LG Sentio with 3 megapixel camera
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Slim and light weight phone, 3 megapixel camera gives good photo quality, has goodies like music player, HTML Web browser and supports 7.2 MBPS 3G speeds.
Thumbs Down:
Touch screen is not that responsive.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
LG Sentio is 2.1 inches wide, 0.5 inches deep, 4.2 inches high and weighs 3.3 oz. It is based on GSM / UMTS technology and supports GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) / UMTS 1700/2100 (Dual Band) band. Phone design is candy bar and the phone has caller ID too. For wireless interface, there is Bluetooth, messaging/data Features include picture messages, e-Mail, text messages, voice mail. There is also Internet browser. Included accessories are desktop charger and battery. Rated phone talk time is 360 minutes. Additional Features include Conference calling, Call forwarding, microSD card slot, Touch screen, and GPS.
Inside Dope:
LG Sentio is the first T-Mobile phone from this manufacturer for USA and we were surprised when we discovered this. Both the service provider and the manufacturer have been in the market for long enough and hence we were intrigued to see that there hasn’t been in the market with this combination. Every phone is going touch screen these days and it is because this interface is much easier to use than the physical buttons. The only exception to is the rugged phone which cannot have touch screen display because it makes the phone too delicate.
On the front of LG Sentio, there is a big 3.2 inch color display which dominates the phone’s face. The display is quite good, the graphics look colorful and the screen is bright enough. We had some problems with the screen in environments with bright sunlight but this is not unexpected in LCDs. If you want a screen which can stand bright sunlight, you should check out those AMOLED screens. They come at a premium though and hence manufacturers avoid putting them in mid range phones like these.
The home screen can be customized with lots of widgets and this is done in order to give you easy access to the applications that are frequently used on the phone. For instance, if you like use the IMs a lot; you can put a widget on that on the home screen. This will save time as you don’t have to go digging inside the menu.
On the bottom, there are four shortcuts on the touch screen – phone dialer, contacts list, browser and main menu. Having these shortcuts are really handy and they are ubiquitous in touch screen phones these days. You cannot change these four buttons and we like to change them anyways because we need all these four buttons frequently.
The main menu of LG Sentio is divided in to four parts – phone, media, organizer and settings. We liked the way the icons were grouped since they segregate all the possible features really well and hence it is easier to locate what you need on the phone. We have seen some phones having crammed main menu but this was a welcome change.
On the phone’s back, there is a 3.0 megapixel camera which is what you accept these days in such phones. Gone are the days when cell phones boasted of a two megapixel camera. When reviewing phones, we usually expect a 3 megapixel camera on such mid range phones and 5 megapixel camera on high end smartphones. The quality of the photos in LG Sentio’s camera was quite acceptable; we clicked a couple of pictures and didn’t have much to complain about the camera quality. That said, we won’t recommending using this as a replacement to your digital camera but the photo quality is still good for occasional shots. Also note that the camera can also record videos.
The LG Sentio has a built in accelerometer which changes the screen orientation from portrait to landscape when you tilt the phone. An accelerometer is found on almost all touch screen phones these days and now living without it has become quite difficult. You get gorgeous wide screen mode for watching your movies. However the primary (and the most used one) function of an accelerometer is the landscape keyboard which gives you spacious buttons for typing your messages or e-mails. In the portrait mode, you get a crammed numeric keypad is certainly not good for typing long messages.
The LG Sentio also comes with a YouTube app for watching videos while you are traveling. This will go great with the youth who love watching music or other such videos while they are in a bus or are waiting for a friend at a local airport. The phone also has stereo Bluetooth which means you can attach wireless Bluetooth headsets to this device and listen to music through it. Finally, there is a full HTML Web browser which is not as good a Safari but still good enough for browsing the Web.
The LG Sentio costs $70 and you have to sign a two year service agreement with T-Mobile.
Nitty Gritty:
We have a few issues with the phone like the sluggish touch screen but they are not deal breakers and we will readily recommend this phone to anyone looking for a good mid range multimedia phone.
