LG Lotus, he was probably the first fashion-forward messaging phone we have ever met, back in 2008. It was an unusual place design, and we were pleased with the version that the decorative purple tattoo had fallen in love. Apparently, fashionistas and, attracted as it made their way to New York Fashion Week this year. Fast forward to 2010 and has an improved successor of the LG Lotus, called the LG Lotus Elite introduced. It still has the usual square design, but it is much slimmer than before. More importantly, it now has an impressive touch screen like the external display from which you can quickly access frequently used functions such as messages and contacts without opening the phone. We were disappointed that most of the features are still the same, but at least now has the integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Design
The LG Lotus Elite leads the fashion phone call of his predecessor with an undoubtedly bold and unique design. Measuring 3.43 cm long and 0.75 inches to 2.44 inches thick, the Lotus pays tribute to the original Lotus Elite, with its square shape but has a unique style. In fact, the Lotus Elite is much slimmer and curvier than the block-like Lotus, with rounded corners and polished chrome detail on its borders. The phone feels like it is solidly built, the joint seems stable as well. LG debuted as the Lotus Elite in a stunning red with a bold and whimsical flower tattoo that seems to be a trick to lure the female demographic decorated. However, the biggest design update for the Lotus Elite, with its external display. It measures 2.4 inches diagonal, which takes a bit of space on such a small phone.
It also has 262,000 colors and a 320×240-pixel resolution that makes everything look sharp and colorful. Not only that, but the display is now a touch screen. In fact, you can tap your finger to scroll through the options as any other touch screen mobile phone. The screen is resistive, not capacitive, so it’s not quite react the way the screen on the iPhone or the Nexus One, but as the external screen on the Lotus Elite has access only to a limited range of options, it’s not so great a deal. The first thing you notice when you need to activate the external screen, is that it’s animated wallpaper – the one we have has an animation of a flying butterfly, for example. You also see the typical indicators such as battery and signal strength, and the date and time. There is also an icon for any missed calls or messages. In addition, you can customize, so that you can access your messages, photo gallery (or slide-show), speed-dial contacts, call history list and address book without opening the phone. Just swipe horizontally across the screen to tilt through them. You can also use the external display as a viewfinder. You can use the external display screen saver, and if you want, you can calibrate the touch screen for even more accuracy.
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On the whole we found the external touch screen easy to use. On the left are a 2.5mm headset jack, volume rocker and charger jack, while the camera button, screen lock key and microSD card slot on the right. On the back of the phone a small metal loop on which you can bind a cell phone charm, if you wish. The LG Lotus Elite even comes with an optional red leather strap to bind to it. Interestingly, the 2.0-megapixel camera on the Lotus Elite is located directly on the hinge of the phone. When the phone is closed, the lens of the camera appears on the upper left corner of the phone back. When the phone is open, the lens in between the screen and the keyboard hinge. Since you can use the internal display as a viewfinder at this point, it’s much easier to take self-portraits. Flip up the phone and you’re going to support another 2.4-inch display with the same color and pixel resolution to be found.
In contrast to the external monitor, but not the internal one with a touchscreen. It does feature Sprint OneClick interface, which is a center of the roundabout linking tiles along the bottom row of the start screen. This way you can quickly access phone functions like your news, your account information, Sprint Navigation, your Yahoo Mail, and much more. Notable links include quick look at your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts, as well as a Google menu that allows you to access Google search, Gmail and YouTube. You can easily add and remove tiles from the link OneClick carousel.
You can display brightness, backlight time, font size for messaging, browsing, the notebook, the dial digits and applications, and you can picture IDs for contacts that have stored numbers and private unknown numbers. The main menu can be arranged in two grid or list view. Below the display and the hinge are the navigation keys. They consist of two soft keys, a rectangular four-way button plus a middle Menu OK button, a dedicated speakerphone key, a Back button and the Talk and End Power keys.
With the exception of the toggle, the speakerphone and the Back button, the keys are mostly flat. Nevertheless, there is sufficient distance between each, we still navigate by feel. Among them are three special keys combinations selected online, e-mail and text. Facebook, Twitter and MySpace – The online key can be mapped to one of three social networking applications. The e-mail and text keys are pretty self-explanatory: the e-mail button takes you to the e-mail in-box while the text button leads to a new SMS. Right underneath that is the full QWERTY keyboard. It is spacious, and all the buttons are raised above the surface for quick and easy entry. The number keys are highlighted in orange, and we want you, the space bar, larger than the rest of the keys. The emoticon button is a nice touch too.
