Are you on the toilet? (LG U8100)

Member Name: katygriff

Product:	LG U8100
Date:	22/08/05 (436 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great features and looks nice.

Disadvantages: Has a tendency to break.

The 3 network. We have all heard the good, the bad and the ugly about the network and their phones but here is the truth about my experience with 3.

I bought the LGU8100 simply because I was bored of my little old nokia phone and wanted a change. The LG phone had everything I needed i.e. the ability to text and to accept and make phone calls, but it also had everything I wanted i.e. a camera, video calling, ability to download music and games.

The phone itself is very good and advanced and the technical stuff is as follows;
Standby – 120 hours.
Talk Time – 140 minutes.
Video call time – 100 minutes.
14MB internal memory.
VGA camera with zoom.
Weight – 126g.
Screen – 35 x 44mm
65,535 colours
220 x 176 pixels.

Now I was happy with this phone. I could store many numbers and download many games and music videos and still have enough memory to store a load of text messages. When my memory was finally full I had over 50 numbers, 5 or 6 games, 3 music videos and a handful of pictures and texts. This shows that this phone in terms of storing things is generally excellent.

The Camera. Generally the camera takes excellent pictures. You have the ability to take pictures and video footage which are good quality. You can also adjust the size of the pictures, the brightness, the zoom and the camera effect which gives you options such as sepia and night mode. The other thing that I like is that you can change the sound your phone makes when you take a picture so that instead of it just clicking you can actually have it say hi which is what I have on mine at the moment. Video footage when recorded can be quite jerky but it is 100% watchable.

Texting. Texting people is easy. You can choose to send the text to as many people as you like by adding contacts and writing the text is exactly the same as using a nokia phone which was useful for me. I use the predictive text as it is easier but you can choose how to do it and also choose from many symbols to use too. The phone also allows you to be able to save the texts you send so you can avoid all of those did I really send that to that person moments as you can check straight away. Plus if you are distracted halfway writing a text you can save it to draft and go back to it later.

Phoning people. To phone people is easy and it is the same as many phones in that you press the green button to go and the red one to stop. You can scroll through the phonebook or just press the green button to go to a list of recent calls. A great feature of this phone is that you can assign photos to callers so that if somebody rings you their picture will appear on the display. Video calling is also easy to use as all you have to do is press the call button with a picture of a person next to it. When the person answers you will see their face appear on the screen and you talk at the phone to communicate. The video calling feature can be jerky at times but the quality is generally very good even with a slight delay between messages getting to each phone. Be careful with video calling though as I phoned my friend only to ask what he was doing and it turned out he was on the toilet.

Downloading. The button that looks like a triangle is the one to press to take you to the downloading section. You can download music videos, ring tones, games and wall papers here and you can also apply to have goals from your favourite football team delivered straight to your mobile. Music videos are great quality and the games are fun. I have the x files game on mine at the moment which I still haven’t completed so they are quite hard. When you buy this phone you do not actually get any games on there so I recommend downloading some but they do cost £5 to buy. You also have the option to rent them so that every time you play you have to pay. Music videos are around £1.50 each and you can choose from latest releases. I bought a wall paper for £1.50 but have never bought a ring tone so not sure how much they are.

Features. The alarm clock is easy to use but you have to reset it every day. Also there is the calculator option, a unit converter, timers and a voice recorder on this phone which all come in to use at some point with me.

The bad points;
The one bad thing I have had with this phone is with it breaking. At first it stopped me accessing my messages, the my phonebook and then the phone would just not turn on. Now the bad thing about 3 is that their customer service is bad and repairs usually take about a month. This is because they have to come and collect it which is usually at random times in the day and then they have to deliver it back to you. I am not sure what went wrong with my phone but when it was returned I lost all of games, wall papers and messages. This is because they flash the phone wiping it of everything. This annoyed me as I had spent a lot of money on games and they were all gone. Never mind though, life goes on.

All in all I have been happy with this phone and although many people moan about the network which I agree is a bit rubbish with respect to signal and customer service, the LG phones have been great sellers and are good little phones. I am not even sure you can buy this phone anymore but the upgraded version, the LGU8138 is available on contracts now.

I got this phone for free on a £30 contract and that was over a year ago now so the newest version should be available for free. I like the phone and although it has broken once and that was annoying, generally I have been pleased with the quality. Texting is quick and all phone calls I have had have been crystal clear. The phone does not get signal in many places but in my cottage in the middle of nowhere in Wales it works.

Thanks for reading.
xxx

Summary: Great overall

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