You know, not every smartphone has to be putting down maxed-out hardware. That's a lesson that Nokia is certainly taking to heart, concentrating many of its latest efforts on lower-end Symbian devices that it hopes will capture entire new swaths of users that'd otherwise be buying dumbphones with half the functionality (and far less than half of the revenue potential). In the world of Android, though, recent devices like the EVO 4G, Droid, Droid Incredible, and Nexus One have admittedly caused us to grow accustomed to the idea that we should all be using blazingly fast processors and huge WVGA displays.
In reality, of course, Android is an extraordinarily scalable platform; there's a whole world of hardware (and around $200 of on-contract pricing) below today's latest round of "superphones." At $100 on a two-year deal, the LG Ally sort of typifies what we'd expect out of a midrange Android device right now -- a gap-filler that can capture users seeking a Droid experience on a Kin Two budget. So does it hold up in the day-to-day grind, or are you going to be begging for a Droid by day two? Let's find out.
With defining designs like the original Chocolate, the Shine series, and the BL40 under its belt, LG isn't a company that we generally associate with producing utterly uninspiring handsets, but there's really no other way to describe the Ally -- it doesn't really look like anything at all. Apart from a pair of muted chrome strips aside the display, there isn't a single feature of the phone that isn't geared at function over form. For a certain percentage of the target demo, of course, this is just what the doctor ordered: some of us just want a smartphone that gets the job done day in and day out without attracting attention. For others, though, the downright nondescript design is going to be enough to scratch it off the short list.
What little design is there, though, is a decidedly mixed bag. We've always had a soft spot in our hearts for soft-touch plastic, and the back of the Ally (well, really just the battery cover, which takes up about 80 percent of the back) is fully coated in it, so that's a plus. Along the sides, the volume rocker and camera button are chromed for no reason in particular -- they really look out of place amongst the sea of black -- and the microSD slot (which comes equipped with a 4GB preinstalled) and micro-USB port are both covered with plastic flaps that swing open on one side. That's totally fine for the microSD slot, but we hate it when phones cover up the charging port with anything -- the micro-USB standard is specifically designed to be robust enough to handle frequent use, and when you've got to charge the phone on a daily basis, it's a pain in the ass. Let's hope you don't chew your fingernails.
Turning our attention to the front, the phone's got a pretty unremarkable mug -- and like we said, that's just fine for some users. Thing is, LG still somehow managed to fumble the mantra of simplicity here: in addition to four physical buttons along the bottom, they've tacked on two capacitive buttons just above as if they were afterthoughts. In Android, we don't even know why you need Send and End buttons -- much less prominently-placed ones that together take up fifty percent of your physical button row, which ends up relegating Back and Search to the capacitive mezzanine. Ultimately, LG should've canned Send / End and either moved the capacitive buttons down to the physical row or nix the physical buttons altogether and just stick with capacitive. Instead, you've got a hodgepodge that will unnecessarily confound your muscle memory if you're coming from any other Android device.
The Ally is well-balanced in the hand and weighs about what you'd expect a phone of this size, complexity, and thickness to weigh. At nearly 15mm thick, you won't mistake it for the svelte Nexus One or CLIQ XT in your pocket -- but then again, the Ally's got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that the others lack, and it's basically the same thickness as its similarly-equipped Verizon stablemate, the Motorola Devour.
Speaking of the QWERTY slide, the Ally's keyboard is a mixed bag (noticing a trend here?). We actually really liked the feel of the keys -- and the spring-loaded slide mechanism itself feels about as solid as you could reasonably expect -- but the layout isn't among the better ones we've seen. For example, the numeric row along the top has alternate symbols that exactly mirror the symbols you'd find along the numeric row on a full-size keyboard -- which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for a phone. We found ourselves cursing every time we wanted an "@" character, for example. In fact, the only symbol you can reach without activating Alt is the lowly period, and there's only one Alt button located left of the A key, so your thumb is executing some serious gymnastic maneuvers every time you need an exclamation point or dollar sign. If you think there's no room for dedicated symbol keys or extra Alts, we'd disagree -- Home, Menu, Back, and Search are all unnecessarily duplicated, and they're placed haphazardly to the left and right of the main keys. We don't get it. On the flip side, the directional pad was actually quite good, though you might not use it very often.
