LG Xenon GR500 Cell Phone

I’ve only had the LG Xenon for a short time but so far I love it! Here are my pros and cons:

Pros:

   Compact and lightweight. Small enough to fit in my pocket and it doesn’t feel like I’m carrying a rock in my pocket weight wise.

   When keyboard is closed, the main screen allows you to do everything you need. There are volume buttons on the left side of the phone and camera/lock or unlock buttons on the right side. The microSD slot is also located on the right side and is easy to insert or remove a microSD card. The charging port, which doubles as a headset port, is located at the top.

   The touch screen is nice. I recalibrated it twice just to ensure accuracy. The haptic feedback is actually very nice to indicate that it did in fact register a touch. It responds to nail and fingertip taps, which is nice because I find by using my fingernail, it doesn’t leave as many smudges and fingerprints on the screen.

   The keyboard slides out nicely and clicks when in place. I feel the keyboard would be small for a man but it seems perfect for my hands.

   It’s pretty easy to turn the volume up/down and to switch to vibrate using the Volume keys. There is also an option to turn down the Vibrate on screen once you hit one of the Volume toggle buttons.

   There are some nice keys on the keyboard that enable the ability to get to Text Messaging, Contacts, Instant Messenger, and the Phone features while the keyboard is open. There is also a “@” key and a “.com” key. Most of the keys have an secondary function, which you can access by pressing the red “Fn” key, which is also indicated on the screen when this is on.

   You can use your own personalized ringtones for contacts, primary ringtone, group ringtone, and message tones. This is great, as I was using the LG Shine and you could not set personalized text message tones.

   I text heavily and so far have been happy with the keyboard and the location of all the keys. The T9 takes some getting used to but it is easy to add your own words to the T9 dictionary. There are quite a few options for text input, so you can change it to what you prefer. I just prefer the T9 suggestions so I don’t have to type out a complete word, it suggests words and I can tap the one I want to use or if it’s the first word in the list, press space and it inserts it for me.

   The customized pages are nice and it’s easy to get to. On the Home screen, press the “Star” and personalize programs or press the “Person” to add Favorite Contacts.

   I typically charge my cell phone every night and haven’t had any problems with battery life yet. I talk on the phone quite a bit and text a lot and only lost 1 bar on the battery indicator.

   Picture quality is pretty nice using the 2MP camera, I tried the flash and it definitely seems decent. You can change the image size in the settings to save memory prior to taking pictures.

   I have noticed that it gets more bars in my frequent travels to and from work. In the office, I average 3 bars (located in an interior office near no windows) where my LG Shine had 0 to 1 bars at all times. Also, in my apartment, I’m average 4 bars, where the Shine had 1.

   Phone call quality is good, I was outside and speaking with a friend in windy weather and they said it sounded like I was still in my work building. They couldn’t hear the wind.

   There is a Widget tab that I can see being useful, but a few of them require you to have the data package, which I do pay for.  I haven’t really played around with this too much yet but it isn’t really pressing for me to use any of these widgets at this time.

   I like the calendar feature, it’s easy to use and add appointments. Its reminders are nice.

   Ringtone/Message alert notifications have nice volume settings and are not “tinny” at all. I have it on volume setting 4 when at home and can hear it pretty well in most of the rooms.

   Vibrate is pretty decent and I can feel it when it’s in my jeans pocket, in my winter coat pocket, on the desk, or in my bag.

   Instant Messenger is pretty easy to setup. It supports AIM, Yahoo! And Windows Live accounts. You type and press Enter and it sends the message.

   Connecting to my Bluetooth headset was a breeze. Easy to enable Bluetooth and search for devices.

Cons:

   On most QWERTY keyboards, there is some sort of raised bump to indicate the “F” and “J” keys so you know where your hands are but the Xenon does not have that, so you need to be sure your fingers are in the correct positioning.

   There have been a few times when I opened the keyboard and the phone seems to hesitate once it switched to landscape view. I haven’t had to reset the phone to fix it; it seems to resolve itself within a few seconds.

   I would love to listen to music with this phone but it will require a Bluetooth Stereo headset because LG uses a proprietary headset with most of their phones.

   No Gmail support in Mobile Email and no Google Chat for Instant Messenger. No Microsoft Exchange component. This would be nice, as Gmail allows you to setup their email as an Exchange account.

   After a couple of days of dropping into my jeans pocket, bag, to my desks (home and work), there are a few faint scratches already showing. You will definitely need to purchase a screen protector and shell/case to protect it from getting scratched.

   Expect to get face oils and fingerprints on the touch screen with use. I’ve notice with holding the phone up to my ear that my natural face oils muck up the screen. I’ve had very few fingerprints, as I use my nail to select things instead of my fingertip.

   I’m disappointed that they did not include a data cable in the box.

   Paper manual included is horrible quality. Paper is so thin that you can see the writing from the opposing page and it makes it very hard to read. I ended up downloading it from the LG site and reading it in PDF format.