LG Enlighten Review

Introduction:

Over the past few months, Verizon has been pushing out a number of smartphones that operate on their 4G LTE network, but there remains large areas of the population that are still only covered by 3G EVDO. For them, their smartphone choices have started to become more limited, especially if they are looking for one with a QWERTY keyboard and that doesn’t break the bank. Verizon’s answer to this is the new LG Enlighten, which combines Android Gingerbread, a 3.2” display, camera, and a physical keyboard with a low 2-year contract price of $79.99.

Included in the retail package is the LG Enlighten VS700 phone with a 2GB pre-installed microSD memory card, 1540mAh battery, wall charger with microUSB cable, and user guides.

Design:

The overall design of the LG Enlighten isn’t too remarkable, as it is all-black in color and has a smoke-gray chrome rim around the edge of the display. But for the price, it feels well made and fits comfortably in the hand. On the front is a small 3.2” HVGA (320x480) TFT display, which is what we saw last year on the LG Vortex. It does an OK job, as text is legible and images look good, but for some reason it is missing an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust its backlight when moving between a dark and bright environment. We can understand LG not using a larger WVGA display to keep costs down, but they still should have included an ambient light sensor. There is a proximity sensor that does turn the display off when it is next to your face during a phone call.



You can compare the LG Enlighten with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.


The sliding mechanisms on the LG Enlighten is spring-loaded, just like on the LG Ally, and doesn’t require you to move it all the way for it to open the keyboard from underneath. We like that the Enlighten has a 4-row keyboard with dedicated number keys across the top, and that all they keys are individual, instead of being one large membrane. Though after typing on it for a few minutes, we noticed that there is not much space between the keys, which does increase the amount of accidental key-presses if you’re not paying attention. Having the bottom row split by the Space key is also kind strange and requires some getting used to. Still, LG does a decent job with the keyboard considering the limited amount of space for it to fit into.

User Interface and Software:

Even though the LG Enlighten carries a low price, we’re glad to see that it comes with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread on board. It has a similar look-and-feel of the LG Revolution and other LG smartphones using their Optimus UI 2.0 interface, as there are four colorful icons on the bottom of the seven homescreens for accessing the phone, contacts, messaging and apps. In fact, the app drawer on the Enlighten and Revolution are identical, with it categorizing everything into sections (communication, news & search, media, tools, applications, and downloads). Some may like this, but we prefer to change it to an alphabetical list so apps are easier to find. Unfortunately, the Enlighten doesn’t contain as many widgets as the Revolution, but still has the basic ones, such as a calendar, clock, Google search, messaging, music, new& weather, pictures, power control, and traffic.

Included is the standard WebKit based browser, which does a good job of displaying web sites just how they would appear on a standard PC. Since the Enlighten is a 3G device, it takes about a minute to fully load the PhoneArena.com site, including all Flash content. When we used the SpeedTest.net app, we got downloads and uploads around 800Kbps.


The rest of the phone’s software is nothing out of the ordinary, such as managing contacts, messaging, and the calendar, and with the Polaris Viewer app you can open Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF files.

Camera:

The LG Enlighten comes with a 3.2MP autofocus camera, just like the LG Vortex and Ally. Using the camera app is pretty simple, and it allows for some nice adjustments, such as the scene mode, resolution, ISO, white balance, and color effect. We also like that there is a dedicated 2-stop camera shutter key, so focusing and capturing the image can be done with it, instead of using the on-screen shutter icon.


Pictures that we took outside on a sunny day were average looking for a 3.2MP camera phone, as detail was OK but not great, and color accuracy was lacking, and some images looked out-of-focus, even though the on-screen indicator did turn green. Furthermore, images that we took inside, even with plenty of light, looked fuzzy and lacked detail. For recording videos, you’re limited to VGA 640x480 resolution at 20 frames-per-second, which results in average detail and jerky motion.


Multimedia:

The music player is also pretty basic, but does the job, though the sound quality through the rear speaker is lacking at high volumes. Watching videos can be done through the gallery app, which shows all your pics and videos in a thumbnail view, or you can use the separate video player app. We tried both, and didn’t notice any difference, as it would not play our files that had a resolution of 1280x720 or that were encoded using DivX and Xvid, but videos with a lower resolution (800x480) and that were encoded using MP4 H.264/263 played just fine.

Performance:

Since the LG Enlighten only comes with an 800Mhz processor, we weren’t surprised that Quadrant benchmark gave it a score of 1039 and AnTuTu benchmark was only at 1573, which is lower than most other Verizon Android smartphones. When using the device, we could also tell that is wasn’t as quick when moving between the homescreens and when opening apps, but again for the price we can’t complain about it too much.

Call quality was pretty good, as voices on both ends sounded clear and natural, as there wasn’t any background noise, though we had to keep the volume set around medium, as raising it to the highest setting did create some distortion in the earpiece speaker. Reception also did well, as we didn’t drop any calls and had 2-3 bars showing in our area.

The included 1540mAh battery is rated to provide up to 6 hours of talk time or 33 days of standby time on a full charge. In our testing, we did get 6 hours of continuous talk time on a full charge, or about 2 days of mixed usage, which includes some talk, text, email, web, app use, and standby.

Conclusion:

When it comes to selecting a low-priced Android smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard for Verizon, your options are pretty limited. For the $79.99 that the LG Enlighten is currently selling for, it does offer all of this, but you have to make do with the lower resolution display, slower processor, and a camera that isn’t a show-stopper. But the Enlighten does offer good call quality and reception, and having a physical keyboard is always a nice touch.

Software version on tested unit:
Android 2.3.4
Build GRJ22
SW Version VS700ZV3

LG Enlighten Video Review: