Will this anti-ghosting and macro recording give you the edge you need?

Keyboards are rarely the world’s sexiest PC parts, but you’d have to be odd not to appreciate a certain je ne sais quoi about the Microsoft SideWinder X4. It’s by no means a subtle design. Its keys are stuck closer together than your average finger tapper, it sits high off your desk – higher still if you flip out the two legs on the underside – it’s very shiny and it’s as black as black can get, and that’s a great part of the appeal – it’s sleek, dark and almost sinister. Essentially, as keyboards go, it looks good on your desk.

It’s relatively portable for a gaming peripheral. It’s not unnecessarily heavy and there’s no extraneous lumps and bumps ruining what is a very well tailored line. In fact, if it weren’t for the media keys at the top and the bank of macros on the left, you could easily over-look this typing deck as a perfectly ordinary office item. Only those recognising the Bond villain-esque Sidewinder logo would have a clue as to its real intentions.

The SideWinder X4 is no work of art though, and the very thing that makes it hard on the eye is perhaps the biggest bugbear of using it as well. The world seems to have moved to isolated chiclet style keyboards over the last 3 years, but Microsoft seems to have ignored that fashion here. The company’s defence might be that they have produced what gamers wanted – and perhaps this is what many gamers are indeed after – but, in our tests, the body of keys is not only far too packed, but also raised incredibly high; meaning that there’s a lot of time lost in travel between your finger hitting the top of the pad and when the block actually hits plate at the bottom. Naturally, you get used to just about any keyboard over time but it’s all too easy to mis-type on the X4 and mash a collection of nearby alternatives instead.

Oddly, that brings us onto our next point. One of the big features of this model is the introduction of advanced anti-ghosting technology; meaning that you can press up to 26 keys at once and have them all function simultaneously without any one overriding the other. On the one hand, that’s an excellent feature particularly in strategy games when you might be holding down a series of shortcut keys at the same time. On the other, it gives you mixed effects when you accidentally mash together a few of the keys placed too close to one another for comfort.

While the main keys are not ideal, the macro and media buttons are everything that the rest of the deck should have been – large, flat, low lying and well spaced. They’re also nicely in finger reach without having to move your entire hand like a pianist stretching for the low notes. There are six macros down the side which form a single bank of actions and you can toggle between three different banks at the touch of a button. What this means is that you can program 18 different macros per profile and you can program as many profiles as you like, which you can even set for your computer to detect automatically.

In other words, you can set your machine to recognise that you’ve just booted up World of Warcraft and the keyboard will automatically call up your WoW settings with the 18 macros you’ve got pre-programmed. When you’ve had enough of the quests and dungeons a double click on, say, your Crysis icon and a different set of 18 macros automatically loads up too. All very seamless and very useful. It’s worth noting, though, that it doesn’t record mouse movements, only key presses. So, your automatic control combinations can only be keyboard-based.

Recording the macros themselves can either be done very simply and easily in-game or slightly less tangibly with the IntelliKey desktop software as well. The most effective overall method is to record them while playing first and then trim them down with the software, which allows you to edit the times between key presses as well as length for which the keys themselves are held down. Once fine-tuned they become a incredibly valuable tool for any game. The macros are probably the most important feature of the SideWinder X4 and the part that’s also been the best designed.

As well as recording, the IntelliKey software allows you to reassign any of the media keys to any one of 47 different functions including disabling them altogether – an option worth taking for the Windows key in case you accidentally bring up the Start menu mid-deathmatch. The only problem here is that many of these functions allow you to launch certain apps like the Windows Media Player or Calculator, but will not let you close them again by pressing the same button. That’s something you’ll need to do manually.

The Sidewinder X4 is topped off with some reddy-orange back-lighting and you can set to three different brightness levels as well as off, with the final small ergonomic disappointment being that the wrist wrest is perhaps not quite large enough and made of a hard plastic mould rather than the comfortable material that it appears to be in the pictures.

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Verdict:

The SideWinder X4 does so much right that it’s a shame to have to warn people about its one real flaw. The problem is that it’s such a major flaw for a keyboard to have awkward keys that it needs to be said. If you have highly trained fine motor typing skills, then you won’t have an issue but, for us, the main keys are just wrong – too cramped, to high set and the surfaces too easy to miss. Doubtless, you will get used to the kind of accuracy needed but why should you have to?

