LG Arena Review
FoneArena presents the LG Arena Review
The LG Arena is the latest full touchscreen multimedia smartphone from LG mobiles.Interesting features include a 5 Megapixel Camera with Flash, DVD Quality video Recording , Dolby Mobile Music, 8 GB inbuilt Memory, DivX Movie Playback. This is just a short review but will try to cover the major areas. We have a Video review at the end of the post just in case you want a quick look !
Package Contents
- LG Arena Phone with Battery
- USB Cable which acts as charger as well.
- In-ear headphones.
- Manuals , DVD
We didn’t find a wall charger in the box , perhaps it’s present in the retail pack as ours was a review unit.
Hardware
While the Arena was compared a lot with the iPhone first gen device, they have a lot of things in common. But after using the phone, I don’t feel it’s a blatant copy of the iPhone. It does somethings even better than the iPhone but it lacks the punch in a few areas.
And it’s smaller than E71 and just larger than a credit card !
The LG Arena is thicker than the iPhone First-gen but thinner than the iPhone 3G which is thick ! The Arena feels really good in the hand and the build quality was top notch except for the lack of the camera lens cover and a standardized microUSB connector.The phone does not feel cheap at all and looks good for the price.
Display
The phone has a 3 inch WVGA touchscreen display which is a pleasure to view. It sports a 480×800 pixel resolution and can handle about 16 million colours.While the display was awesome indoors , it’s difficult to use in bright conditions. Would appreciate a slightly larger display as they have cranked up a lot of pixels in 3 inches.
3D S-Class UI
The 3D S-class UI is something unique from the rest of the competition. But it lacks perfection and can be confusing at times. The Accelerometer was too sensitive when displaying the icon grid. Even though the UI is Unique , no one can deny the inspiration comes from iPhone’s UI and HTC’s TouchFLo(especially the transitions). The Widgets were fun to use but found it difficult to use them in the beginning.
Camera
On the back you will find a 5 MegaPixel Camera with a LED Flash which does take some great pictures especially in daytime.
Image Quality
for more samples chk out the camera samples of the lg arena
Video Recording
The phone does really good video recording but it saves the recorded video in a almost outdated .3gp format.Another problem is zoom did not work in the video mode whereas it worked in the image capture mode. Even the microphone is powerful and picks the sounds very well. Make sure you watch the below video in HD Quality and you will certainly appreciate the quality.
Multimedia and Music Playback
Music playback is great and whats cool is the stock in-ear headphones . It does come with a 3.5mm jack so you can plug in your own pair of headphones.
chk out our dedicated post about the music playback of the phone
You can choose the album by picking it on the screen. The player didn’t have a problem recognizing our mp3 files. Playback was clear and loud and reached the peak of around 100 decibels which is worth a mention.
FM Radio gets a trendy new UI and is fun to use. Watching movies should be a treat as the phone supports full screen playback of DivX movies.
Keyboard
The is no physical keypad on this phone and you have to stick to the onscreen keyboard be it the dialer , sms or browsing. The capacitive screen does make typing feel easy, the keyboard is not perfect and misses a few key strokes. This may be due to the small screen and my large fingers. But on the whole you will get used to it.
There are 3 touch sensitive keys(call ,home, hangup) below the screen and they light up when the phone is in use.
Connectivity and Calling
The phone features Wi-fi, 3G and GPRS/EDGE and also supports Quad Band GSM Networks. Wi-fi worked really well. Calling worked flawlessly and the audio quality was brilliant. The phone is also 3G ready ,in case we get 3G soon, Arena will be compatible. Google Maps and Email support is also bundled. We could get the Maps working but not Email. Browser was good but font-size was a bit small and also there was a lag between the page loads
Battery Life
Considering the fact that the Arena is a multimedia smart phone , users are certainly going to use the phone for much more stuff than plain vanilla calls and sms. The 1000 mAh battery lacks the juice and the phone barely lasts a day. That being said, the talktime depends on your usage.
Conclusion
Pros
- Screen
- 3D S-Class UI
- Build Quality
- Multimedia Support
- Music Quality
- Camera
- 8 GB In-built memory
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- FM radio with transmitter
- Data Transfer Speed
- Plenty of Connectivty options
Cons
- Smaller Screen
- Lack of microUSB port
- Memory Card slot under battery cover.
- Video Recording format is .3gp
check out our extensive photo gallery
Varun Krish is a Mobile Technology Enthusiast and has been blogging about mobile phones since 2005. His current phones include the Nokia Lumia 800 and Apple iPhone 4S. You can follow him on Twitter @varunkrish and on Google+ You can also mail Varun Krish