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Features
The LG Lotus Elite has a 1000-entry phone book with room for each entry in six numbers, three e-mail address, a memo, a URL, an instant messenger user name, address, date of birth, a job title and a company name. You can save the messages to caller groups, pair them with a photo caller ID, or a polyphonic ring tones of 33 and one of four oscillations. Major features include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, an alarm clock, a calendar, a calculator, notepad, world clock and stopwatch. Slightly more advanced features include USB mass storage mode, wireless backup service, voice control and voice dialing, voice memo recorder, a document viewer, stereo Bluetooth and a mobile Web browser. The Lotus Elite also has A-GPS support for location-based services from Sprint as Sprint Navigation and Sprint Family Locator.
Messaging is the head of the Lotus Elite features. Of course, it has text and multimedia messaging, but it also has Instant Messaging (AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo) and e-mail. You can e-mail from a variety of Web providers such as AOL Mail, AIM Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, plus other POP or IMAP servers. You can also submit your work or corporate e-mail, which is especially easy if your company uses Outlook Web Access (OWA). If your company does not use OWA, you must register using their Sprint mobile e-mail account that you need staff to download software onto your computer office.
As the Lotus Elite with EV-DO Rev. 0 is equipped, you get access to Sprint array of broadband services. This includes Sprint TV for live on-demand TV shows, movies sprint for pay-per-view movies, Sprint Radio for streaming radio, plus Sprint Music for buying and downloading songs over the air. The music player on the Lotus Elite is a very bare-bones interface which mirrors that of the Sprint Music Store. You can create and edit your playlists, and you can also your songs via USB. Options include Repeat Send to shuffle, and the ability to the players in the background. You will be prompted to save additional tracks via a microSD card. Like with the original Lotus, the Lotus Elite, a 2.0-megapixel camera. It can take pictures in four resolutions (1.600 x 1200, 1280 X960, 640×480, and 320×240) and three quality settings. Other settings include four colors, brightness (automatic and manual), five presets for white balance and a manual mode, nine fun frames, a 4x zoom (but only if they are not in the highest resolution), a self-timer, a night- mode, and four shutter sounds and a quiet election. There is also a camcorder, which allow video recording in two so much as the memory card, or a shorter video version. Videos can be recorded in three resolutions – QVGA (320×240), 176×144, 128×96 or – and three quality settings. Other options are similar to the camcorder to the camera. Photo quality was not as good as we had hoped. We really had to hold still for the picture not blurry and muted the colors and seemed dull.
As already mentioned, you can customize your Lotus Elite with graphics for wallpaper and screen saver. You can create your own or download more from mobile Sprint store. The same is true for all ringing tones or beeps. The Lotus Elite also comes with a couple of games and applications – demo versions of Family Feud and Mini Golf Las Vegas 4 prices, Frogger Evolution, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, NFL Mobile Live and on-line zone. As with the graphics and sounds, you can download more of this from Sprint as well.
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Performance
We tested the LG Lotus Elite in San Francisco with Sprint network. Call quality was very impressive on the whole. We heard our callers clearly with no distortion, and their voices sounded natural. Automated-calling systems recognized our voice well. Callers also reported good voice quality. They said there was little background noise or static, and we sounded so clear that it was almost that of fixed-line quality. They wanted to say that our voice seemed a little robot, but it was not a deal breaker. Speaker phone, was on the other side pretty bad. They said we sounded rather dull, even when we spoke relatively close to the microphone. We thought it sounded tinny, but with much volume.
The same goes for the music audio quality: the phone’s tiny speakers just were not enough to find quality bass. The entire audio was quite tinny and thin as a result. We would certainly recommend a headset for better audio. EV-DO speeds were acceptable. Although the speed is not as fast as EV-DO Rev A, we still managed to stream video from Sprint TV without buffering problems. We also downloaded a song 1.5MB in 40 seconds. The LG Lotus Elite has a rated battery life of 5.9 hours talk time. We were impressed with the tested talk time of 7 hours and 3 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the Lotus Elite a digital SAR of 1.2 watts per kilogram.
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