LG AX830 Glimmer Cell Phone Author:  Jack Wells Date:  2008.10.07 Topic:  Phones Provider:  LG Manufacturer:  LG

LG AX830 Glimmer

Home Screen

Let’s take a moment to talk about the screen you will see the most with this phone, the home screen.  Technically there are two different versions; one has a quick launch menu and the other has a background and the time

At the top of either screen is the basic information that is standard from any phone, at the bottom is 4 buttons that should be pretty intuitive.  In the quick launch version you can customize all of the buttons to whatever you want.  The standard view has a time and date widget that can be dragged around.  I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted with that

This is the button “lock” that means your screen is no longer active until you touch the padlock.  Unlike an iPhone you simply touch the lock, you don’t drag it.

Calls

Arguable the most important part of any phone is how it deals with calls.  The LG Glimmer offers a number of ways to dial a number in addition to the standard typing on the keypad.  Not only can you type a number in by using the on screen keypad, but it gives you 4 other on screen ways to do it.  Those are displayed in the below left picture

As far is in call performance goes the LG Glimmer is above average in microphone clarity.  I have actually had people amazed at how well they can now hear me. The flip side of this is that the earpiece is average at best, occasionally I have trouble hearing other people clearly in it that I used to be able to hear better on my old phone.  Most of the time, however, the earpiece is clear enough to understand what someone is saying.

Text Messaging (SMS)

To a lot of the younger crowd with cell phones text messaging is just as important, if not more important, than in call performance.  I happen to fit in this crowd, so trust me when I say I’ve given the text messaging capabilities a thorough test.

You start at the home window of the text messaging, from here you can see old text messages, receive new ones, or write a text message.  Suppose I receive a text message here about wanting to go shopping (for food, we’re roommates), after I hit reply I am faced with two choices. I can type back to him with the standard keypad or I can use the on screen keypad.  The choice is made based on whether or not I have the handset open or closed.  A closed handset implies I’m using the touch-screen whereas an open screen means I want to use the keypad. 

Let’s talk about what’s good and what’s bad about the text messaging system.  The interface is clean, it’s easy to text with and it handles almost any situation well.  It’s versatile and if people don’t know you have a touch-screen you can easily shoot off texts without them knowing.  The keypad allows veteran T9 users to crank out text messages quickly and efficiently.

The down side is the Glimmer seems to fail with transferring my texts more than any other phone I’ve used.  It occurs so frequently with this phone that I have to take the extra second or two to watch it go off.  The other problem with it is if it hangs you’re stuck staring at a sending screen for about 20 seconds before it times out.  The only thing you can do is cancel the text which does not send the message to drafts - it deletes it.  If it takes longer than 3 seconds to send the text, it will fail, making you wait 17 seconds before you can do anything with your phone.  I’m not sure why it waits this long because after its first attempt it never seems to try again - it just waits.

Contacts

The contacts list in the LG Glimmer is pretty standard.  It adheres to the rest of their UI, but other that that is devoid of anything original. The green bars covering the numbers have inserted to help protect the identity of the contact.

Audio Playback

One of the things LG brags about for the Glimmer is that it is a fully functional mp3 player.  You drop the songs onto a microSD card and just insert the card into the phone.  From here you open the media player and you should see your songs.  The media player can continue to play songs even after you close it.  This allows you to plug in earbuds and listen to music as if your phone was an mp3 player.  The only problem I have with that is it eats away at your battery life.  Cheers to anyone who knows these songs!

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