That aside, Microsoft has come up with a very good peripheral. It’s not too garish, in the way that gaming accessories tend to be, but still offers a great level of functionality with perhaps just one or two built-in USB slots an absent touch. It’s an okay price for such a specialised piece of kit, but you might be after something a little better for the money. On the plus side, the desktop software is flexible, easy to use and, mercifully, nice and light too.

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Hardware Keyboards Gaming Microsoft Microsoft SideWinder X4

Microsoft SideWinder X4 gaming keyboard originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:28:44 +0000

Russian post-apocalyptic novel brought to stunning game-play life

It’s the year 2033, 20 years since nuclear holocaust ravaged the earth, rendering the surface uninhabitable. When the city of Moscow raised the alarm, its citizens had 7 minutes to make it to safety and head to the only place strong enough to face both the blast and the fallout. Today 40,000 survivors exist in the subterranean world of the Moscow underground system; built by the communist regime to double as a giant nuclear bunker for the people and the military to survive in.

Now every station on each line exists as its own mini-state under local rule be that democratic, fascist, anarchic or unspeakably devoid of any kind of remnant of humanity whatsoever. They survive in this dark world in a makeshift fashion by engineering whatever they need from the supplies already down there and scraps gathered from the toxic surface during the short, gas mask-clad visits they dare to make. This is the world of Metro 2033 and where this excellent looking cinematic survivor first person shooter is set.

The story of this game, the setting and all the characters are the creation of Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who wrote the book of the same name, and this Xbox and PC title set for release on 19 March is all the richer for it. All too often, games inspired by fiction are usually from films and usually to cash in on Hollywood success. Coming direct from a novel and the wealth of detail therein, Metro 2033 becomes so much more than a FPS glued together with a loose plot and a series of uninspiring cutscenes.

The protagonists have personality and charm, the context of each level makes perfect sense and the story is the gaming equivalent of a page turner. It’s perhaps the only shooter we’ve ever seen that’s almost as enjoyable for the spectator as it is for the player.

From the levels we played of the preview code, Metro 2033 offers an excellent mixed approach to this genre of gaming. The first real stage of action takes place with three survivors plus you, the hero, Artyom, beginning a journey to the centre of the underground to warn all the stations of a scourge of mutant creatures capable of psychic attack on the survivors.

For one reason or another, you end up taking the spooky service tunnel where the Dark Ones, as they’re known, attack (surprise surprise) and the game turns quite literally into a rail shooter where you get to open up both barrels off your sawn-off shotgun. There’s still plenty of crouching down in rooms full of crates shooting at men in uniform for the more traditional FPS action, but what the game seems to do well is mix it up quite nicely with the story scenes which are both playable, to a degree, and thoroughly entertaining too.

The real joy of the game, though, is the total immersion in which you can play it. The post apocalypse world of Metro 2033 is utterly believable and you get a true sense of the life in the new underground that the book conveys. The atmosphere is created by more than just the odd monster jumping out to surprise you. The soft shadow detail, the drifting semi-transparent dust and real-time reflections in glass and water are an excellent addition courtesy of the 4A Engine on which the game runs. There’s the odd jerky piece of action and miss-rendering of objects relative to one another in some of the cutscenes, but not during the action levels.

The sounds in the game were probably the highlight for us though. The moaning and creaking of the pipes of this weathered underground world twist beautifully with half-heard conversations of horror bending down the train tunnels and into the darkness. It’s a perfect accompaniment to the hanging mists in the half light and the calls of terror when the monsters attack.

Throw in some excellent almost Steampunk style weaponry – including the side loading Bastard Gun famous for its terrible aim, constant jams and over-heating – a wrist watch for timing how long you can spend up on the surface, and some enjoyable, if ever so slightly dodgy, Russian accents, and you’ve got what looks to be a really good game. It will work with Nvidia’s 3D system, if you fancy, but from what we saw it doesn’t really add anything to the experience – except a bit of a headache from going cross-eyed at the gun situated front and centre of the field of view.

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Verdict:

There’s still a little way to go before the final version arrives, but what we’ve seen rather knocked our socks off and should do the same for even the more jaded first person shooter players. The story is nothing short of compelling, the game play challenging, enjoyable and varied enough to keep you interested, and the look and feel is as good as you’ll find anywhere. Even the Dark Ones have an originality of movement about them that seems to separate this game from more run of the mill offerings.

