Another offering from LG. After the aesthetic success of the ‘Chocolate’, LG have another slider phone, the ‘Shine’ hot on the heels of that one. Its generic name is LG KG970.
First impressions of the LG Shine are almost certain to be mixed. They have gone for the sleek brushed metal minimalist look with a mirror front façade. This will be striking for some and underwhelming for others. Each to their own.
Holding the phone in your hand, it has a quality feel as LG have not gone for the ultra lightweight and it feels solid and safe whilst remaining sleek at only 14mm thick. It is ever so slightly wider than the LG Chocolate at just under 51mm.
Does it work? Well, for one, the keypad is a lot better than Chocolate’s whose touch-sensitive buttons aren’t all that sensitive. There are four navigation buttons and a scroll-wheel which, when you get used to them, makes it a joy to use the LG Shine. The scroll-wheel doubles as an ‘OK’ or ‘Select’ button when pressed.
There has been noises of signal reception problems with the LG Shine which may actually be due to the metal casing interfering with the antennae. LG may need to look at this design quirk in the future.
The 2.2 inch TFT 262K colour display is impressive especially indoors and images are well rendered. The resolution is 240 x 320 pixels.
The camera, if this is of interest to you, is a now standard fare 2MP. There is a light but there is no flash. There is no camera cover and therefore potential for lens smearing.
There is an on-board memory of 50 Mb which is expandable via a microSD card up to 2Gb which can store up to 500 high quality MP3 tracks. Not bad at all..
The phone functionality is overall quite good with all the standard options but also with nice additional touches such as call-recording.
Connectivity is good with Bluetooth, USB, EDGE, WAP but no infrared. This absence is unlikely to keep many awake.
As a music player, LG Shine is decent without being outstanding. It handles a wide range of audio formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC++ and WAV so you are unlikely to find yourself stranded on that front.
All the other standard fare for a mid-range phone are there on the LG Shine and overall, the interface is a joy to use. Some may find the absence of 3G to be a deal-breaker but we suspect, for most, this will not be an issue.
Overall, the LG Shine is a very good quality phone which, for most, performs well and has got a real presence. Poor battery life and occasional weak signal quirks are the only significant niggles that we can identify.
Size: 99.8 x 50.6 x 14mm
Weight: 119g
Standby Time: Up to 280 hours
