LG Optimus GT540 - Review

“LG’s Optimus GT540 is a good entry-level smartphone. But beware the phone’s troublesome touchscreen”

LG Optimus GT540 - Review

Optimus' bodywork feels classy

Smartphones offer more features than basic mobile phones, so it’s only reasonable that you may feel overwhelmed when considering upgrading to one.

Mobile phone manufacturers have responded by creating so-called “entry-level smartphones” that combine most mainstream smartphone applications, such as Google Maps, and a user-friendly interface for a palatable price.

The LG Optimus GT540 is one such entry-level smartphone.

I was immediately impressed by Optimus’ build quality. The phone feels well built and although its brushed aluminium bodywork is actually only plastic, the large touchscreen and useful physical buttons contribute to Optimus’ quality feel.

Optimus’ applications usually opened within milliseconds and, because the smartphone runs the user-friendly Google Android operating system it features most of the advanced applications you would find on a high-end smartphone from HTC, such as the HTC Desire HD.

LG has, for example, followed in the footsteps of other smartphone manufacturers by installing a handy social network feed manager app called SNS onto Optimus.

The app let me see Facebook status updates and Twitter posts from within one window. SNS was a real time saver because I didn’t need to open lots of different applications to read or post alerts.

But I hit a major problem the second I tried typing emails, writing texts or doing anything that required me to use Optimus’ touchscreen.

LG has fitted Optimus with a cheaper type of touchscreen than found on higher-end smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone 4. The result is a screen that responds well when your finger touches large on-screen objects, like app icons, but which is terribly inaccurate when used as an on-screen keyboard.

Google Android operating system

A 3Mp features on the LG Optimus

Every other word was spelt incorrectly because the keypad often selected the key beside the one I actually wanted. I had to enter my email address at least five times before the phone got it right, for example.

But Optimus works well when you use apps that don’t require much text entry, such as the camera.

LG LG Optimus GT540has a 3Mp camera that, although it will never win you a photography award, captures respectable images.

The camera requires a fair amount of surrounding sunlight because a flash isn’t included, but pre-installed scene modes, such as “sunny”, and the digital zoom can be used to improve picture quality.

Optimus’ camera captured fairly smooth videos.

The phone’s media player is fairly basic, though it does the job, and an industry-standard 3.5mm headphone jack sits snugly on the top of the device.

Since music and video are stored onto Micro SD memory cards, running out of storage capacity will never be a problem – not even the mighty 32GB iPhone 4 can claim that.

Google Maps generally loaded pretty quickly on Optimus and, because the app has large on-screen keys for zooming in and out, the touchscreen’s troubles didn’t bother me too much.

I also liked Optimus’ side-mounted web search button that brings up a Google search window on the phone. It’s just a shame that entering text into the search box is such a chore…