LG Shine KE970 Mobile Phone
Introduction
“Bling bling” is the way a lot of things are going and mobile phones are no exception.
LG became something of a fashion phone maker with the “Chocolate” range of handsets and it has continued this trend with the Shine. The KE970 is a slider and it is very slim at a 13.8mm, although it measures 99.8mm tall and 50.6mm wide. It weighs 118g and most of this weigh is because of its metal exterior. If feels very solid, although the grey plastic release button for the rear cover looks out of place and should at least have been chromed. The 2.2-inch, 240x320 screen is behind a glass cover and it can display 262,000 colours.
The Shine is a slider and the keypad is as such situated behind the screen when it is not in use and it simply slides out below the screen to reveal the keypad. If you have used a recent Motorola in the RAZR family, then you will be familiar with the kind of keypad that LG outfitted the Shine with. It is not as tactile as a normal keypad, but it is not as bad as a touch screen. When it comes to phone keypads, the same rules applies as it does to PC input peripherals, there is a lot of personal preference that goes into your choice.
You generally do not have to use the keypad, as apart from the call buttons, the clear button and the number pad, all other controls are located below the screen and you can use these to make calls from your contact list. There are two soft keys that correspond to the menu options on the screen. The main control consists of a scroll wheel – or scroll key as LG wants to call it – with a button on each side of it. The scroll wheel works very much like that one a mouse, but due to its size, it is not as responsive as it should be and there did not seem to be a setting to change the sensitivity. The buttons on each side of the scroll wheel are used to go left or right in the menus, while the scroll wheel is for up and down navigation as well as making selections.
The menu can be set up in two different ways, either as a three by three icon system or as a scroll list. It is actually easier to navigate the larger icons that it is to go through the scroll list, the only problem being sideways navigation as the two little buttons on each side of the scroll wheel are quite difficult to press at times.
Around the back is a 2MP camera with auto focus that is certified by Schneider-Kreuznach – do not confuse this, as the Shine does not use a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, it is just certified to meet a certain quality standard. It is still a rather decent camera by mobile phone standards and it is accompanied by a small LED light that is meant to replace the flash, although it is only good up to about a couple of meters. You can snap pictures up to 1,600 x 1,200 resolutions, but the general quality of indoor snaps are quite grainy, so it is not great for low light situations.
As you can see, our dear managing director, does not really get lit up that well by the tiny LED light and the background in one of his more frequently visited watering holes is taking over, as it is much brighter.
Popping the back of the phone reveals the battery, which is rated at 800mAh – LG claims a standby time of up to 280h and a talk time of up to 3h – the sim card slot and a micro SD card slot. We tested the Shine with a 1GB SanDisk Ultra II micro SD card and the only problem was that the files already on the card got deleted by the Shine, something that was not expected, so be careful about that if you intend on buying this phone.
There is a wide range of buttons on the right hand side, although the other sides of the Shine are bare. Going from top to bottom we have a covered connector that is combined for the charger, headset and USB cable. We are uncertain if it is only standard USB or USB 2.0 as our review sample did not come with a USB cable. Next is a pair of volume control keys, a quick access button to the MP3 player application and finally a camera button that launches the camera application and also doubles up as shutter button.
The Shine is a tri-band GSM handset and it works on the 900/1800/1900 bands and it also supports GPRS and EDGE. Bluetooth is also part of specification, but only version 1.2, although it has support for A2DP profiles. There is 50MB of built in memory and about 5MB of this is taken up by the pre-installed applications. You get a couple of games, one is a fishing game and the other is a puzzle game – it might keep you occupied on the train until you get bored with them. The built in MP3 player application is quite good and the Shine is supplied with a remote control that has a 3.5mm jack, so you can use your own headphones with it.
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