In a shocking turn of developments, LG's super-slim P7200 clamshell bears a distinct resemblance to the Motorola RAZR; Sindre Lia pops the hood to see what makes it stand apart.
Review summary of the LG P7200:
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 The LG P7200 offers an impressive set of high-end features, gracing it all with a slim clamshell form factor complete with a Transformer-style front cover stunt which renders the handset a dedicated camera look-a-like by the flick of a wrist. Its most notable flaws include falling short on text input and performing only on average with regard to its camera and music player capabilities. As such, eager texters should stay away, but everyone else on the hunt for a slim clamshell would be well served by the P7200. Release: November 2005. Price: $450.
Pros: Slim form factor; swivels to impersonate dedicated digicam; memory expansion slot
Cons: Camera slow with mediocre output; text input sluggish
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Full review of the LG P7200:
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Is there a manufacturer out there that doesn't have an anorectic clamshell in its line-up nowadays? The LG P7200 is just such a handset, which at 96 x 50 x 17 mm and 112 g is decidedly minute, yet doesn't offer the most streamlined of exteriors. Unlike the recently reviewed
Panasonic VS6, the P7200 has found room on its front cover for a small 65K display as well as hardware shortcuts for operating the handset's audio player. The back, meanwhile, contains a 2 Megapixel camera complete with photo light, while volume and camera buttons have been allocated to the left and right sides, respectively.
Impressive... or is it?
Open up the P7200, and the first impression of its 262K colour screen will have you contently nodding - but unfortunately, a quick twist to either side quickly reveals that it suffers from the same loss-of-contrast syndrome as Motorola's
ROKR E1. Stray from a head-on view, and you'll quickly be greeted by a lessened viewing experience which is particularly annoying in darker environments. The 5-way navipad of the handset, however, offers adequate interaction with an intuitive menu system as well as plenty of direct shortcuts and useful short menus.
Unfortunately, another disappointment quickly arises as we move to the numerical keypad of the P7200 as poor responsiveness and a complete lack of tactile separation of its buttons makes it hard to use. Rapid text input without using T9 is a practically impossible task, and the handset in fact also proved to be a little sluggish when using T9.
Please, rotate to snap stills!
In spite of providing a rather low shutter speed, the P7200's 2 Megapixel AutoFocus camera offers very good yet slightly blurry still pictures when used in daylight. Pictures taken in slightly darker environments can best be described as adequate. The camera also offers video recording at 176 x 144 pixels.
What really sets this 2 Megapixel phone apart from others, however, is its ability to quickly assume the nature of a super-slim dedicated camera look-a-like by rotating its swivel front cover 180 degrees and closing it back on top of the keypad. Indeed an ingenious feature, but unfortunately not enough to mitigate the sluggish camera application which caused simple tasks such as saving and sending pictures to become troublesome affairs.
Remember to buy a microSD card
Also sporting an integrated MP3 player, the LG P7200 offers sound playback of mediocre quality with the bundled earphones. The sound experience is improved significantly by using earphones of better quality although the handset still left some gain to be desired for. Also, as the P7200 only offers approximately 60 MB of internal memory, it's a good thing its designers chose to include a microSD slot for the purpose of expanding storage.
On the note of connectivity, the LG P7200 supports GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz networks as well as GPRS. Unfortunately, EDGE and Infrared support have been left out, but at least Bluetooth and a bundled USB cable are present for short-range connectivity. Also present is SMS and MMS support, a WAP 2.0 mobile internet browser and two Java MIDP 2.0 games: Bubble Soccer and JetSki XXL.
Reception and voice quality for the LG P7200 both proved excellent, while the battery offered approximately 2,5 hours of talktime and 4 days of standby time as compared to the claimed 3 hours and 8 days, respectively.
Availability
The LG P7200 is at the time of press available in Europe, selling for approximately €450 EUR.
Price and availability
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