LG Mini GD880 Preview

Introduction and design:

Perhaps you know that we are reporting live from MWC in Barcelona for the fifth consecutive year. And we have to say the event is a virtual madhouse – almost all major cell phone manufacturers are introducing their latest models and claim them to be the cream of the crop and best ever. However, a handset needs to be at least slightly different from what we have seen so far in order to catch our eye. The LG Mini GD880 is eye-riveting amidst all the clamour and clutter at the exhibition and the reason is its design.

At first glance, the LG Mini GD880 looks incomplete. Like a product demo or one of those nameless devices used for showcasing new operating systems. When we took a closer look at it, however, we found out the designer team had actually put quite a lot of work in order to make it as elegant in its simplicity as possible. The handset remains true to an underlying design concept of the LG Pop GD510, namely as little unused space between the left and right sides of the screen to the edges as possible. The manufacturer has developed the idea further and the Mini is the smallest cell phone equipped with 3.2-inch screen, at least according to LG. The device looks more angular than the Pop, but feels great in your hand and reminds us of a gun - blending metal and plastics with streamlined design created to ki… erm, to be of service.



You can compare the LG Mini GD880 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Said 3.2-inch screen is capacitive and features surprisingly high native resolution of 480х854 pixels. It doesn’t utilize all the rage AMOLED technology, but the image quality and colors are pleasing indeed.

What we are also pleased at is the particular way the microUSB port and microSD slot are concealed from sight and their sliding, protective flaps look reliable indeed. Aside from them, the handset is equipped with 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning you will be able to plug in a pair of earphones to your liking right away.



The LG Mini GD880 may look a tad odd at first, but eventually many of you will find its offbeat, even if slightly angular shape, appealing.

Interface and functionality:

Let´s just get down to brass tacks – the LG Mini GD880 is a feature phone running S-Class interface. As far as we know the lack of 3D cube means the interface is not worthy of the “3D” in its name. However, it brings some pleasing improvements and novelties alongside of the versions of models like the LG ARENA KM900 and LG Crystal GD900. The home screen consists of three pages instead of four, but you are free to place whatever you want on any of them, including widgets, shortcuts to websites and more or less all available phone functions, plus we are happy to see the device allows for downloads of additional widgets.



The main menu is divided into relevant categories, something typical of LG´s latest cell phones equipped with touch-sensitive screens. We are slightly surprised to find out there is no landscape mode that enables visualization of all icons at once. Fortunately, the landscape QWERTY is present and we must say it looks cool indeed, although we would rather wait until we have had the chance to test a retail unit before sharing our impressions.



The service LG Air Sync makes its debut on the LG Mini GD880 and is still in beta testing stage. As a whole, it will allow users to transfer data between their computer and cell phone as well as store files on remote servers over the Internet. We have already seen the SNS function - it provides access to Facebook and Twitter clients and lets people integrate information about their online buddies registered with social networking services into the phone book.



The browser (LGE WebKit developed by Azingo) managed to surprise us pleasingly. First off, it supports double taps and multitouch controls. Second, you are able to take advantage of partial Flash support and watch YouTube videos. You can see more test results and a thorough comparison of the application to other modern browsers… in our full review, of course.



Camera and multimedia:

The LG Mini GD880 sports 5-megapixel camera (without flash) and captures video at VGA resolution. In other words definitely not something to write home about, but at least LG has equipped the camera interface with a number of options. You can also edit your clips and pictures, which is pretty cool really.





The music player of the LG Mini GD880 is an odd bird, but it has been replaced with a more standard piece of software that comes with cover-flow style landscape mode. We are glad to see the handset plays Xvid files, because its display is awesome for that, not to mention the retail units should feature DivX support out of the box as well.

There are several games and applications dedicated to entertainment on the go that have found their place on the LG Mini GD880.




Expectations:

We do like the LG Mini GD880 and all its aspects. The handset comes with design that stands out, really good build quality and rich functionality, so the cell phone seems to have what it takes to become a worthy replacement of the now aging, last-year´s market hit of LG, the ARENA KM900. Actually, the rumor has it that the real successor to the ARENA will be another, high-end device. The only troubling thing we encountered was the sluggish operational speed of the prototype, but we hope the issue gets fixed before the retail units hit the shelves. If this happens, the LG Mini GD880 does stand a fair chance of becoming a truly successful and desired cell phone.

LG Mini GD880 Video Preview:]