photojunkie

So for the last month, as a part of a blogger outreach program, I’ve been playing with the first Smartphone put out by the South Korean company LG, appropriately called the LG Eve (aka LG GW620). The phone features include a resistive touch screen, a tactile slider qwerty keyboard and a 5 megapixel camera (and LED flash) which shoots both photos and videos. Touted as a Social Media smartphone, the LG Eve runs on the Google Android OS, which allows for the download and use of any Android based applications.

Upon initial inspection, the LG Eve looks like a slightly smaller, slightly thicker iPhone wanna be, featuring a 3 inch screen (dimensions 106 x 55 x 12 mm). But you soon discover the discover a slider tactile qwerty keyboard and the impressive 5 megapixel camera. The phone was initially loaded with a limited number of basic applications and upon my first use of the phone, I wasn’t all that impressed. Being a full time iPhone user, Apple has done a very good job of training us to use our phones in certain ways, and using the LG Eve requires a bit of unlearning to get a full sense of the three available buttons available on the LG Eve. Underneath the touchscreen, there is a home button to the left, a round menu button in the middle and a back to the right. Once you figure out how each button works, the ease of use on the LG Eve increases massively.

Sample Video from the LG Eve

Out of the box, I wasn’t all that impressed with the applications built into the LG Eve. Being an Android phone, it came preloaded with all the various google applications, a very functional GPS application called Telenav (subscription extra), and a few other basic applications for email, web browsing etc. Also included was a Social Networking application called linkbook, which is supposed to be your one stop shop for all your social networking needs (I’ll get into this shortly). It wasn’t until I found the Marketplace application and started downloading various applications when I started to truly enjoy playing with the LG Eve. In the marketplace I was able to find apps for all my social networking needs. Twitter, facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, they had them all covered. I was also able to find Android versions of my favorite iPhone apps like Bump and Shazam. I think it was a very smart move on LG’s part to hop on the Android bandwagon, as opposed to building their own operating system for the phone. There is a whole community behind the Android movement and lots of apps being developed for it.

Linkbook

One of the biggest things they are marketing about this phone is it’s ability to connect you to your social network’s. The built in application made for that purpose, on the LG Eve is called Linkbook. The application allows you to connect to various social network from one central place. In theory, it sounds like an amazing idea, but in execution, LG does a poor job. When shown the application for the first time, I was deeply disappointed with it lack of features. The app, only provides support for Facebook, Twitter and Beebo (who uses that?). The software only allows you to access one network at a time. And there is a very limited number of things you can do from the application. Basically from a Social Network Manager application I would expect to see a number of features, which would include, but are not limited to; a large selection of networks to plug into (FourSquare, Flickr, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, MySpace etc), the ability to update my status once and have it posted to all (or selected) networks, and the ability to access more information like facebook events, or other information you might find useful while you are mobile. Of course, the redeeming feature of the phone, which I mentioned above, is it’s Android platform, which provided me with many application options for my various Social networking needs.

The Camera

When handed a phone to try, my first thing to check out is it’s camera capabilities. The photo of Wall-E above is the first I took with the camera and instantly I was impressed by it’s ability to take decent macro shots. But the real strength in the camera is built into the camera application itself. When you dive into the camera’s menu screens you soon discover, exposure compensation, flash and macro controls, shooting modes, white balancing and a whole slew of other settings you can control. Also in playing back the images on the gallery application, there are a number of edit features that you can do in-camera. Many people have asked me if I would trade my iPhone for the LG Eve. And for the camera alone, I might.

Photo Gallery of images captured with the LG Eve

Overall the LG Eve is a excellent initial effort by LG into the smartphone market. They’ve made a lot of good choices with this phone. The keyboard and touchscreen combo is a great feature especially for those who are fans of tactile keyboards, and I know there are a lot of you out there. The built in camera is a joy to play with. and the Android platform provides a ton of applications, for productivity, to games to social networking. The LG Eve is available in Canada on the Rogers network.