The GW520 looks like a Cookie, with a touchscreen display, but turn it on its side and you can pull out a full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is styled differently to the KS360, but it works very well. The slide gives plenty of room for keys, and we found the size and spacing of the keys excellent. The responsiveness of the keys is top notch too, making this a step above virtual keypads on touchscreen phones. The overall size of the GW520 is slightly more than the KS360 and it's a heavier phone too, but it's not a brick! This is a phone that's almost ideal for texting and messaging, and it incorporates features like threaded SMS, which makes text conversations flow more naturally. It can support email too. We also like the brand new feature of avatars. This lets you set up avatars for your closest friends on the home screen, and you can then click an avatar to view messages, etc.
The touchscreen measures 2.8 inches across, which is slightly less than a Cookie, but more than the KS360. Generally the rule is that larger touchscreens are easier to use, but in this case because the keyboard slides down, there's more screen space available than you might expect. In terms of usability, we think that this outperforms the Cookie and other budget touchscreen phones. In addition to the QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen, there are conventional buttons for making and ending calls, etc.
The GW520 costs more than the KS360, but it has some significant enhancements too. The most important of these is 3G. While the KS360 was a triband 2G phone, the GW520 has 3G and supports broadband internet access right up to 7.2 Mbps with HSDPA. This moves it beyond a simple call and text mobile into the realms of fast web browsing, facebook, youtube, etc, making it a thoroughly modern phone.
Other features of the phone include a 3 megapixel camera with video recording, music player, FM radio and Java games. Connectivity is by Bluetooth. Memory is limited to 40 MB, but the phone can accept microSD cards up to 8GB, providing enough storage for 2,000 - 4,000 music tracks. Battery life is good.
We like the GW520 very much, and we think that it offers a lot more than the entry level touchscreen phones that have dominated the marketplace in the first half of 2009. Its key benefits are the QWERTY keyboard and 3G. On the other hand, it has a camera that's average at best, and is missing video calling. We think that's a sacrifice that many people will be willing to make. The only word of warning that we have about this phone is that users of both the KS360 and the Cookie have reported software glitches and occasional freezing of their phones. Whilst we have not experienced any problems ourselves with the GW520, it is built on the same platform as these other phones, so it's reasonable to expect that there may be some problems here too.
Update: Many of our users have reported that the GW520 will stop sending texts if the inbox becomes full. The solution is to delete texts so that your inbox does not become full.
The new Samsung Genio Slide offers the same features as the GW520, but we think is a better phone. Check out our Samsung Genio Slide review before you commit to the GW520.
Features of the LG GW520 include:
Camera: 3 megapixels
Video camera
Display: TFT, 262,000 colours, 240 x 400 pixels (2.8 inches)
Music player: MP3/ AAC/ AAC+/eAAC+ formats
FM radio
64-voice polyphonic ringtones
Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, instant messaging, email
Java games
Document viewer
Memory: 40 Mbytes plus microSD memory card (expandable to 8GB)
Connectivity: Bluetooth
Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
Vibration alert
Quadband plus 3G HSDPA
Size: 107 X 53 X 16 mm
Weight: 125g
Talktime: 4.5 hours
Battery standby: 500 hours