Once you add on the extra GPU power of running Metro 2033 on the PC, then it’ll probably be as smooth throughout as it deserves to be. As one games journalist at the preview said “It’s got ’sleeper hit’ written all over it”. We’d have to agree.

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Gaming Xbox 360 FPS First look Metro 2033 THQ

Metro 2033 – Xbox 360 – First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:57:08 +0000

Chocolatey enough for the Ambassador’s reception?

With the mobile world gripped with mini-version fever, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that LG would bring out a sister handset to the New Chocolate, but somehow it did. The new new Chocolate, or LG BL20, keeps the same colour scheme and finish as the super-wide BL40, but with a slightly stumpier form factor at 106.9 x 50.8 x 12.3mm. It’s a good 50% thicker than its sibling but that’s because, this time, it’s a slider.

You see, whereas the New Chocolate was a premium smartphone, the BL20, although high-end, is what the industry now refers to as a feature phone – possibly because you’re stuck with the features on the handset as you bought it. There’s little real internet access on this phone – a very basic browser you’ll tire of in seconds and never bother with again, a clunky email service stuck onto the SMS messaging centre and no Wi-Fi access anyway. There is 3G for those that wish to persevere, but most who want that level of function in the first place will have already traded this in for an iPhone.

Typically, the rest of the software on the BL20 is not good. The OS is LG’s most basic and looks like something out of 2005. It takes time to learn where simple functions like putting the handset onto silent are found, but there is at least the mercy of a 3 x 3 icon grid for the bigger applications. That said, once you master it, you’ll find some decent shortcuts on the touchpad on the front face.

Software aside, it’s actually a very nice piece of kit. It’s got a top LG mobile camera complete with 5-megapixel sensor, Schneider-Kreuznach glass, an LED flash and a decent set of WB and exposure settings to play with. It’s a bit of a shame that the ISO only goes up to ISO 400, that there’s no scene modes and that the zoom is a no-no at full resolution, but there is an excellent Text Read mode which makes it great for taking pictures of both typed and hand written diagrams and copy. Admittedly, there isn’t a world of application for that kind of feature but it’s the kind of thing that’d make you love the phone when it finally comes in useful.

Curiously, the excellent camera does make you realise how tiny the screen is. There’s just 2.4 inches to play with and a matching QVGA (240 x 320) video capture available too. It does seem a little short-sighted not to have doubled that up to VGA, particularly as you get given a stills resolution that’s far greater than the screen is capable of showing. Why not allow users something a bit better, at least with enough resolution for a reasonable YouTube watch?

On the plus side, the screen is nice and bright and, although it’s mildly smudgy to the touch, it’s easy to read in bright light conditions too. The glass of the of display is actually part of one large piece covering the entire length of the phone which appears entirely black and uniform until you slide the handset open and reveal both a red keypad and red-lit touch controls that were on the top surface all along. These touch buttons are beautifully calibrated with gorgeous haptics that let you know you’ve hit your mark which we guarantee you will every time.

There’s both a widget hotkey and a multimedia touch control which are pleasant but slightly pointless given that there aren’t really enough good applications to ever need two running simultaneously. Besides, the widgets are probably just as slow and clunky a way to access your notes, calendars and contacts as riding the menus anyway.

Ultimately, though, it’s not the software you’d buy this phone for – it’s the looks, and it’s easy to forget how stunning and distinctive the New Chocolate style is, especially when you’ve been test driving the BL40 just a few weeks earlier. However, take the BL20 out of your pocket in public and people will turn their heads and ask you what this sexy handset your holding is, because sexy is what it is. So, provided your willing to spend ?160 on a love affair, then you won’t mind that there’s little here in the way of substance.

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Verdict:

If you want good looking on PAYG, then there’s few prettier than the LG BL20. It may not have the exotic shape of the BL40 but it still oozes class. The camera is excellent, the choice between the smooth touchpad and the expertly designed small squared off keys is a real luxury too, but there’s little else here to get you excited about.

If you just like a phone to be a phone, then go and buy a Nokia Classic of some sort. It’ll be a better, more compact workhorse of a gadget. But if you’re willing to sacrifice some of that ease of use for a big dollop of wow factor, then you’ll be perfectly happy with the BL20. It fits in your pocket, it makes calls, it looks cool.

