LG GW620 Preview – LG’s First Android Mobile Phone Handset

Written by Simon Barker on December 3, 2009 · Filed under Tech 

I recently attended an LG Mobile event in London in which LG showcased a number of their current and upcoming mobile phones, the main focus of my interest that evening was certainly the chance to get my hands on LG’s first Android-based mobile phone, the LG GW620.

First of all, the main mobile phone I currently use is an iPhone 3GS, but I’ve been interested in Google’s Android platform for mobile phones ever since it launched with the T-Mobile G1 late last year, but now we’re starting to see some real potential with it as Google continue to development it further as a platform that could truly rival Apple’s iPhone platform.

One of the true benefits of the Android platform is that while their downloadable ‘app marketplace’ may currently only be a fraction of the size of the iPhone’s App Store, more Android apps are being released all the time and the main difference is that they do not have to go through a strict approval process like with Apple’s offering. This opens up a lot possibilities for users as they are not limited by the restrictions that Apple literally dictate to you in terms of functionality and I’m sure Android will become far more community-spirited and popular in the next year or two.

For a mobile phone manufacturer such as LG, the benefits of using the Android platform is that they can concentrate on what they are good at, ie. designing and producing hardware in terms of a handset and leaving the software functionality to Android, which in turns also saves LG the hefty time-invest in creating separate apps for all their new phones.

LG’s first Android-based handset is only known as the LG GW620 so far, admittedly it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue that well, so perhaps we’ll see it being given a brand name in the run-up to launch.

The pre-production handset that we saw demonstrated and had a chance to test out for ourselves looked pretty good. One of its main features is the slide-out , five row, QWERTY keyboard, which in itself is quite unusual for an LG handset, but it does make text entry quick and easy, it’s one of the better mobile keyboards I’ve used. Although, there is a good reason why LG have chosen to go down the QWERTY keyboard route and that is because the 3″ display (320×480 resolution) is of the resistance touchscreen variety as opposed to the more smooth iPhone-like capacitive touchscreen that some other Android handsets also feature. This would make an on-screen keyboard trickier to use, but in general use like any resistance touchscreen it becomes less of an issue as you get used to how it works.

The handset also has the usual features that you’ve come to expect from LG such as being DivX and MP3 compatible, having a standard 3.5″ headphone socket and a 5 megapixel camera.

Overall, the LG GW620 looks like a very promising handset, even at its current pre-production stage as it’s seems better to use than any Windows Mobile handset I’ve used to date and it will also run any Android application that you want to download from the Android Marketplace. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the LG GW620 and the other forthcoming LG Android-based handsets coming in 2010.

You can take a look a closer look at some of the software features of the LG GW620 by watching this video below, what do you think to LG’s first Android-based handset? Will your next mobile phone have Android on it?

Via – Coolest Gadgets UK & Gadget Venue