Customer Reviews

LG dLite GD570 Phone, Blue (T-Mobile)

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

 

 

I bought this phone for my daughter for her 15th birthday. It's girly enough to satisfy her sense of style, but basic enough to keep the experience simple. She loves the included themes, ring tones, etc. and there's enough included to keep her occupied on longer trips. Having a built-in music player and micro-SD card slot (no card included) is a bonus so that she doesn't need an iPod or other player (yet) if a reasonably sized (8GB) card is included. Battery life under reasonable use shouldn't require her to plug in daily, but heavy usage (games, texting, etc.) may require nightly charging.

Pros:

* Exterior dot-matrix clock doubles as caller ID or animated caller-id graphic
* LED lighted edge can be used for Caller ID identification through patterns and colors
* Call quality seems excellent
* This phone holds a far better signal than my own Nexus S in our home.
* Micro-SD slot for music/pics
* Standard Micro-USB charging means an abundance of charging options.
* Contacts backup online in case she loses the phone.
* Supports Visual Voicemail
* Cheap to acquire on contract

Cons:

* It's a bit long/tall when open, but not entirely bad when using as a phone for larger faces.
* Contact backup sync can take a bit of time and happens at seemingly random times after managing contacts. Editing further contacts is blocked during this activity. This can frustrate inexperienced or impatient users.
* No flash on the camera, but for a 2MP class camera, this should be expected.
* No dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack - sharing the Micro-USB port means you can't charge and listen to music at the same time.
* Included Micro-USB cable for charger is rather short.
* Some of the included apps/contacts encourage data usage or extra downloads. Parents may want to disable these features within their account because accruing these charges can be a bit too easy. This isn't a phone I'd consider putting a $30/mo data plan on.
* Some of the UI decisions are not intuitive at first - i.e. some of the buttons to confirm or perform a desired option aren't the central enter key, but one of the side soft-keys.

I've had many cell phones, smart phones with keyboards and touchscreens, including the LG Voyager, the Samsung Alias 2, and most recently an HTC Touch Pro 2. I came to the conclusion I don't need a keyboard, only use certain features, and the LG Dlite is perfect for me. I live in a remote area where I have trouble getting an adequate signal, with all carriers. I'm using the phone with T-Mobile. This phone is the FIRST to have full bars showing (!), never drops calls.

Most important to me are sound quality and visibility:

Sound: Loud and clear as a bell, so much so you have to turn it down. Callers say sound is great on their end, too. The speakerphone is also very loud, easy to hear and understand, though a bit bright, tinny, not like you're hearing through the phone's earpiece. But loud and very clear- no mistaking what's being said. And people on the other end said they couldn't tell I was on a speakerphone.

I use my phone as my mp3 player, and likewise, the sound is not melodious through the phone's external speaker, but is PHENOMENAL through headphones or bluetooth headphones. Though the music player is basic, it has a built-in equalizer that lets you customize the music so you can hear every nuance.

Visibility: The screen is big and bright, ultra-clear. My eyesight isn't great, and this is one of the few phones I've found that you can make the font of ALL menus UBER-LARGE. I don't have to wear my glasses to see it. Similarly, you have three options for incoming calls (and you can use all three simultaneously)- have the phone announce who's calling, have their name or phone number scroll in large, bright lights across the outer cover of the phone, and/or customize several different "secret lighting" patterns for individual callers, around the edge of the phone. These are bright, beautiful LEDs, can be customized in an array of different colors, PLUS different patterns. Absolutely no doubt as to who's calling. And you can set the phone so turning it over silences the ringer/rejects the call.

You can set the phone so there's a voice readout of the digits you dial. Helpful, because unfortunately the backlight on the number pad is a darkish blue and not very bright. But the keys are relatively large and well-spaced, so unless you need to type a special character, or are texting and don't know what letters correspond to what keys, you can easily see the keys themselves without glasses. I am not nimble-fingered, so the keys are easy for me to use.

I cannot extol the virtues enough of how easy and user-friendly this phone was to set up. I transferred my 1gb SD card, and my sim card from my old phone, and it automatically filled in my contacts, pictures, videos, etc. The phone also automatically lets you use any song in your music folder as a ringtone, and likewise, any picture as wallpaper, without doing anything special.

Plug it in to usb on your computer, it asks you if you want to sync music, use the phone as a disk drive, or use the phone as a modem, automatically (for the latter, and for GPS, I'm assuming you need a data plan). If you don't choose any of these options it just charges from the usb port.

It also paired automatically with my Motorola Stereo Bluetooth headphones (and my laptop), without having to enter any codes. It just found them and they worked.

The controls are simple, intuitive. There's one dedicated button for showing what's running, and for closing any or all tasks. I've only accessed the internet briefly, but the controls seemed easy, you can zoom in or move around on any page.

The only problem I had was that I downloaded a couple of animated wallpapers from the T-Mobile site (sent directly to my phone), and when I set them as my wallpaper they were no longer animated. They went into the pictures folder instead of the animated wallpaper folder (I think), and I've been unable to find a way to move files around myself. Oddly, when you view gifs in the pictures folder they're animated but when you set them as your wallpaper they no longer are. ??

I love the size of the phone, it's long enough that the speaker is next to your ear and the mike is next to your mouth, and thin, lightweight, comfortable to hold. Plus, it's gorgeous, animated, people comment on the light effects. I love it!

I didn't know I was ordering my dream phone when I ordered it. The funky screen graphics, and exterior LED lights, T-Mobile "Favorites", gives it character. And if you don't like the cartoony graphics as being "childish" you can choose different color themes which replaces all the graphics, including the very sad gray theme that looks like all so business serious Windows 3.1 graphics.

The dLite is an ideal phone if you don't need a smart phone, heavy texting, no data plan, no touch. The web browser is too sluggish for heavy use. Has all standard features, calculator, converter, calendar, notes, lists, messages, IM, SMS, loud alarm, stopwatch, speakerphone. Gripe 1 - stopwatch resets when cover closed) Gripe 2: no 3.5mm audio plug (resolved, see below).

Bonus: 2 MP camera, video, audio player and recorder. Plays mp4 videos in iPod format (name them .mp4), audio. Autorotate pics, videos to widescreen. Charges using USB or wall outlet. Handsfree earbud. Backlit keypad. Bright screen, outside of direct sunlight.

I'm a power user and like to max out my favorite personal electronics. This is one of them. I use it for: (0) excellent MP3 / iPod / multimedia player. (1) purchased LG compatible Mobiman micro USB to 3.5mm audio adapter from amazon to use my favorite headphones (check out my review on it). (2) added sandisk 4gb microSD card (3) works great with my bluetooth enabled laptop to transfer apps, pics, files (4) loaded many free JavaME/J2ME midlet apps, including dictionary, blueFTP, full res picture viewer (useful to view loaded maps transferred from computer), ebook readers, games (5) plays converted mp4 videos

Who needs a smartphone.

I like this phone. It's different in design, and fun to use. But try to get any additional support from LG's website. You would think that if LG sells this phone in the U.S., you could get more info (downloads, etc.) BUT NO!!! You have to go to their Singapore site to ANY kind of support info (some of which is NOT available for the U.S. market).