LG Cookie Zip LG510 Half Baked - By: John.Wells

LG has been churning out a lot of cellphones recently, particularly entry-level and mid-range offerings. Their purpose is simply to saturate the market with as many devices as possible. Some devices have been a hit – offering good value for money and usability, while others have gone the way of the ergonomic blunder. The Lg Cookie Zip aka LG510 is a CDMA handset built around a resistive-touch interface. As far as devices go, it’s pretty easy to see this one is aimed at those wanting a basic touch-based handset with music and a basic camera.

Look and feel

As far as looks go, the LG Cookie Zip LG510 is pretty much just another touch device. It’s reasonably slim and won’t make an unseemly bulge when pocketed. The front of the phone is dominated by the 3-inch display. The bezel surrounding the display is too wide to be termed as appealing or attractive – adjectives correlating to “good-looking” don’t apply here. A wide chrome trim runs around the phone and the rear features a black coloured, matte finish with a design consisting of embossed dots to add a bit of appeal. The menu button is large and usable, and is flanked by equally usable call accept/reject buttons. All these are backlit, enabling usage in dim conditions. The call-reject doubles as a power button.

On the right, is the concealed microSD slot and below that, are the screen lock and camera keys. Both these are pretty small, although the slight raised surface makes them usable. On the left side are the volume buttons. Although small, these have nice feedback and are easy to use. Above this, is the charging/headset port. LG sticks with the archaic and restrictive proprietary interface for the handsfree, meaning you cannot use your own 3.5mm-based earphones. The stylus is located on the bottom and is installed horizontally into the body, rather than vertically. It’s a collapsible stylus, and is a little small to use for writing. It’s a tight fit in the body.

This is one of our first outings with the Brew OS and while it can’t hold a candle to the higher end OS’ we’ve come across, such as WM and Android, it feels just about right for an entry-level device. The home screen has a small tab that once tapped, will display a small pane that holds a lot of widgets including ones for FM Radio, calendar, clock and even the Facebook application. These widgets can be dragged from this pane to the home screen and placed virtually anywhere. One the bottom of the screen are four functions buttons that are mapped to the most common functions – calling, contacts and messages; the fourth function displays the main menu with all functions in a grid view. The main menu itself is divided into four blocks on the basis of functions. These are communicate, entertainment, utilities and settings.

While the menu system is pretty good, and the ability to drag widgets on to your main screen pretty gimmicky, what wasn’t impressive, was the touch interface. Resistive-touch is slowly dying, and with good reason. Phones are meant to be convenient and ergonomic to use, and there’s nothing ergonomic about having to use two hands – one to hold the phone and the other to clutch a stylus. Equally annoying is the unregistered hits on the screen, lag and inaccuracy of the interface that ultimately results in frustration and wasted time not to mention it serves to detract from the joy of owing a “loving” your phone rather than "living with" it.

A cellphone is a tool, no more, and what use is a hammer with spikes along with shaft? The LG510 is plagued with a slow and inaccurate response to touch, dragging and the stylus – in short, after a few minutes spent using it, we wanted to put it down. Admittedly, we’ve used some brilliant devices like the Apple iPhone and HTC Touch HD2, so maybe we’re not representative of the average user, but beware – the underwhelming interface experience will leave scars!

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About the Author

John Wells is an expert in personal electronic gadgets including laptops, Blackberry Mobile Phones , LCD Tvs and Lava Mobiles Price, and many more. Read the Expert Reviews and Users Reviews of your gadgets at consumermate.com

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