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Phones Mobile phones LG LG BL20

LG BL20 mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Can LG’s LED impress?

The good thing about LG TVs is that the company has a firm grasp of what consumers want to be able to do. In the case of the LG SL9000 that involves Bluetooth connectivity, a bag full of HDMI and SCART sockets plus an all important USB port, which will play back JPEG, MP3, MP4, MPEG, AVI, MKV and DivX in HD amongst the more important file formats. The only thing missing is an Ethernet cable but then getting videos or pictures to the set is easy enough without it.

The panel itself is certainly pretty enough. The SL9000 is part of LG’s Borderless range, aiming to marry design up with functionality and you certainly feel like you’re getting both here without paying over the odds for either. Borderless is perhaps a bit of a fabrication given that the picture is set inside a 2-inch wide black frame, but it’s the single sheet of glass they both sit behind to which LG is referring. Definitions aside though, it does make the set modern and minimalist, and able to be free of a heavy bezel.

Despite the sleek looks, the panel still holds a series of control buttons running neatly up the side, meaning if you happen to lose the remotes it is not quite as disastrous as with some other TVs. That said, two excellent controllers – one basic, the other full featured – come in the package. To misplace one would be careless, two and it might be time to have a word with yourself.

As with the remotes, the on-screen menus are a real joy to use. They offer not only an incredibly clear and straightforward navigation, but also feature enough options to keep the expert playing with slider controls until dawn. At the same time, there’s an excellent idiot-proof way of getting the look just the way you want it with picture wizard offering a series of calibration tests to optimise for your taste and environment.

It even saves your preferences in such a way that you can’t cock everything up, and for pure family-friendly use you can also rename all the inputs to whatever you like, making the Xbox, DVD, etc, all easier to find. There’s also an eco-saving mode which allows you to choose what level of environmental concern you’d like to exhibit and the intelligent sensor performs well in selecting the appropriate level of brightness for the task.

Probably the only issue on this side of things is with the EPG which could be better. The SL9000 has a Freeview tuner built in and with all the channels available, it’s not so easy, at a glance, to work out where in the schedule you are and what’s on next. Too many grey bars packed too close together in too similar shades. Worse though is that when flicking from channel to channel you’re never presented with the important info at hand – i.e., what this program is, how much of it is left and what’s on after. It’s a little irritating to have to go back to the guide each time to find out.

Out of the box the TV is an effortless set-up. Tuning and updating is effortless with all the ports well placed apart from perhaps the headphone jack which requires an extra long cable to reach right around the back. The swivel stand is simple and sturdy and the minute you fire the screen up you’ll be impressed by the picture. It offers strong if not top-notch HD images, very punchy colours and the 100Hz frame rate only lets you down on a few occasions. We’d still recommend sports fans opt for 200Hz technology.

The LED side-lighting is a great feature giving decent black levels if not quite the stunners you’d want for darker films. To be picky, there’s also the slightest hint of light bleed at the edge of the frame where the LEDs are housed, but the only time you’ll notice is when film credits roll, otherwise it’s really not an issue.?

The only real caveat we have to offer with this TV is on the audio side. Tests from external sources – a Blu-ray player and Xbox both via HDMI 1.3 – often resulted in the sound being out of sync with the video. The problem may have been unique to this particular set but either way it was resolved once the Clear Voice and other audio technology was switched off. Otherwise, the speakers themselves were good given the constraints of a flat screen. The legendary Mark Levinson playing his part once again.

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Verdict:

The LG SL9000 is an excellent blend of style and performance. Too often with an LED TV you end up paying the Earth without really getting the performance bang for your hard earned buck. This set offers a tasteful, non-ostentatious design. It’s very slim without being a size zero, offers fantastic usability and a solid, if not mind-blowing picture.

The sound syncing was a frustration and it’s a shame to have to switch off all the audio technology to get it fixed while watching from external sources, but otherwise the experience of this TV is top notch. We’ve not read about this issue with these sets anywhere else, so the advice would be to buy one in good faith but be sure to test it out within 14 days of purchase in case there is any problem with your model.

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Home Cinema Televisions LCD televisions LG LG 42SL9000

LG 42SL9000 television originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Windows Mobile meets S-Class

The LG GM750 is a fairly unassuming creature. To take it out of the box it looks little different to other recent non-Black Label handsets from LG. Put it down on the table with the Arena, the Renoir and even the Cookie and they’re all pretty much like siblings with slight variations of thickness. If the Cookie is the lean, lithe teen, then the GM750 is probably the strongest big brother of the bunch. It’s got no real glitz or glam about it but there’s a steady assurance that it’ll deliver, which indeed it does.

