autofocus camera, LED flash, manual focus, geotagging, image stabilization, multi face detection (up to 3), smile detection
- D1 (720x480 pixels)@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
- 1.5 GB storage memory
- Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
- MicroUSB v2.0, mass storage mode
- TV-out port
- Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
- Gesture shortcuts
- Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
- Multi-touch input
- DivX and XviD support
- Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement
Undoubtedly the see-through keypad is what gives the LG GD900 Crystal its main appeal. Unique and different enough to put the device in a class of its own, its white glow looks really fascinating, especially in the dark. The Crystal touchscreen uses the capacitive technology, which requires only a touch rather than a push to register a click. Even the lightest of touches does the trick which is probably a large part of the reason why people buy touchscreen phones in the first place. LG Crystal has multi-touch support, which means you can use the two-finger pinch-to-zoom gesture made popular by the iPhone. The back of the GD900 hosts the 8 megapixel camera and its companions - the self-portrait mirror and the LED flash. Those are of course only visible when the slider is open, giving them plenty of protection from scratches. The top of the LG Crystal features the On/Off button which, much like on the LG Arena, is used to lock the device display. The right side of the Crystal hosts the camera key and the volume rocker.
The S-Class UI has already taken a prominent place among full touch phone interfaces. LG seem to have struck gold with it and the new fancy 3D UI will thrive across touchscreen feature phones and Windows Mobile handsets alike. The S-Class builds heavily upon previous UI solutions in the LG range and thus still feels familiar enough even with the number of innovations introduced. The capacitive touchscreen is quite responsive and haptic feedback has always been on the LG feature list. Hardware graphic acceleration is essential: everything from homescreen to dropdown menus roll, sweep in, unfold and rotate extra smoothly.
The LG GD900 Crystal sports an 8 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. It boasts fancy Schneider-Kreuznach optics and a LED flash. The camera interface of the GD900 Crystal is identical to the one on the GC900 Viewty Smart. Access to all the camera settings is via the left taskbar in the viewfinder. There you get virtual buttons for flash, focus mode (auto/macro) and exposure plus an advanced settings key. This left toolbar auto hides when not used and you need to tap on the screen to bring it back. On the right hand-side of the screen is another bar with a virtual shutter key, that also slides up and down to switch between still camera and camcorder. Alongside are the exit and gallery buttons. This taskbar is fixed and actually not part of the viewfinder - that's the way to get around the difference between the wide aspect ratio of the screen and the standard 4:3 image sensor.
The Crystal comes with 1.5GB of internal memory and allows expansion till 16GB. The mobile phone packages Wi-Fi capabilities, Dolby Mobile enhanced sound and DVD resolution video recording. The LG GD900 Crystal is offered in chrome and titen shades and is made available at all retail outlets nationwide for Rs 26,000. “We wanted to give our consumers a super luxury experience and therefore, developed a handset that touts a gorgeous sliding keypad – the LG GD900 Crystal. The phone’s transparent touchpad feature adds to the personality of our consumers and gives gizmo geeks a wonderful reason to possess it. Not only this, we have made a creative use of hardware through Gesture Command that provides control via simple, on-screen finger movements. We are positive that our new handset will become a winning model of the year,” explained Anil Arora, Business Group Marketing Head, Mobile Communications, LGEIL.