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Average Customer Review
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The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
85 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
Perfect phone for my needs
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...
Published 15 months ago by Clashboard
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Cool phone but DO NOT drop it
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...
Published 13 months ago by A. Staggs
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85 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
Perfect phone for my needs, April 22, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
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 =)
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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
Finally a phone that has what I want without being a smartphone!, May 3, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
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!
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Much Better than the Techies Give it Credit For, May 19, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
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!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Love this new toy!, May 14, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
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.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Cool phone but DO NOT drop it, June 16, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
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.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Good phone overall, but has some annoying quirks, June 27, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
Pros: features, ease of use, call quality, price
Cons: internal memory, software quirks
I recently bought this phone to replace an older LG model (CU500) and overall I am very pleased by it. It was a tough decision between this model and the similarly styled Samsung Impression. For me the deciding factors were the fact that this model was lower priced and used a mini/micro USB charger unlike the Samsung which has a proprietary charger.
The phone is very easy to use and the manual very helpful. Making calls is easy, especially once you get used to the touch screen if you've never used one before like me. The other programs are pretty easy to use as well. The included yahoo email application works great as does the downloadable gmail application. The gmail app would be better if the orientation would adjust when the keyboard slides out (can only use the app when phone is vertical). The camera takes really good pictures and even has a flash, but some of the camera functions can be difficult to figure out.
My only real complaints are the limited internal memory for text messages (limited to 150 messages + 30 or so messages on the sim card) and a corresponding software quirk. 150 messages may sound like a lot, but it isn't for a frequent texter. It would be nice if text messages could be stored on a micro SD card, but this doesn't work.
As for the software quirk, this is the only phone I have ever owned with no "Sent Messages" folder for texts. The only way to see what messages you have sent is to switch the inbox to conversation view and then you can see an entire exchange of messages with a given contact. Now the problem with this is that the only way to delete sent messages is by deleting the entire conversation. My problem with this is that sometimes I have individual received messages I would like to save, but can't because my own sent messages are taking up so much of the limited (see above) space.
If you don't text too much, or don't mind frequently deleting messages this is a great phone, especially for the price.
Edit: I discovered that you can in fact delete just your sent messages. As long as the messages are not in conversation view, just go to the outbox menu and they can be deleted. I also discovered 2 more odd quirks:
1. If you are on the phone with someone and get another call the beep notification is so loud that the person you are on the phone with knows you are getting a call. The same goes for text messages. I don't think this can be turned down.
2a. You can buy a USB cable to connect the phone to your computer and this is great for transferring pictures. However while you should be able to transfer ringtones like this as well, it is hit or miss. The tones can definitely be transferred to the phone, but often times they are not able to be selected as ringtones. There seems to be a maximum length that the sound clips can be for them to be able to become ringtones (around 15-20 seconds), anything longer and they will just show up as sound files in the sounds folder. I contacted LG on this and they told me that I had to buy tones from AT&T in order for them to work. I knew this wasn't really the truth but the person didn't seem to know much about the phone.
2b. It would be nice if you were able to somehow save text messages to your computer using some kind of software. It seems that you should be able to do this given that you can easily connect the phone to a computer but to my knowledge it can't be done. Even my old Motorola RAZR from a few years ago had this feature.
All in all this is still a good phone and I would definitely recommend it!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Great phone!!!, May 14, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
What I like most about this phone is that is user-friendly for women that have long finger nails. I literally tried out every phone in the AT&T store, and this was the only one that would respond well to the touch of a finger nail. Also, I am an avid IM-er, and the touch screen for the letters is great (letters are not too small like on the iphone). Also the pull out key board is very easy to use with nails as well...... I know it may sound silly to some of the men out there, but I know the women that have any length at all to their nails will know what I'm talking about.
There are a few things on it that aren't very intuitive. With a few tries, you can pretty much figure everything out.
The cons I have for it are that there aren't many apps available for this phone right now - I hope that will change. Also, there is only one headset you can purchase from the AT&T website - which is the kind that hurts my ears (they are usually too big for my ears). I prefer the "gummy-like" earbuds, and I have yet to find anything compatible.
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21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
Screen Auto Rotate Issues - NO STARS, June 11, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
First of all, I would give this phone ZERO STARS if I could.
There is a fundamental design flaw with this phone. The screen auto rotate stops working, rendering the qwerty keypad useless. This was the main reason my wife and I got this phone in the first place. So far, my wife has returned two phones and I have returned one in the space of 5 weeks, all with the same issue. Coincidence? I don't think so.
To make a bad situation worse, AT&T REFUSE TO EXCHANGE OUR PHONES for a different model (they want us to take the same phone again, after already going through three phones with the same problem). I've been an AT&T customer for 8 years, but I'LL BE SWITCHING TO T-MOBILE before the end of the day.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Awesome Phone!, May 25, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
I am loving this phone. Loving it! I was torn between this and a similar phone by Samsung. I went with this one, because I have always loved LG products, especially their phones. I am so glad that I followed my instincts. I LOVE this phone. I am impressed by all that it can do, and how easy it is to figure out most of the neat features! And, the Qwerty keyboard is awesome. I love the @ key and the .com key. Makes texting a lot easier!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A decent phone, but a bad SMS choice, October 6, 2009
This review is from: LG Xenon GR500 Phone, Blue (AT&T) (Wireless Phone)
The phone itself is pretty good, although the touch screen locks up on me. I am only able to unlock it by opening (or closing) the keyboard and re-closing (or re-opening) it. Quite a pain when you're in a hurry. There is also a noticeable lack of security on this phone as well. Your choices are pretty much "don't lock it" or "lock every time I try to do anything". But the worst thing about the phone is keyboard itself. The keys are way too small for anyone to realistically use, except someone with fingers as thin as pencils. If you press the letter A a little too hard, the email application opens due to the proximity of the email button. Same thing with the letter Z, only that launches the Internet browser. Other keyboard complaints include having to turn shift on and off after each capital letter. It only works as "Caps Lock" instead of "Shift". And the same thing goes for the Function key. You have to turn it off and on. It slows everything way down to the point of not really being worth using cases, and making it easier to type "eleven" instead of "11".
On the positive side, battery life is pretty good, and the camera is decent, although only 2 mega pixels. Video recording is decent as well.
My suggestion boils down to spending more money and buying the Samsung Impression, or spending less money and buying the LG Neon. Both have great keyboards, but the Neon's touch screen is only for dialing the phone. Everything else is done by buttons. This is a great phone, but it lacks the security required for a business environment. The Impression is definitely the leader of the pack with the great keyboard and the best touch screen out there!
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