LG GW300 review: No-frills messaging

Introduction

The LG GW300 is quite a rare bird: it packs a full QWERTY keyboard and looks like a BlackBerry handset, but has a completely different line of business. Even if it was designed with teens and tweens in mind, we wouldn't be surprised if their moms fell for it too.

Social networking services are all the rage these days and mobile phone makers have duly noticed that. The LG KS360 was among the first devices of the mobile social networking breed targeted specifically at the younger ones among us.

The LG GW300 walks in its shoes and though it isn't unique in terms of design, the idea behind it helps it stand out in the crowd. Teenagers enjoy texting and social networks are just a more elaborate and more integrated way of staying in touch with friends. So, LG are continuously exploring a market, which doesn't exactly brim with competing devices.

LG GW300 official photos

The specific form factor of the GW300 makes it look much more promising than it actually is. In fact, it only does what it was meant to do. It gives access to Facebook and has a comfy keyboard for fast typing and that's pretty much your lot. When it comes to the other goodies you may expect from a modern phone - music, camera, etc - you get a pretty limited feature pack.

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM support
• 2.4" 256K-color TFT display of 320 x 240 pixel resolution
• Four-row QWERTY keyboard
• 2 megapixel fixed focus camera
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• 15 MB internal memory
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (supporting up to 16GB)
• Standard microUSB port and Mass Storage mode
• FM radio
• Live Square communication manager
• Facebook integration
• Multi-tasking with a proper task manager
• Smart dialing
• Affordable and easy to use QWERTY messenger

Main disadvantages:

• No 3G or Wi-Fi
• Camera has no auto focus or flash
• Video recording no good at QCIF resolution
• No DivX/Xvid video support
• No office document viewer
• Facebook is the only available social networking app

None of the LG GW300's drawbacks is a real deal breaker since the price is so low no one could've expected anything more.

LG GW300 live views

Things would've looked better for the GW300 if it came with 3G support and a better camera (2 megapixel fixed focus is a real blast from the past). Wi-Fi would've been an even better cure for the data-thirsty Facebook application, which needs almost constant access to the Internet.

And even the single noteworthy application on the GW300 - the Facebook one - is underdeveloped lacking real push support. You have to manually update the Facebook feed instead of getting news the moment they happen. We guess if Push was enabled, the data traffic generated would have scared the life out of the bill payer. And let's face it, that's more than likely going to be a parent of a user rather than the user themselves, so maybe this was a wise decision.

As you can see, you sometimes have to see things from a different angle before drawing any conclusions. And with that in mind, let's get on with the LG GW300 and see if this is the right phone for you (or for you kid).