Customer Reviews

LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

And what are those needs?

- I wanted a phone a step below a smartphone with cool features... no need for web browsing, navigator or the higher priced data packages.
- small enough to fit in my pocket
- physical qwerty keyboard for tons of texting (the touchscreen qwertys really irritated me so buh-bye iPhone and Samsung Eternity)
- decent camera


I narrowed it down to the LG Xenon and the Samsung Impression. They are both great and are almost identical in looks and features. The Xenon won for two reasons: the price on amazon at the time of purchase (a penny vs. $49) and the size... the Impression is just a tad larger. Also, I've owned many LG phones with Verizon (switched because of no reception at my parent's new home) so I guess I could throw in brand loyalty to that list.

And after five days of ownership, here are some PROS: great battery life, very intuitive, responsive and bright touchscreen, memory slot is easily accessible on the side, three tabs on the homepage to organize/group your favorite contacts(very useful!), the camera (with flash) is AWESOME even at just 2MP, the huge and rubbery qwerty keyboard and I actually like the blue "xenon" color. And judging from the LG phones I've owned in the past, this phone should be very durable and reliable.

CONS: the speakerphone is horrible for both the talker and the listener (kind of a shocker because all my past LG phones had great speakerphones) and I'd like it if the slider were a bit more resistant (now I'm just nitpicking).

Overall a great phone!

**** UPDATE: 5/15/09 ****

I had to return the phone. AT&T's service was horrible in my area (San Francisco Bay Area). Tons of dropped calls and static. I asked a few friends who also have AT&T (which I should've done before switching over) and they agreed about the service. Most of them are iPhone users and put up with the terrible service just to keep the iPhone!

It's a shame because the phone really is good... but I think a phone is only as good as the service you're getting. Also, I did find a few more flaws during my three weeks with the phone:

- noticeable scratches and scuff marks on the keyboard from the slider.
- slight freezing with the three homepage touchscreen buttons on top (favorite contacts, home, star features)
- the enunciator drop down menu (accessed by pressing on the top edge of the touchscreen) stopped working altogether
- phone randomly didn't ring for incoming calls, but would alert me if caller left a voicemail. (not sure if it's a phone issue or an issue with AT&T's horrid service)
- phone would occasionally freeze when trying to make outbound calls

The freezing issues with the touchscreen and outgoing calls may be a bit of a concern. I noticed it started to do it after I loaded the phone with contacts, pictures, text messages, etc... So I would take away one star if I could.

And I have to just mention that it was a bit of a pain to return. It took about four days before I finally got the right info. I spoke to three Amazon reps and some were clueless about the return process. One guy put me on hold for five minutes before telling me he would just email me instructions... the email arrived two days later but required I call AGAIN to get authorization. Just a very clumsy and disorganized return process. So my suggestion is if you're going to go through Amazon, be sure that this is the phone you want.

I decided to go with another online retailer for my replacement. Not sure if I can post the company on here, but feel free to ask me privately for the info. They were great and definitely instilled more confidence in their buying and return procedures. (this is the first time I've had to return anything to Amazon, so I'm not sure if this is common or just isolated with the cell phone department.)

So now I'm now with T-mobile and received my new Blackberry Curve 8900. The service is awesome... no dropped calls and the call quality is superb. I never thought I would own a blackberry, but this phone is GREAT! Review on that will be coming shortly =)

The Xenon is about near to perfect as I have found for my needs in a cellphone. First off, I have tried the Dare, the Omnia, the Behold, the Zine, and the Nokia 5310. All of them had some neat things, but weren't for me. I had initially been attracted to the phones with the high MP cameras because I didn't want to have to carry a camera with me, but I found that a higher MP doesn't necessarily mean a better picture. I also wanted something that could have music, which all these phones have, but some have the sd card inside. I wanted easy access. I wanted something that wasn't too small, which the Nokia seemed to be. I really liked it, otherwise, because it also had an FM radio. I was afraid I'd lose it, though. The Zine was okay, but I didn't like the keys. I really can't put my finger on why I didn't like the Behold. The Omnia was a smartphone and with it came the higher phone bill. It just had too much on it for me. I don't think I liked the side pullout menu of these two Samsung phones. It was neat to pull the icons onto the main screen, but they could be very cluttered. The Dare was a cool phone, but it was lacking one very important thing for me and also had some problems with locking up or turning off at the wrong time. It lacked a place in the contacts where I could input a street address with the contacts. I liked the touch screen and camera, though. I have written a review on the Dare, so I won't go further.

