Customer Reviews

LG CU500 Multimedia Unlocked Phone

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I went through a period of time where I broke a phone annually. That is until I bought this phone on ebay nearly 4 years ago.

I am not... nice to phones. I drop them constantly. I even dunked this phone in water, once mildly, the second time it was fully immersed. I would have been happy if this phone had lasted the regular 2 years that we tend to expect now days. This phone has gone above and beyond.
I had to replace the battery two years ago. The original stopped holding a charge, but once a new battery was in the phone functioned like new.
Unfortunately, even this phone couldn't resist me forever, and I broke the clip that holds the battery in place a few months back. Electric tape fixed that just fine, and was barely noticeable.
After this last dunking in water however my phone is having a few issues. I think the battery is messed up. The charge barely lasts a day. I am confident that if I replaced the battery my phone would once again work as before. However... since the battery clip is broken it would still have a bit of a wiggle, and 4 years is a long time for a phone, and since the numerical keypad makes texting tedious I have been considering a new phone for a while. If it weren't for the lack of a QWERTY board I would get this phone again in a heart beat! I HIGHLY recommend it.

To expound a little on the features that I use:
call quality: good
Ringtones: can use Mp3 which I love since I can make ringtones on my computer (using garage band) then blue tooth push them to the phone and have great rings.
Video: all right, not amazing, but really, what do you expect from a 1.3m pixel camera?
Pictures: again, all right, though to be honest, for the low Mp I am actually quite impressed with the quality. I actually love photography though, so while I LOVE the camera for a quick capture, this will not be a primary device for picture taking. I do love the rotating camera though. That has come in handy many times!
Messaging: if you can handle t9 then great. the phone gives a tone when you hit send, and when the message sends, which can be a little annoying when in company so I often keep it on vibrate or silent to avoid that. The notification can be handy though since I work in a building where reception can be frisky. The phone only holds ~160 messages at a time, give or take... kind of annoying when you have to go through and delete texts. The inbox has a multi delete function in case you don't want to clear the whole inbox. The sent messages/drafts don't have this option though, so be prepared to hand delete a bunch or just wipe the whole thing.
Reception: is actually great. I work in buildings where people have a very difficult time getting reception, and this phone usually manages to keep a bar at least. It has 3G and then the regular bands so it will switch between them to find the best connection.
The micro SD card is behind the battery. This doesn't bother me, but it may drive some crazy.
There are buttons on the front for if you want to use this as a music phone, personally, I have an ipod, and so there is no point in buying the special adapter to listen to music on my phone. My niece loves playing with the music function though, she can hit a button and all my ringtones can play. Great toy (with supervision)
Caller ID: you can set specific ringtones and picture id which I like
Phone book: you can create caller groups but can't set one as the default phone book list (I could do that on another phone)

Other options that I have used and liked:
tip calculator
alarm
stopwatch

I haven't used the IM/etc I like my phone to be a phone, and don't get data plans.

This is all I can think of for now. Any questions and I can try to answer them. I have had this phone for a while, and like I said, I would buy it again if I didn't want to get a full keyboard on my next phone.

** I don't give 5 stars easily, but I did for this phone... and I wrote a review of it... so that should say something.

Nothing special but works after a fashion - bought it as an unlocked phone for voice calls and texting to use in Europe, India and Australia and it does the job, although clumsily and with no evidence of an intuitive design. Shipping was prompt but the included battery was well past its useful life.

I needed to replace my old LG because the screen went dark so I ordered this replacement. These guys were very helpful. I had an issue with the battery and they sent me another very quickly. Response to emails was fast.