We've no serious complaints about the Ally's audio. In fact, the monaural loudspeaker located toward the bottom of the back is crazy loud -- there aren't many phones in existence where you feel compelled to back off a notch or two from max volume when using the speakerphone function, but the Ally proudly makes that short list. The earpiece was also plenty loud but possibly just a tad muddied; ultimately, we couldn't tell whether that was the connection, the phone, or just the general characteristic of the carrier's vocoding to blame. It certainly wasn't even close to being a deal-breaker.
As for the camera... well, if you're looking for a point-and-shoot camera replacement, you'll need to look elsewhere. Though the LED flash performed admirably in really poor lighting (both as an autofocus assist and as an actual flash), shots from the 3 megapixel sensor came out smudgy, splotchy, and without definition, which we'd probably have to chalk up to an overly eager noise reduction algorithm. Shutter lag held steady at just under a second in our testing -- after you've established focus using the two-stage dedicated camera key, that is, which was a reasonably quick process. You have access to 8 effects (compared with stock Android's 6), configurable white balance, ISO, and a dedicated macro mode, but none of it really makes much difference if you can't take a decent shot.
You won't commonly find us complaining that a phone's screen resolution is too high... and actually, you won't find us complaining about it with the Ally, either, but we did find it somewhat odd that LG chose to go with WVGA resolution on a crisp, bright LCD measuring just 3.2 inches. That puts the phone into stratospherically high pixel density territory, and frankly, we felt like it was a bit unnecessary -- HVGA is totally fine below 3.5 or 3.7 inches, especially since most of Android's UI fails to take advantage of the higher resolution displays by, say, offering more space for icons on each home screen. The capacitive touchscreen has a distinctly plastic feel to it -- though it's no different (or worse) than virtually any of its pricier contemporaries like the Droid or Nexus One -- and it seemed responsive enough. There was some jerkiness that we'll get to in the next section, but we attribute that more to software than we do to any issues with the touchscreen. Anyhow, we can't help but wonder if Verizon could've sold the Ally for, say, $80 on contract if they'd stepped down to HVGA.
Software
At a quick glance, you might think that the Ally was running stock Android 2.1 -- but you'd be wrong. Instead, LG (or is that Verizon?) has chosen to imbue the phone with a mildly reworked build that's sort of the worst of both worlds: there's no perceptible benefit to LG's skin, and because it is skinned, Android updates stand a greater risk of being delayed significantly (if they come at all). It's a bizarre and unfortunate move that the average Ally buyer isn't going to appreciate -- or even think about, for that matter -- walking into the store.
So what does LG's skin buy you, exactly? You get a handful of custom widgets -- all of which can be replaced with nicer looking, less buggy equivalents in the Android Market -- along with a mediocre social aggregation tool called Socialite and a reworked home screen.
Let's start with the widgets. You get an oddly-sized 2 x 1 alarm clock that isn't particularly pretty; you can toggle an alarm on and off from here, but tapping on the set time will just drop you into the standard Android Clock app. Dual Clock might be the prettiest of the custom widgets, great for keeping track of two time zones at once with clock faces that change from day to night depending on the locale's sunrise and sunset -- but it's hampered by an unintuitive configuration screen that might leave some users scratching their heads. LG Calendar is a simple (but huge) calendar widget that offers barely any additional functionality over Google's own; you've got a full-month view, which we suppose could be useful in some situations, and you can change the day from the event view, whereas the stock widget leaves you stuck on the current day. Finally, there's Weather, which is an uglier, buggier, less useful version of the stock News and Weather widget -- it can't be set to track your location, it has no news, and at one point, we got it stuck so that it took more room than was physically available on the screen (see the picture above). Even worse, it appears to be a 4 x 2 even though it's basically taking the space of a 4 x 1, so if you tap and hold anywhere in the space below it, it picks up the widget rather than bringing up the home screen context menu. Bottom line, it's a disaster, and we quickly found ourselves missing Google's own widget here.