On to the Xenon. I like the smaller size. I like that it has both a touchscreen and keyboard. The qwerty keyboard slide is comfortable to text on. The keys are fairly flat, but they still feel like separate keys. I have big hands and it is great to use. I appreciate the .com, @, and text related keys along with the quick access keys for email and IM. It has AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo! Messenger. Although the keyboard is four rows, you must use the Fn key (blue) to access numbers and symbols. It wasn't difficult to use. The sliding action of the keyboard feels solid to me and not springy. The covers for the sd card and charger/headset port are a little different. It's best if you have a bit of fingernail to grip the indentation and then carefully pull on the cover piece because it has a plastic post for the little covers to swivel on. I found it a bit tricky at first.

The touchscreen is quite responsive with haptic vibration and the accelerometer is quick when you go from portrait to landscape (qwerty). I like the layout of the menus and the Xenon offers different ways to access the things you need. It is as if LG tried to accommodate almost every possible user. You can use a virtual dialpad to text in T9, tap, or just use the qwerty keyboard. It also has a copy and paste feature. To access contacts, you can do so from the slideout qwerty keyboard, by using the green call button, and by the bottom icons on the screen using either the rolodex type icon or the menu icon that looks like a dice. AND, you can input street addresses in the memo area of the contacts! The dice button will bring up the various menus, as well. At the top of the screen (hidden from view), you can pull down a menu for messaging, your calendar, bluetooth, stop watch, music player, and ring options. Just below that you can access three icons. When you are on the home screen, only the person and the star icons are highlighted. The star icon brings up your favorite menu items, which you can move/drag to the order you want. The person icon brings up your favorite contacts with some cool features, which I'll write about in a moment. When in either of these areas, the home icon will be highlighted to quickly close your favorites. On the home screen, at the bottom left is a small pullout menu that gives you quick access to notes, calendar, pictures, music, an alarm clock, and world clock. You can drag and drop these onto the home screen, if you want. It is a very full featured phone, but not a smart phone. In between the call (green) and end (red) buttons is a task manager button, which is handy if you have a couple things going on. The back function is virtual on the touch screen.

The neat thing about the favorite contacts is that you have an icon that you can save a picture ID to and when you click on it, four options become available. You can call, text, see if there are messages from that person, and view the phone number. You can also quickly access all the contact info for that person by double tapping on the picture and edit also. In addition, you have three locations within the favorite contacts area, denoted by three little dots towards the bottom of the screen. You can have one be for your family, one for friends, and one for co-workers or whatever your three favorite categories would be. In these areas, your icons can be set grid-like and stationary to a designated spot or they can have the ability to shift as the phone shifts by pressing in the empty space around your icons until a small menu pops up at the bottom of the screen. The menu will have a plus sign so you can quickly add to your favorites, a grid icon that will put your icons in place, a push pin icon that will give you the option for your contact icons to shift with your phone orientation or be fixed in the position you want. I like a little more stability so I set them to their places.

The camera is a 2MP with a flash that is very bright. The Xenon offers so many options to have fun with pictures. You can morph, stamp, draw, edit, colorize, etc. It doesn't offer a panorama or multi-shot function that I have found, but the other options make up for the lack of these. It doesn't have a zoom. The photo quality is good. It also has a video option so you can video call or just take a quick video.

The battery life is pretty good. I charge it about once a week with a lot of use. I'm not a heavy texter, but I've been playing with the phone and learning what it can do. I didn't find the learning curve to be steep at all and I didn't read the manual. The speaker phone is okay, but I never really use that feature on any phone unless I'm waiting on hold. I've yet to experience a really clear speaker phone conversation on any phone. The normal call sound is clear. I can't comment on the internet function because I don't use the internet on my phone, but from researching the phone, it appears to be good at that, also. It has GPS capability, but that wasn't really important to me.

The Xenon is a really fun and functional phone. It's close to being smart. It had enough smarts for me to finally commit to a phone and a two year plan after a year of playing with phones and different providers. My 15 years old daughter has really enjoyed it as much as I have. Thank goodness for the family share unlimited texting plan!

