Design
Maybe it's because we've just seen Bruno, or maybe we're overestimating the fickle tastes of the youth market, but the standard colour scheme for the LG Xenon needs a coat of paint. Its black plastic chassis with silver trim may sound like the latest Prada phone, but in person the Xenon lacks that all-important visual lure. At launch Telstra will accompany this standard black model with an electric blue version that may appeal more to its target market: teenage texters. And while we're nitpicking the design we should point out that the LG Xenon is a bit of a chunky monkey, its 15.8mm girth is 1.5 times the waistline of LG's sexy top-line touchscreens.
If you're familiar with the LG WebSlider, you should see the similarities immediately. The Xenon shares the former's horizontal slider form, but also includes full touchscreen input (the WebSlider's touchscreen is only active in the dialler). The keyboard is of the teeny-tiny variety, with this reviewer's freakishly small fingers struggling to stay accurately on the intended keys while typing quickly. Though we have a sneaking suspicion the smaller fingers of tweeny-boppers might have more luck. The tiny key sizes does make way for a few smart shortcuts like access to the browser, address book, recent calls and new messages without having to look up from the keyboard — plus a very handy ".com" button for web address entry.
The screen is a decent sized 2.8-inch touchscreen with an above average viewing angle. We tested Foxtel TV using the Xenon and we're happily surprised by the angles we could view the screen clearly. Its WQVGA resolution (240x400) is sharp and clear enough for all purposes; watching videos through to web browsing and messaging, we had no issues viewing the content on display.
Notably absent for a handset aimed at youngsters is a 3.5mm headphone socket, instead we're encouraged to use the supplied headphones via a combined dual-purpose proprietary charging port. There's also a microSD card slot for expanding the Xenon's 80MB of memory, but at this price point don't expect to see one included in the box.
Features
The Xenon will launch exclusively with Telstra in Australia. As such, the review unit we're testing is littered with the standard Telstra links and web services. This comes with its own pros and cons. Access to Foxtel TV is a real plus, but Telstra's MyEmail service takes what should be free and adds a fee of $7 per month. Why anyone should have to pay to access free web mail on top of the fact that you're already a paying customer is beyond us. But this isn't a review of BigPond services.
On its own merits, the Xenon is a cracking messaging handset. It features HSDPA downloads (up to 3.6Mbps) and a decent HTML browser. Often browsers on lower-end phones are tedious to play with, but the Xenon's broswer is a cut above, due in part to its ability to automatically zoom in to fit a new page on the screen. This works much better on mobile sites, like m.cnet.com.au, than it does for full-sized sites. Surprisingly, the Xenon also includes A-GPS hardware, though no pre-installed navigation software. Google Maps is obviously available to download, and Telstra offer its Whereis web service which should be fine for quick once-off directions.
LG bundled its excellent PC Suite II syncing tools with the Xenon, making it a cinch to sync personal details, like calendars and contacts, as well as media files with your phone. Once you have your media loaded the Xenon does a decent job of playing everything back. Its compatible with MP4 and 3GP video formats, as well as MP3, WAV and WMA audio files. The media playing software for both video and audio is clean and easy to use, which re-enforces what a shame it is that you are forced to use the shoddy bundled headphones rather than your favourite cans.
Budding camera phone photographers won't be impressed by the Xenon's low-spec 2-megapixel shooter, but those looking to take photos at a music festival or pics of the dog for Flickr should find the built-in camera sufficient. The camera sports an LED flash, to help in low-light, but no auto-focus, though this is almost made up for by the camera's near-instant shutter speed. All of the photos we took looked predictably soft, with the colours looking washed-out and the whites tending towards overexposure, giving the photos a ghostly, steamy effect.
Performance
If there's one thing we CNET editors remember about being young(er), it's that our attention spans were much shorter than they are at this calmer age. LG remembers this too and has delivered a zippy performance to match its youth-focused design. The Xenon runs on an LG proprietary platform, similar to the Croix system LG has used previously on the Prada phones and the Viewty camera phone. This platform runs smoothly on the Xenon, with very little lag between on-screen selection and execution. Impressively, the Xenon is also capable of multitasking with a dedicated app-switching key located between the start and end call buttons under the screen. Even with several apps running — the browser, address book and music player — we still saw little to no drop in performance.
The web browser is one of the few areas you're likely to run into any frustrations and these, we've found, are overcome with patience and a little practice. An initial connection to the web can take a few moments more than you might like to see, and selecting hyperlinks on a page can be tricky depending on how chunky your fingers are. The Xenon's resistive screen could be touched with a stylus, and though there are holes to attach a lanyard, LG has decided not to include a stylus in the box.
Call quality is clear, even if the speaker is tinny sounding. People we spoke to commended the clarity of our voice and the tinniness of the earpiece speaker didn't disturb us hearing what our friends were saying. We were disappointed with the poor auto-correction in messaging; the Xenon seemed shy to correct any of our mistakes, even simple things like adding an apostrophe in contractions, like don't or won't. LG estimates battery life at four hours for talking and 11 days standby. With a mixture of use, we saw battery cycles of over two days each time, which is decent considering how much we found ourselves browsing the web.
Overall
The LG Xenon scores well on our checklist of what we want in phones for the youth market. The touchscreen is good, and for those who hate smearing the screen with fingerprints, the QWERTY keyboard is better. Calling is sound and messaging is fine, let down only by shoddy auto-correct software. It makes a decent, but not outstanding, media player, and the camera is fine for quick pics and happy snaps. But it's the online experience that sells this phone. The web browser is one of the better browsers in this price range and the phone's HSDPA web speeds are more than enough for updating your Facebook status. For the RRP of $589, the LG Xenon would satisfy anyone looking to extend basic phone functionality to include connections to an active cyber-life.
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