Likewise, Socialite serves no discernible purpose. It's a social aggregator, but it only handles Twitter and Facebook -- both of which now integrate deeply with Android through official (and free) products -- and the app's widget takes up the entire fricking screen. If your widget's going to take up a whole screen, why not just... you know, launch the real app? Furthermore, Socialite doesn't directly support any photo upload or URL shortening services for Twitter, and you can't load multiple accounts. It's just not a useful product.
We'll end our conversation on the customizations on a slightly brighter note: LG's skin. Activated through an application called Themes (rather than through Settings, for some reason), LG's home screen UI is clean and functional, adding four unchanging icons at the bottom that stay with you as you scroll between panels: Phone, Contacts, Messaging, and Browser. And when we say "unchanging," we seriously mean unchanging -- we couldn't figure out any way to replace them with our own selections. So close, LG! (Turns out you can't press and hold on these icons to remove them, but you can press and hold on icons in the launcher, drag them to the bar, and drop them to replace existing icons. We tested it and it works, but it's a little finicky, hence the initial confusion. Thanks, everyone!)
Opening the tab in the center of the strip reveals a fairly typical list of apps, though LG breaks it up between pre-installed items -- listed under "Applications" at the top -- and apps you've installed yourself, down below under "Downloads." We're not sure whether we like this or not, but we're leaning toward thumbs-down; we just can't really think of a reason why we'd want them organized this way, and this dooms anything you've downloaded from the Market to an obligatory scroll since the built-in apps always get top billing. Fortunately, the skin is totally optional -- you can switch back to the stock Android 2.1 theme, which gives you the 3D launcher first found on the Nexus One.
LG also bundles with Ally with DivX VOD compatibility -- you access your registration code from Settings and input it into your computer's player to link the device to your account. We tested it quickly and it works fine, though it's not the most user-friendly thing in the world: on a Mac, it seems that you need to mount the phone as mass storage and transfer the movie by hand, though you should be able to do it through the DivX Plus Player on Windows machines. Once the file is downloaded, you open it using the Gallery app -- not the first place users might look. Playback controls are basic, but the movie played without a hitch.
But never mind all these bells and whistles -- what about speed? Frankly, the Ally is a bit jerkier than we would've expected considering its 600MHz MSM7627 core with graphics acceleration, but it was totally usable. At times, things like the stock 3D launcher were butter smooth, but then things would start locking up and slowing down in unexpected ways; context menus would take a long time to load, for example, and swiping between home screen panels always seemed to choke up the processor just a bit.
Wrap-up
The battle for the Android high end is well-entrenched, and it's becoming a bloodier battle nearly every day; the huge middle ground, though, is seemingly wide open. Staying shy of the magical $100 price point is key for a device in the category, and it's a challenge that the Ally passes -- but we couldn't help but feel like we should still be able to expect more. Cheap doesn't have to mean low quality.
Frankly, we came away feeling like LG half-assed this phone at a time when it could've swooped in and established itself in the thick, meaty midsection of Verizon's smartphone lineup. The customizations feel as though they went through barely any quality control at all, the phone's slower than we know the MSM7x27 series is capable of performing, and nothing about the hardware inspires us. Sure, it's unquestionably a better value than the $150 Devour, but that doesn't make it a good value. For now, the Ally's a pass -- but we're encouraged that this is a market segment that manufacturers and carriers want to play in. If HTC can make an affordable Android handset drop-dead sexy, surely LG and others can do it, too.
OK...WTF? How many Droid users out of the 2-3 million owners do you think have rooted their devices and overclocked theirs? It is slightly risky, and many people don't see the benefit in it...
To add insult to injury, my Milestone is bootloader is signed, hardware locked, it is unrootable...and all of us Milestone users are stuck with the stock 550Mhz...Don't tell me there is no difference between Droid and Nexus One or EVO...There is a six/nine months difference in technology, and that is a whole generation of difference...