You do not need to sign up for ATT's sevice plan in order to purchase this netbook. This is just wrong information, plain and simple. If you want to take advantage of ATT's high speed mobile service, you can purchase it separately and this netbook can then work at the higher speed. Otherwise, you're just limited to wired (10/100) and wireless (54g) broadband and WI-FI service.

This has the potential to be a great phone. Love the form factor, touch screen, keyboard, light weight.

However, it has a fatal flaw: the touchscreen is too fragile for use. The first day we owned it, the screen cracked on the inside. The outside of the phone has no scratches or scuffs whatsoever, and we did not drop or otherwise damage the phone. When trying to resolve the issue with AT&T, the logic is wonderfully circular: "the phone worked when it left the store, so if the screen is cracked it must be your fault". As a result, they will not take it back.

Do not buy this phone unless you buy the insurance and are willing to pay the deductible to replace it.

I have been using the phone for just over a week and have yet to have any problems -- I'll update this review if I do.
It keeps a good charge -- even sending and receiving texts and going online a couple of times a day the battery stays charged for 2-3 days. And it charges in only a couple of hours. Bery nice.
I'm not a big texter, but I have to admit that the keyboard is wonderful! Even when I'm entering contacts it works great and switches itself to numbers or letters depending on what field (name or number) is being worked on.
The camera, although only 2 MB takes very nice pictures -- I do miss a zoom function, though.
The screen is bright and easy to read and I can easily adjust the sensitivity and vibrations as necessary -- I say this because I don't know if the other people who said their screens cracked were juggling their phones or using them to prop up a book case or what... It's sturdy enough for 'normal' use and I think it's works just fine.
Now, the phone has frozen up on me twice, but I've figured out why -- and I'm not all that smart! Both times it froze I was on the internet and it froze when I was trying to load a web page. Either the browser in the phone couldn't handle the action or the page I was trying to load wasn't in a WAP accessible format and so wasn't able to load. Either way a simple removal of the battery for a few seconds took care of this. (Personally, I think it's the browser as I surfed the internet for a couple of hours one night -- I had the charger plugged in; only going to WAP sites. When I tried to load a site I KNEW wasn't WAP the phone froze). This doesn't make the phone bad. It just says the pre-loaded browser sucks.
Also, when I was playing around with the GPS function while on a trip -- my wife was driving -- the phone got pretty hot. Well, this is to be expected of any electronic device! Again, not really a failing.
Overall I was trying to decide between the Xenon and the Samsung Impression and decided on this one because a reviewer on youtube said the keyboard was nicer. And I would agree, and would like to say that I am very happy with the phone! (Thanks PhoneDog).
ps -- Finding a good case for the Xenon -- I don't mean a plastic hard shell snap-on case -- isn't easy, though and I had to do some looking to find anything I liked.

All over the internet there are reviews of this phone comparing it with the Samsung Impression. I didn't want the impression because it is GIGANTIC and also because as someone who has used Samsung phones for a long time, I've always found their battery life to be horrendous. My last cell was the LG Shine, and I was pleasantly surprised with how long its battery lasted.

Some of the reviews on the internet complained about the haptic feedback (aka the fact that the phone vibrates when you use the touch screen). Actually, you can adjust this feature to your liking (there are three vibrations to choose from) or completely turn it off. Another feature complained about was the sensitivity of the screen, but again if you go into the settings menu you can recalibrate the screen to your liking.

I actually think this phone is better and CHEAPER than the Samsung Impression. It has a screen lock on the side which the impression doesn't have. It also has a camera button on the side so you can take a pic in an instant. The camera is 2 mega pixels, but it takes decent pics and has a flash. Samsung Impression is 3+ mega pixels, but has NO flash. When using the mobile web this phone automatically re-adjusts the screen size. Again, Impression doesn't do that!

Best of all, this phone as a lot of great "little" features. It has widgets, like post its that you can leave on the back drop. It also has a special column where you can organize your favorite phone contacts for easy access. Overall, a great phone for the price!

I've owned this phone for less than 48 hours so it's probably a bit early for a review, but I wanted to set the record straight on just two points from previous reviewers that almost made me NOT purchase this phone.

Point #1: The camera DOES have a zoom function. You just need to set the image size to any of the lower two settings to use it.

