Review: LG dLite
The menu design options on the LG dLite are cute and even playful, but they aren't organized in a useful way. On the home screen, you can choose from a small number of animated wallpapers. These don't offer much information beyond the time and date, but they are a bit playful. The 4-way button opens a standard array of shortcuts by default. Pressing the center button opens the Faves menu, a favorite contact screen. You can also jump to the call log or the contact list, compose a new text message or open the camera for a framed MMS picture message. These shortcuts are not customizable, which is too bad. There is already a Contacts shortcut assigned to the right soft key, and pressing the Send key opens the call log, so both of these shortcuts are redundant. Plus, the phone has a dedicated camera button. So, three out of four shortcuts around the d-pad are mostly useless.
The main menu screen was not very well organized. First, LG wastes space by plastering the word "Menu" at the top. Why not just stick the word "Phone" at the top of the home screen, too, while we're being obvious? The first menu option is "Downloads." This always irks me, when carriers make their download store a top priority on a feature phone. It's an obvious money grab. I would bury the "Help" menu deeper into the menu to free up space at the top level. After all, the phone is pretty simple, how often will I be looking for help?
The rest of the options are straight forward, except for the "Organizer" menu choice. This is where you'll find the Voice Command app and the TeleNav GPS Navigation, neither of which seem appropriate for the Organizer. There's also a calendar and alarm clock, but the contact list gets its own menu option. Instead, the Organizer gets a calculator, tip calculator and unit converter.
I'd like to see more useful apps bubble up to the top level of the menus. Maybe the photo gallery, music player or Social Buzz apps, if not the GPS navigation or more advanced features. Better yet, I'd really like to be able to customize the main menu to place my favorite apps where I want them.
With three slightly different, animated themes for the menus, the LG dLite can seem playful, but the phone couldn't keep up with its own designs. One theme has a little bird fluttering around and landing on your menu choice as you move the selector, but the phone can't draw the bird fast enough, so it seems to teleport from one option to the next. Throughout the phone, the interface seemed sluggish. It worked, it just moved very slowly.
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LG dLite