@kapanak The Milestone's bootloader is locked but it still is rootable. You can not overclock it or flash unofficial ROMs, but you are able to install programs which require root access like WiFi tethering.
@kapanak I saw the writing on the wall last week when I read that the Ally likely wouldn't handle flash and just went ahead and got the Moto Droid. I couldn't be happier, and this article confirms I made the right choice. Actually, with BOGO and two new contracts (switched from ATT), both I and my wife got a Droid for only $200! That's hard to beat and totally worth it. I was worried about how she would take it, as she uses a macbook for her main computer, but she has taken to the Droid and Android OS really well.
@Randazzo Dangerous. The OMAP 3430 wasn't designed to be clocked to speeds higher than 1 Ghz (or even 1Ghz itself), which is why devs in WebOS Internals haven't done it (800 Mhz is the current max for the Pre right now).
I keep waiting on a good, budget android phone on T-Mobile, which has a $59 off contract plan with unlimited data and texts. Put out a decent android phone for $300 off contract and you'll have a winner.
@preslove I would just like to say, LG makes the worst phones that I ever used. A company that has their hands in various markets and comes up mediocre in all.
@preslove I'm not sure what the pricing will be on the MyTouch Slide, but you might want to look into that. It should be a midrange phone and falls in line with the rest of the MyTouch line. Come to think of it, does T-mobile even have a high-end Android phone? For being the first carrier in the world to sell an Android device they sure seem to have fallen behind everyone else.
Seems like a decent low(ish) priced phone. I'd certainly rather have this than a feature phone (ditto with lowerpriced nokia s60 offerings too, glad we're moving in this direction). I'm more concerned with total cost of ownership, however. Sure, on contract this is $100 (all of $80 less than the Nexus One on contract), but what is that going to run you over two years? I'm guessing it would be cheaper to buy the Nexus One off contract and go with month to month on T-mobile than it would be to buy the Ally. Engadget - you've proved that you're a force amongst the gadget/phone world - can you use this to start pushing contract free existence and opening people's eyes to total cost of being on contract? I've love to see consumers pressing back on this, and Engadget is in a good place to help lead the charge.
Maybe Sprint's excellent plans will start to be noticed and VZW's and AT&T's will be shown for what they really are: insanely expensive over the course of two years. The initial price of the phone is just a drop in the bucket before monthly bills start adding up along with any overage charges, taxes, fees, etc.
@bravokiloromeo is it bad that i no longer care about phones that lack a 4"+ screen and at least a 1ghz snapdragon? Everything else just seems so dinky and toy like to me... and i know im in the minority in the world but probably not on engadget.
@SteveyAyo The Droid, like the Ally, has a graphics chip, which lightens the load and makes it just as fast as the Nexus One, etc. And you can overclock it to 1.2 GHz!
@bravokiloromeo Yeah, I would probably go that route too... the only reason I could think not to would be that this keyboard looks more usable. I tried using droid's keyboard for a while and basically ruled it out for that reason.
@SteveyAyo Dang, I thought smart people would realize this. Anyway, Android is NOT JUST FOR GEEKS(aka, people like us who appreciate gadgets). YES, Engadget readers like high end phones. YES, we think all Android Phones should be that way, bigger and badder than the last. BUT IT'S NOT RIGHT. I mean, the world is not like us. They may not need all those features, let alone pay for it. This is a good handset for the average user. I would buy it, were I not locked in for another year.
@Firehazel Just because we "geeks" like high end hardware doesn't mean we don't appreciate the quality as well. Also, why would you buy a phone that does the same things worse and slower than another phone with roughly the same specs at the same price? The Droid and Ally have the nearly the same functions, and almost the same hardware, so your "may not need all those features" point is entirely moot.
Picking the better product here is a matter of common sense, not some sort of gadget lust we have.
@bravokiloromeo From the point of non-gadget people:Price. That's probably the single most determining factor in the purchase of a cellphone. Call me miserly, but I like to stretch dollars from here to Mars.
