LG Shine II – midrange multimedia feature phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Attractive looks, good features for multi media, speaker phone gets very loud.
Thumbs Down:
Bad keyboard and the navigation buttons aren’t the best.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM/UMTS
Band: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz (GSM), 1900/850 MHz (UMTS)
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Speaker Phone, camera, music player.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
LG Shine II has a 2.20 inches display with resolution of 240×320 pixels, supported audio formats are WMA, AAC, AAC+, MP3. Supported video formats are 3GP and MPEG4. The handset also has built-in FM.
The device has a 2 mega pixel camera with LED flash and it can also take videos. Maximum resolution for the videos is 320×240 pixels. The internal memory of the phone is 100 MB and supports up to 16 GB of expansion cards. 900 mAH battery of the cellphone has a talk time of 3 hours and 20 minutes and standby time is 20 days.
Razzle Dazzle:
Just like the name, the Shine II sports a really shiny look and really stands out in looks. The exterior attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints. The slider interface gives way for a bigger screen and the slider clicks firmly in to the ends. Shine II is 0.53 inches thick, 2 inches wide, 4.2 inches long and weighs about 4.4 ounces which isn’t much heavy.
Inside Dope:
Shine II is the third phone from LG in the Shine series. The first two were Shine KE970 and Shine CU720. The former was unlocked and came at a price of $575 which was a bit costly but apart from that, the phone was good on features. This phone will put you back by $119 with a 2 year contract and after a $50 mail in rebate. If you want it unlocked, you can get it for $269.
The display of the screen is 2.2 inches big and gives a resolution of 320×240 pixels or 262,000 colors. Graphics and colors are sharp, photos are clear and the text too looks good. You can change the font size and color of the menu, dialing font size, backlight time and brightness.
LG hasn’t improved the navigation controls in the Shine II. It will take some acclimation, the soft keys are thin, the joystick is tiny and the four way navigation button is so big that it takes almost all the real estate dedicated for the navigation controls. The only good part is the OK button which is easy to press.
The buttons on the keypad of slider phones are mostly flat on the surface which makes it difficult to press. Shine II’s keypad too has similar problems but on the bright side, the backlighting is bright. The numbers on the keys are big but the alphabets are small. Above the keypad are the talk/end keys and the back/clear buttons which we would hav preferred on the upper half of the phone.
On the sides of the phone there is a volume rocker, a button for opening a shortcut menu, camera shutter key and the headset/charger jack. Being a music phone we would have preferred a 3.5 mm phone jack for plugging in standard earphones. The proprietary jack also means that, at a time, you can use only one peripheral.
Shine II has a 1000 entry limit phone book and a single entry can take five phone numbers, notes and 2 e-mail IDs. Photo caller ID and grouping of contacts is supported on Shine II. Other features include unit converter, stop watch, task list, world clock, speaker phone, tip calculator, calendar, note pad and alarm clock. For advanced users, there are features like USB mass storage, file manager, voice recorder, voice commands and dialing, PC syncing and Bluetooth. Other goodies include support for IMAP4 and POP3 connectivity and Assisted-GPS with support for AT&T Navigator.
You get a 2 mega pixel camera for the Shine II, we would have liked at least 3.2 MP camera for a multimedia centered phone like this. Features for the camera include a self-timer, 2x zoom, image quality, white balance, color effects and brightness adjustment. The camera can also record videos, there are two resolution options – 176×144 and 320×240 and the options for the video shooting are the same as the camera. Photo and video quality is typical of a 2 MP camera, images looked blurry but the colors were natural.
The Shine II is a 3G handset and it offers full support for AT&T’s wireless broadband multimedia services. You will find AT&T Mobile Music for downloading songs wirelessly and Cellular Video for streaming videos. Just like most AT&T phones, the LG Shine II has a variety of Java applications and some of them are subscription based. There are apps like Mobile Banking, MobiTv, world clock, Notifier, Yellowpages Mobile, WikiMobile and The Weather Channel.
The music player is the best part of the phone, it has airplane mode, repeat and shuffle modes, playlists, equalizer and album art. There are also lots of music related features like application for making custom ringtones, Music ID and XM Radio support.
To store your images and music, Shine II supports 16 GB of memory through microSD cards but the slot is located underneath the battery cover.
If you are a gamming enthusiast you will love the 4 demo games packed in – Dinner Dash 2, Tetris, Uno and Ms Pac Man. The phone has WAP2.0 browser for downloading more games, ring tones and wallpapers.
Shine II has a rated talk time of 3 hours and 20 minutes and the standby time is 20 days. In our lab tests, the battery survived a little more than the rated talk time which is impressive.
We finally tested the phone for call quality, the quality was good but not excellent. The signal was inconsistent but the volume was loud enough to talk smoothly even in noisy environments. Audio was cut a lot of times when we were on the call. Our friends said that Shine II attracted a lot of noise from the background. The speakerphone calls got loud and were better than the headset calls. Bluetooth calls too were good.
Nitty Gritty:
LG Shine II isn’t the best multi media phone, it has issues with call quality and though the phone looks really good and has lots of features for multi media, we would recommend you to skip this purchase and look elsewhere.
