The LG KE970-also known as the Shine-is aptly named, because the first thing you notice about the phone is the brilliant shine from the brushed stainless-steel body. Even the main display is mirror-finished, and when the screen is inactive, you can actually use it like one! This tri-band phone is based around a slider design. The slider mechanism feels smooth; opening the phone takes just a nudge. Build quality is good, and the phone is comfortable to hold. The (largish) 2.3-inch high-resolution display looks brilliant indoors; however, it pales outdoors this can be attributed to the glossy screen.
The volume control buttons are on the right along with the shortcuts to the camera and music player. To use the memory card slot, you need to remove the battery cover, but it is hot-swappable. The phone’s 50 MB of internal memory can be augmented using microSD cards. The keypad is flat but easy to use because the individual keys are large. The navigation keys aren’t the best we’ve seen, though. The rocker in the middle scrolls though the
menu and can be pressed to activate the menu. The adjoining keys allow horizontal movement but they are small and tight uncomfortable, we thought. The 2-megapixel camera, though good, can’t match the ones on entry-level Sony Ericsson models such as the K550i.
The auto-focus system requires delicate use of the dinky shutter release key; a little clumsiness, and you’ll see blurred, washed-out photographs. Tonal accuracy isn’t that great either; the photos are generally overexposed. Outdoors, the camera fares better, and the colours are more natural. Video recording is strictly okay; it is limited by the resolution and fps. Music on the KE970 was good; the phone handles MP3, AAC, and AAC+. The Inline control with 3.5 mm jack allows you to connect different pair of earphones, though the bundled pair is okay.
With our reference Bose in-ear phones, the volume level was good and the quality crisp, but there is still room for improvement. Photo ID, Bluetooth, mobile e-mail, USB mass storage, and a document viewer for MS Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF are some of the other notable features. On the performance front, the phone is snappy, with no apparent lag in the user interface. Signal reception is good; however, voice clarity could have been better. With nominal use, the phone goes two days before the low battery alarm pops up. The LG KE970 is a stylish phone, and is reasonably priced at Rs 11,990-if you can put up with the operational glitches and the extra bling
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