Not a bad phone. It seems to be a solid lower end Android phone for the masses. This is something that Android needs. For $100, it will make a lot of people happy. Not all Android phones can be top of the line because not everyone wants to spend the money on a top of the line phone.
Oh, and please stop encouraging HTC's "chin" phones. The are far from "drop dead sexy".
@AJerman I disagree. The chins are so much nicer than these ridiculous half-circular bottoms that serve no function whatsoever. Overly rounded corners have been ugly since inception.
I'll disagree as well. The chin adds charachter. As long as the phone's chin doesn't get in the way (and it shouldn't since most android phones have some space below the screen for the home, back, and menu buttons) I'll encourage the chin every day.
How's the asian language support on this phone? One of the concerns a few of my international friends have had is the extremely limited CJK support in the OS. I figure, since LG is Korean, they might have some sort of Korean support baked in...
Really, it's inevitable with Android, you need horsepower to appreciate the Android OS. Yeah, I'm all for cheaper options too but they should have stripped it down like crazy to have a "smooth" experience but then would you still be able to call it Android? Would it be recognizable? Probably not... Where am I going with this? No idea...
@Plazmic Flame umm... yes? thats the best part of android, its open source and customizable. Any company can take it and make it perfect for their specific handset. Do they? often times no but when they do you get the best handsets on the market (EVO, Droid and Droid Incredible)
this looks like its a device from the past. buttons, arrow buttons, more buttons - horrible! ...if u r too stupid to improve the UI of ur OS, just use a ton of buttons! yeah!
I am not sure my "smartphone problems" will be solved with a 3.5inch screen, 256mb of ram, and a "walled garden" app ecosystem. Also, Rogers in Canada, and I'm sure AT&T in US, do not provide a very reliable 3G network...Telus does though, and their 21Mbps is quite nice...
@kapanak ok lets get one thing straight i was on ATT for a long time during the iPhone reign and i owned a blackberry, because im not a sheep, and guess what? My phone never once dropped a call!!! I had zero problems with att, its the iphone not the network... shoddy software builds on a lackluster phone.
The problem is that in the U.S. market, the heavy subsidies and pricey, mandatory data plans have removed much of the value of a set like the Ally when considering the TCO. That's why I can't give up my Q9H and its $15 data plan...
@nefnet13 Ditto with my unlocked nokia phone and a $10/m internet plan through t-mobile. $20/m extra for data equals $480 over two years. I'd rather have an Android phone, but not at that price - especially when the on contract price of the phone would cost me almost as much as my s60 phone unlocked.
I don't get why people focus so much on the initial cost of the phone. After two years of paying voice and data every single month, $100 is chump change. Just get the HTC Incredible, it's $8.33/month over 2 years vs $4.17/month for LG Ally
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Damn...after a long wait, a good looking slider comes out for Android...and it is still a ... half-baked letdown ...
I want an EVO with a qwerty keyboard...
@kapanak it still looks like a pretty nice looking phone. i'm probably thinking about picking this bad boy up once i can upgrade in a few months.
@kapanak Actually Droid has been out for quite some time and it's gorgeous. Not exactly sure what you're referring to here.
@lerxst Actually Droid has been out for quite some time and it's gorgeous. Not exactly sure what you're referring to here.
Dude what's not to get! Evo has Snapdragon, more ROM/RAM, a bigger screen, front-facing camera...it's definitely a step up from the Droid.
@lerxst
I own a Milestone (Droid) and I love it...but I was looking for something a bit more "punch" to it...that is also a slider...
@NaeemTHM : Correction. It's a staircase ahead of the DROID.
@kapanak
Yup, it is disappointing. I really wanted to recommend this phone to a friend if it held up in the review, but I/we will keep looking.
@blenderman345 than stock droid yes, overclocked droid...not as much
@BobStewart
OK...WTF? How many Droid users out of the 2-3 million owners do you think have rooted their devices and overclocked theirs? It is slightly risky, and many people don't see the benefit in it...
To add insult to injury, my Milestone is bootloader is signed, hardware locked, it is unrootable...and all of us Milestone users are stuck with the stock 550Mhz...Don't tell me there is no difference between Droid and Nexus One or EVO...There is a six/nine months difference in technology, and that is a whole generation of difference...