It’s easy to tar the GM750 with the same brush as all Windows Mobile phones when Android is the sexy choice, but there’s plenty to like about 6.5 if not to love and it works very well on this phone. Just in case you’re not convinced, LG has added its top of the range S-Class custom UI on top but we found in testing that, although both were quite usable, it quickly becomes preferable to ditch S-Class in favour of the honeycomb homescreen of Windows.

The 3-inch touchscreen on the phone is almost enough to work WinMob without a stylus but not quite. Once inside the applications like IE and the Office suite, you’ll be down to the edge of your fingernail unless you’re carrying the excellent telescopic touch pointer included by LG. There’s no slot in the phone to house the device but there is space to attach it as a charm.

If you do wish to go bare back it actually becomes a bonus that the TFT is just resistive rather than capacitive. Windows Phone is far too intricate for two big digits thumping down in multi-touch and there’s a reassurance when the phone pulses in your palm on recognition of a light but certain touch. If you’re new to Windows Mobile, it’ll take you a few days to learn all its ins and outs. Intuitive navigation is not one of its strong points but somehow the size and honest design of the LG GM750 is forgiving to your task.

When you’ve found your feet, you can browse, word process, send and receive emails from multiple accounts and synch with your Windows PC with typical Windows Mobile ease. Instructions both on the phone and in the box make the routine welcoming enough to pick up. There are a couple of issues where the LG does hold you back.

First, and by far the most important problem, is that the experience is a little laggy. Windows Mobile 6.5 not a light piece of software and it feels as if LG hasn’t quite fully appreciated the crunching power needed to run it. You find yourself waiting a fraction too long for the more complicated application tasks and the entire phone crashed within the first 2 hours of play. We could only get it running again by removing the battery and putting it back.

A faster processor would probably solve the problem – although software refinements by Microsoft would also help – but perhaps battery life was what LG was going for. That might explain the enormous 1500mAh Li-polymer battery that blots out everything else under the back cover, but, with well over a day of heavy use from one charge it almost seems worth it.

The second problem is less severe but still quite irritating. The sensitivity of the Wi-Fi receiver is not as good as it should be. One of the joys of these devices is to use them at home or the work place with faster online access, but the GM750 only picked a weak signal from our router even when within a matter of metres of the unit. Combine that with the lag and you’ve got a very slow browsing experience.

On the outside, there’s plenty to enjoy about the phone. It’s a solid build, if slighty unexciting and sits still pocketable but chunky at 109.8mm x 53.5mm x 12.9mm. While no one’s going to be massively impressed, its tank-like body will protect it from most bumps and bruises. The on/off switch at the top doubles as a lock, there’s the usual quick launch camera/shutter release on one side next to a microSD card slot which should really be swapped over with the volume/zoom controls on the other side.

LG continues to embrace the Micro-USB standard for charging and even if there’s no dedicated 3.5mm jack, the company has included an adaptor to ensure you can use your own phones. Best of all though is the multitask button which allows you to instantly swap between however many applications you have open at any one time – very useful.

For on-screen controls on the front face, there’s simply the traditional green and red phones, which work for opening and closing applications as well as for in-call use, and between them is a well-chosen and nicely calibrated optical trackpad. It’s just a shame that there aren’t quite as many times where it would come in use ahead of the stylus.?

There are cameras on the front and back with the main unit well positioned and packing a resolution of 5 megapixels. There’s no Schneider-Kruznach optics here – a pity – and no flash either. You can’t zoom at full resolution at all and you only get a multiple of less than 2 when you agree to go down to 2 or 3 megapixels. That said, the quality of the shots is reasonable with a typical set of controls from LG including a few scene modes. It might not take the best shot first time but with a bit of fiddling, the third will be the charm. At the very least, the AF is good and the shutter delay mercifully short. What can be tricky is to get a steady shot though.

The frame rate for the VGA video capture is poor with the slightest pan causing instant Monet blurs and getting a decent exposure with stills hasn’t been balanced with a workable shutter speeds; certainly not without a few goes at holding your breath and really trying to keep still.

