LG Xenon GR500
Phone Scoop Review
Apr 28, 2009 by By Eric M. Zeman
The Xenon is LG's latest attempt to merge touch phone on the outside with QWERTY messaging phone on the inside. Does the result taste as good as it sounds? read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
First Day, First Impression
My iPhone decided to auto restore today, so I went to work and slapped my SIM into this phone. (Because I was getting it for my Dad.)
LG makes a decent touch screen. This one is more responsive than the Dare. The overall feel of the phone is cheapish, so I think a good case for it would come in handy. The GUI is standard LG, just like the Vu.
I scratched the screen the first hour I had it, so it is mandatory you get a cover. I put an invisible shield by zagg. (I do not work for them, but endorse their products.)
Pros:
Good Keyboard
Bright Screen
Can enlarge fonts!
Loud speakerphone/ringing
Very responsive Screen
The Flash camera is excellent
Decent video quality. (Don't more around too much!)
Cons:
Minor incident involving missing contacts. (Fixed by taking out battery, putting back in, restarting.) They all showed up.
Cheap feeling. (Do not drop this one.)
Screen is EASILY scratched.
I recommend this to 12-20 year-olds. My wife (22) loves it, and wants one.
Good with a glitch
Although I will be returning this phone and waiting on the Nokia E71x to come out and I had a pretty big glitch with the phone, I would recommend this phone and if not for the E71x coming out, I would buy another Xenon.
The glitch: the keyboard stopped working on both mine and my wife's Xenon. A few days after buying it, the phone just doesn't recognize the keyboard. You are supposed to be able to slide the keyboard out and the screen unlocks (if it's locked) and everything on the screen except the wallpaper flips in landscape mode to use the keyboard. Now I slide it out and the keys don't work and the screen doesn't change flip or unlock.
Pros:
1. The touch screen: it's responsive and easy to use.
2. The keyboard feels great and it has a quick link button to text message, email and IM.
3. You can customize the intensity of the vibration for both the touch screen and call alert.
4. The size is really nice, small but doesn't feel cheap to me.
5. Call quality is good.
Cons (other than the keyboard malfunctioning):
1. Ringtones have to be less than 300kb. Not sure why it matters since the phone has an mp3 player in it.
2. The address book allows multiple number per name but you can't change "number" to the name of the location or anything to let you know what each number is. I have contacts with 4 or 5 number for different locations all with the same area code.
3. No 2mm or 3mm headset jack. I think the music player is mostly useless without it.
4. The charger jack is in the top of the phone which makes talking on the phone while it's being charged a pain.
5. It doesn't come with the USB connect cable; Nokia includes it with their phones.
If the keyboard worked, the pros far out weigh the cons for me. I can make my ringtones smaller, I can adjust the address book, and I have 2 iPods; I buy my phones for calls and text messages and this phone does both really well.
LG Xenon
I have been working for an AT&T retailer for almost a year now and have seen a lot of phones come but were always lacking one thing or the other. I had the LG VU when it came out last summer and it was good, don't get me wrong, but it was missing that little extra something. I wanted a camera with flash, full html webrowsing and a better working touch screen. I came into work to day to finally get my hands on the LG XENON and I was a little skeptical. Yet after a good 20 mins of playing around with it, I was astonished.
The Xenon does everything I wanted the VU to do. It has a nice widget and you can do some customizing on the phone screen. The widget and customization is not as extensive as the Samsung Impression but it is a big improvement from the VU. Another thing I noticed is this time around LG didn't limit the phone to the preadded alert tones, you can use any alert in your phone, depending on the format of the file, as a message tone for the Xenon. The addition to the flash on the 2.0 mega pixel is GREAT and the video recording and play back is a tremendous upgrade from the VU. Even watching CV or videos on youtube was much better. Playing video on the VU was choppy and and the volume was far too quiet. Again after some more exploring I discovered you can change the font size and color for the phone. Which is awesome because I've had some many customers who want a phone with larger text.
I checked my GMAIL and I could download attachements and even save them to my phone's SD card.
I sent a few text messages and was very pleased to see that the Xenon has THREADED TEXTING! Which was an amazing surprise, especially for a non Smart Phone.
I'm still torn between the Samsung Impression and the Xenon because of the gorgeous AMOLED display and the display and touch technology of the Impression but the Xenon is almost everything I could as for in a mobile device. I'm still holding my breath for the Ominia HD but until then, the XENON GREAT.
XENON phone with LED flash???
the xenon phone is a great chioce for text enthusiasts with its qwerty keyboard... but my concern is...Why did LG name a phone after a noble gas as Xenon? the camera on the phone doesn't even have a xenon flash, it comes with a LED flash.
first glance
LG took the touch screen to the next level and added the qwerty keyboard as a part of the slider. They fixed some of the dull and boring selection screens that were in place with the lg vu. Small, compact with a decent camera.
Big difference with the xenon browsing style with the web and that of the lg vu. The xenon is simply put, amazing. type in a web site and once loaded the screen is zoomed in to an appropriate size.
Touch screen is very responsive, yet is i am a little skeptical of the touch screens durability as it is extremely soft. (recommend screen protector)
Unlock button is in the same location. The only down side is, is that if the phone slides just a slight bit open then the phone is unlocked without having to hit the unlock button.
Over all a good phone so far. If you were a fan of the quickfire, but shied away due to the bad reviews then check out the xenon
TRASH
This phone is trash. The slide feels terrible. I'm incredibly dissappointed with LG for this garbage. You would be better off with the VU. They actually subtracted features for this phone. NO MOBILE TV!!! Really LG?
An awesome, affordable phone
I've had several phones over years including Motorola's V400, V551, V600, and KRZR, as well as the LG Vu, and the Xenon is by far the best phone I've ever had.
Fans of the Vu will love the Xenon. This phone is an ever-so-slightly smaller version of the Vu with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The interface is very similar to that of the Vu as well, but also reminds me of the LG Dare. It's somewhat of a small step up from the Vu's interface.
They keyboard is sturdy enough and very functional. I don't think any part of the phone seems cheap, but I did buy a clear case for it just in case... I tend to drop my phone a lot.
PROS:
-Touchscreen is VERY responsive (better than the Vu)
-Battery life is adequate (also seems better than the Vu)
-Camera takes nice, crisp pictures
-Reception is great (I get service in places some of my AT&T friends don't... about the same as the Vu though)
-Slideout keyboard is pretty awesome and not cheap
-Threaded texting is a plus
-Screen seems durable
CONS:
Not really any major cons...
-Doesn't have a headphones jack, but you can use a special one that plugs into the battery charger slot... but it's NOT included like it was with the Vu.
-Requires different car charger than the Vu (uses the Dare charger)
Overall, it's an excellent phone! I love it.
Love it so far
Ok so i just got this phone yesterday and so far i love it! I love taking pictures and editing them, this phone has alot of picture editing options and i cant get enough of it! Love the threaded messages. only thing kind of bothers me is that when the flash on the camera is on when i take the picture the flash goes off before the picture is captured leaving me with a black picture if it's dark (why else would i need the flash) duh! but i'll manage i've had no flash on my last 2 phones!
Better than Average!!!
I have to disagree with the comments the previous person left about the phone sucks. It must have been a operator problem. Or it was his or her first phone. Any hoo.... Love the phone and I didn't have to pay alot either.Pros good touch screen and I love the keyboard because I have large fingers and usually the manurfactors make small touch screens.Overall better than average!!!