@kapanak
The Milestone's bootloader is locked but it still is rootable. You can not overclock it or flash unofficial ROMs, but you are able to install programs which require root access like WiFi tethering.
@kapanak
It was to be expected, when was the last time LG ever made a desirable smart phone?
@kapanak
I saw the writing on the wall last week when I read that the Ally likely wouldn't handle flash and just went ahead and got the Moto Droid. I couldn't be happier, and this article confirms I made the right choice. Actually, with BOGO and two new contracts (switched from ATT), both I and my wife got a Droid for only $200! That's hard to beat and totally worth it. I was worried about how she would take it, as she uses a macbook for her main computer, but she has taken to the Droid and Android OS really well.
@kapanak then too bad for you but for real droid users we can over clock and make or phones faster than a snap dragon
@kapanak A good phone indeed, but not comparable with EVO 4G. I say get this, if you're looking for a cute alternative. http://j.mp/ally-phone-from-lg
@Randazzo Dangerous. The OMAP 3430 wasn't designed to be clocked to speeds higher than 1 Ghz (or even 1Ghz itself), which is why devs in WebOS Internals haven't done it (800 Mhz is the current max for the Pre right now).
It looks fugly for $100....
But thats to be expected with android.
@TheLondonExchange Let the flame wars.... Begin!
@TheLondonExchange oblivion troll gets downranked to whence he came...
@TheLondonExchange "But that's to be expected with Android"
and you go around crying Wolf about how people bash iPhone OS.
Really thorough review, thanks Chris.
I keep waiting on a good, budget android phone on T-Mobile, which has a $59 off contract plan with unlimited data and texts. Put out a decent android phone for $300 off contract and you'll have a winner.
@preslove
I would just like to say, LG makes the worst phones that I ever used.
A company that has their hands in various markets and comes up mediocre in all.
@preslove I'm not sure what the pricing will be on the MyTouch Slide, but you might want to look into that. It should be a midrange phone and falls in line with the rest of the MyTouch line. Come to think of it, does T-mobile even have a high-end Android phone? For being the first carrier in the world to sell an Android device they sure seem to have fallen behind everyone else.
Seems like a decent low(ish) priced phone. I'd certainly rather have this than a feature phone (ditto with lowerpriced nokia s60 offerings too, glad we're moving in this direction). I'm more concerned with total cost of ownership, however. Sure, on contract this is $100 (all of $80 less than the Nexus One on contract), but what is that going to run you over two years? I'm guessing it would be cheaper to buy the Nexus One off contract and go with month to month on T-mobile than it would be to buy the Ally. Engadget - you've proved that you're a force amongst the gadget/phone world - can you use this to start pushing contract free existence and opening people's eyes to total cost of being on contract? I've love to see consumers pressing back on this, and Engadget is in a good place to help lead the charge.
@Eddie W
+1
Maybe Sprint's excellent plans will start to be noticed and VZW's and AT&T's will be shown for what they really are: insanely expensive over the course of two years. The initial price of the phone is just a drop in the bucket before monthly bills start adding up along with any overage charges, taxes, fees, etc.
Isn't the Droid also down to $100 with a contract? Just get one of those instead. Still the best selling Android handset.
@bravokiloromeo is it bad that i no longer care about phones that lack a 4"+ screen and at least a 1ghz snapdragon? Everything else just seems so dinky and toy like to me... and i know im in the minority in the world but probably not on engadget.
@SteveyAyo
The Droid, like the Ally, has a graphics chip, which lightens the load and makes it just as fast as the Nexus One, etc. And you can overclock it to 1.2 GHz!
@bravokiloromeo
Yeah, I would probably go that route too... the only reason I could think not to would be that this keyboard looks more usable. I tried using droid's keyboard for a while and basically ruled it out for that reason.
@Eddie W yeah my friends and brother have the droid and it is amazingly fast... but i think ill wait on the Mondrian
@SteveyAyo Dang, I thought smart people would realize this.