Point #2: You CAN save attachments from email messages. I sent several pictures successfully to my husband and could save them on his phone (he bought the same model, just in red as I got blue).

This is my first experience with a phone with a touch screen and I didn't think I'd like it, but so far I'm getting used to it. I LOVE having the QWERTY keyboard to use as well. I also enjoy that if I want to send a quick text message without using the keyboard, I get the option to use the touch screen with a regular phone setup, so you can send quick messages just like you could with a regular phone, using the numbers 0-9 to send the corresponding letters.

Saving contacts on the main page and attaching a photo to those people is great. It makes it really easy to just send a quick message or make a quick call to those people you would call the most without having to search for them in a phonebook.

I'm still getting used to scrolling through my browser screens using the touch screen and zooming in and out the same way, but I don't browse that often so it will probably take some time.

I'm still figuring out how to attach my own self-created sound files as ringtones as well. I'm sure it can be done.

Make sure you read the book on this for a few other tips and tricks. I figured out a lot of it on my own, but reading the book with it gave some other fun stuff. For example, on the main Home page, if you touch the top of the screen above the 3 icons, in the black border space, just to the left of your battery and ringtone indicator, you get another drop-down quick menu similar to the slide-out version at the bottom of the screen with a few more functions. This is something you'd never know if you didn't read the book since there is nothing on that screen to indicate this.


Overall I love this phone so far, but I'll update my review at a later date once I've had some time to use it on a more regular basis.

I want to like this phone... it's small, has a full keyboard that is easy to use, good feedback (the amount is adjustable) on the touch screen, the touch screen can be calibrated for individual use (I believe lack of calibration is why some people are having problems with the touch screen). It does have a 2 megapixel camera with flash, however it isn't as good as the one on my old Sony Ericsson W810. That phone also had better reception as well; I've dropped a few calls with this LG in places that I shouldn't. Speaking of drops, this phone is also pretty delicate... one short drop (maybe 2 feet out my car door) chipped the outside. And if you are planning to keep this in your pocket like I do the screen scratches pretty easy. If you get this phone buy the rubber skin (protective shell) and screen saver plastic BEFORE you use the phone. Also, be aware that there is no adaptor available to connect a standard 3 mm headphone jack. Your only options are blue tooth headphones ($$$) or the cheap headphones AT&T sells. NO ONE makes a mini usb to 3 mm adapter that will work on this phone; although I have a nice pair of Senn noise isolation headphones I can't use them with this phone. Check this issue out the LG forum on the AT&T website (my S.E. W810 came with this adpator). Also be aware that there is no software available that will let back up your address book. Lose the phone and you lose your numbers. Lastly there are some software bugs.... took several re-boots of the phone to get the address book properly loaded. I've used this phone for almost a month; it has some nice features but I feel it isn't quite ready for prime time.

I really like the many shortcut and customization features on this phone. It's a good weight, nice resolution, easy qwerty keyboard etc. However, I dropped it about 2 weeks after I got it. It was not a catastrophic fall but immediately after the device orientation was completely screwed up for anything that requires the qwerty keyboard (texting, notes, calendar). It started working again after leaving it on the charger for the night. I ordered a new one anyway, and it fell out of my pocket and did the same thing but much worse. If you are prone to dropping things, and you rely heavily on texting I absolutely would not recommend this phone.

I live in Atlanta where they have a pilot program for actually selling the laptop in AT&T stores...the sales associate will even tell you...it works without a plan because it has built in wireless card, but you need the plan if you want to connect to the AT&T wireless network.

This netbook is being sold on the AT&T network because it has a BUILT IN WIRELESS ACCESS POINT CARD. Meaning, if you are in a location that can connect to a wireless port (home, work, friends house) then you can access their internet for free because of the standard built in wireless card that comes on practically everyones laptop! However, if you are in a Starbucks or someplace that requires you to pay...you can connect to the AT&T access point and use the MB's on the plan you have chosen. It's like having a back up plan when free isn't available!

It's like this...have you seen those people using their laptop with those cards sticking out on the side...those are their wireless access point cards...all cell phone companies sell them...and they usually start at over $200 to $300, but they give you a deal if you sign a 2 year service contract. Well if you get this laptop, yours will come built inside and your deal is the laptop at a really discounted price!