Verdict:

You have to give the LG GM750 an A for effort. What this phone is, is a real work horse. LG has covered all the bases with high-res camera, an in-depth OS, a second option in case you don’t like that one and an easy to use handset that will last even the longest of contracts. What there is little of is style and subtlety.

However, given you’re getting pretty much the power of a top notch phone free for just ?25 per month, it becomes a real winner. All too many handsets at the same price promise high-end functionality but seldom deliver the genuine experience. This phone does. Forgive it its sins and you’ll find a mobile of which you grow fonder day-by-day.

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Phones Mobile phones LG LG GM750 Windows Mobile

LG GM750 mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:41:47 +0000

Poptastic?

At just ?99.95, the LG Pop is an excellent buy. The Korean company heralds it as the world’s smallest touchscreen phone but to merit the handset merely for its size is to do it an injustice. Yes it has a 3-inch touchscreen and, yes, the casing around said WQVGA is figure-hugging indeed but there’s a quality about the whole phone that is a great testament to the work LG has been putting into its mobiles over the last few years.

There’s a satisfying minimality to the device with its anodised bezel broken only by the single off-centre intell-key button on the front which both starts and ends the call. Round the sides you’ll only find hints at volume buttons and a shutter release and one of the smallest power switches you could ever meet. A cover hides the universal Micro-USB recharge and connection socket but there’s no 3.5mm jack in sight which is entirely criminal for a phone advertising itself for MP3 playback and an FM radio. For that alone the Pop has to lose points.

The back is a plastic slide cover nicely disguised as brushed aluminium with just the lens of the 3-megapixel camera the only other mark on the face, unfortunately so close to the corner that it does take a bit of practice to keep your finger out the shots. There’s no camera flash and no superior lens that you find on higher LG smartphones but the quality of the imaging is strong and the camera software typically usable. Video capture gives you VGA resolution.

The Pop sticks with an LG OS, unlike some of the company’s premium handsets starting to appear, but rather than the top end S-Class system it features the slightly more slimmed down A-Class. Although not wildly different, this software is a lot easier to manage relying less on the rotating desktops which can be notoriously cumbersome to navigate. You can get what you want from pretty much any menu on the phone meaning that you don’t have to figure out the right page just so that you can make a phone call or send a text.

A-Class also adds a little fun with LiveSquare, as we’ve seen on a number of LG’s devices. It gives you a customisable representation of who you’ve been connecting with most recently, be that through SMS or phone calls. These friends are represented as avatars that might appear in a zoo or park, or not even as humans at all, and the more you contact them, the more ducks, chickens and all sorts of things are added to their surroundings. It’s completely pointless but really cute and just makes you want to talk to these people more to see what happens next.

The other excellent addition is the native support for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace which is really going to work for the teens and early-20s market where this handset is aimed. The interface with each is good in itself and really only suffers in terms of speed of connection because this phone can only rely on WAP with neither 3G nor Wi-Fi to back it up. Bit of a shame really.

The user interaction itself is solid. It’s a resistive touchscreen, as long as you keep that in your mind, it won’t cause frustration. Expect the Pop to react like an iPhone and you’ll be disappointed. Give each selection a good push with your finger and you’ll never have to ask it twice.

In all the build-up photos, media and coverage, the Pop was seen with a solar charger cover to give the handset its eco credentials. At the LG meet up when this was raised, they said that the PCB-100 cover would be available sometime around March or so was the estimation. It will also cost extra.

As it stands, the battery is very good. Heavy use will easily get you through a day but seeing as there’s not a major amount of browsing your going to do, heavy use really only equals constant video playback. Most users will get more like 2 days out of a charge.

Verdict:

LG has really done an excellent job with the Pop. It’s a great handset to use if you don’t want to spend big on a mobile phone. The slow internet connectivity is a bit of a bind given that the software is there ready and waiting to help you access everything you need, but perhaps that’s not really the aim of this phone. Go and pay for a black label handset or an Arena if you want that kind of thing.

At under ?100, the GD510 Pop really is a bargain. What it might lack in power it certainly makes up for in style, usability and pure unbeatable value. You can feel like you’ve got something special in your pocket for a very small outlay. The only criticism you’d have to level at it given the cost is the missing 3.5mm jack. When will these people learn?

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Phones Mobile phones LG LG GD510

LG GD510 Pop mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:36:42 +0000