Anyway, Android is NOT JUST FOR GEEKS(aka, people like us who appreciate gadgets). YES, Engadget readers like high end phones. YES, we think all Android Phones should be that way, bigger and badder than the last. BUT IT'S NOT RIGHT. I mean, the world is not like us. They may not need all those features, let alone pay for it. This is a good handset for the average user. I would buy it, were I not locked in for another year.
@Firehazel
Just because we "geeks" like high end hardware doesn't mean we don't appreciate the quality as well. Also, why would you buy a phone that does the same things worse and slower than another phone with roughly the same specs at the same price? The Droid and Ally have the nearly the same functions, and almost the same hardware, so your "may not need all those features" point is entirely moot.
Picking the better product here is a matter of common sense, not some sort of gadget lust we have.
@bravokiloromeo From the point of non-gadget people:Price. That's probably the single most determining factor in the purchase of a cellphone. Call me miserly, but I like to stretch dollars from here to Mars.
lol the nexus got tired and went to sleep
Not a bad phone. It seems to be a solid lower end Android phone for the masses. This is something that Android needs. For $100, it will make a lot of people happy. Not all Android phones can be top of the line because not everyone wants to spend the money on a top of the line phone.
Oh, and please stop encouraging HTC's "chin" phones. The are far from "drop dead sexy".
@AJerman I disagree. The chins are so much nicer than these ridiculous half-circular bottoms that serve no function whatsoever. Overly rounded corners have been ugly since inception.
@AJerman
I'll disagree as well. The chin adds charachter. As long as the phone's chin doesn't get in the way (and it shouldn't since most android phones have some space below the screen for the home, back, and menu buttons) I'll encourage the chin every day.
How's the asian language support on this phone? One of the concerns a few of my international friends have had is the extremely limited CJK support in the OS. I figure, since LG is Korean, they might have some sort of Korean support baked in...
yea good job chris. more like this please
@N900androidOS
+1 on the review. i will keep coming back for these
Really, it's inevitable with Android, you need horsepower to appreciate the Android OS. Yeah, I'm all for cheaper options too but they should have stripped it down like crazy to have a "smooth" experience but then would you still be able to call it Android? Would it be recognizable? Probably not... Where am I going with this? No idea...
@Plazmic Flame umm... yes? thats the best part of android, its open source and customizable. Any company can take it and make it perfect for their specific handset. Do they? often times no but when they do you get the best handsets on the market (EVO, Droid and Droid Incredible)
this looks like its a device from the past. buttons, arrow buttons, more buttons - horrible!
...if u r too stupid to improve the UI of ur OS, just use a ton of buttons! yeah!
I have to say, I expected much more from LG.
WWDC - JUNE 7TH - SOLVE ALL YOUR SMARTPHONE PROBLEMS
@Snowelevation
I am not sure my "smartphone problems" will be solved with a 3.5inch screen, 256mb of ram, and a "walled garden" app ecosystem. Also, Rogers in Canada, and I'm sure AT&T in US, do not provide a very reliable 3G network...Telus does though, and their 21Mbps is quite nice...
@Snowelevation actually June 4th is that day get it correct
@kapanak ok lets get one thing straight i was on ATT for a long time during the iPhone reign and i owned a blackberry, because im not a sheep, and guess what? My phone never once dropped a call!!! I had zero problems with att, its the iphone not the network... shoddy software builds on a lackluster phone.
The problem is that in the U.S. market, the heavy subsidies and pricey, mandatory data plans have removed much of the value of a set like the Ally when considering the TCO. That's why I can't give up my Q9H and its $15 data plan...
@nefnet13
Ditto with my unlocked nokia phone and a $10/m internet plan through t-mobile. $20/m extra for data equals $480 over two years. I'd rather have an Android phone, but not at that price - especially when the on contract price of the phone would cost me almost as much as my s60 phone unlocked.
I don't get why people focus so much on the initial cost of the phone. After two years of paying voice and data every single month, $100 is chump change. Just get the HTC Incredible, it's $8.33/month over 2 years vs $4.17/month for LG Ally