Taking a look at the LG Shine

When the LG Shine phone arrived on Saturday morning, I’d already been without power for 24 hours and all my other phones were about to run out of juice. So instead of sitting and peering at it from a review perspective, I stuck in the sim and started using it.

They weren’t messing around with the packaging either. When you walk into the mobile store and ask for an LG Shine, you are not going to wilt at the sight of the shitty box. No rubbish here. Have a look:

(This is a review handset so I imagine there would be some manuals of some sort when you open up the box here).

I can’t think of a handset available on the market today that looks as good as the Shine. If the Shine was an actress, it would be Sienna Miller in Layer Cake. This handset looks gorgeous just sat on the desk. It feels even better bringing it out of your pocket.

Let’s have a few more shots of it:

Slide the screen up (or the keyboard down) and:

The back of it:

Lovely lines:

Gaylene, on behalf of LG, had emailed me a few links to various other blog reviews of the Shine (for example, TechDigest), however — and I write this with the greatest respect to the chaps at TechDigest — I didn’t look. I didn’t do a Google, I didn’t look up the specs, I didn’t check out the LG main site for more information. I wanted to be influence free so that when I opened up the new Shine, my first impressions would be my own.

The only external influence was the LG Shine blog site that (at the time of writing) contained no information about the handset itself (that’s coming soon) with the exception of a rather funky looking handset picture.

Why’s it called the Shine? Well you immediately understand when you unpack it and notice your ugly mug (or, in my case, gorgeous, toned, chiseled features) staring back at you. The entire front of the handset is mirrored. Interesting.

It’s a good mirror! Here, is my hand:

(I hadn’t removed the protective plastic cover at this point)

Fits nicely in your hand:

That’s your camera, music, volume and power/USB lead:

I stuck in the battery and my T-Mobile sim in the back.

Holding it in my hand, I did a once over and wondered how to open it. Does it flick open, I thought? Or, is it like the sliding LG Chocolate? (A handset I’ve seen used, but never held myself.) I had a look to see if it flicked up, Star Trek Communicator-like. Nope. Definitely a slider.

The numeric keypad slides down just like the Chocolate.

How do you turn it on? I hunted briefly for an ‘on’ button until I realised it was on the keypad.

BRRRRRRINNNNG. The LG Shine makes a satisfying switch-on noise and immediately that mirror changes to show the handset’s screen. Very neat indeed. Really, really funky. Mega funky, in fact. So the screen is a mirror and the mirror is a screen. Nice.

There’s a little LG animation and you’re immediately into the standby screen. There’s a nice little scroll bar at the bottom of the screen together with option keys that make it easy to navigate about the menus.

The menus are something else. Being a regular Nokia user, I’m indoctrinated into their rather … sparse … user interface. Sparse compared to the LG Shine. GORGEOUS menus. Lovely little sounds all over the place.

Open the handset by sliding it down and the phone beeps a little hello. Close it and it provides a satisfying closing beep. Click around the menus and you get little beeps and nicely sounding chirrups all over the place. I didn’t find them annoying at all.

The form factor of this handset is just wonderful. To put this in context, I am normally walking around with a Nokia E61 in my right hand pocket and, more often than not, a Nokia N93 in the left hand pocket. So walking around with a handset that is half the size, weight and whatnot of my usual… well, it’s a slightly liberating experience. I kept on wanting people to phone me or text me so I could get out the Shine and ponce about with it. It generated strong desire to use it.

As I’ve said before, the menus are divine. Lovely animations, nice sounds, super rendered graphics. I’m going to try and get some sort of application to nicely capture the screens — or see if Gaylene and her colleagues can send me over some screenshots. I don’t think my Nokia N93 will do them justice.

That afternoon I had arranged to take Natalie, one of my normob friends (‘normal mobile user’ — i.e. not a geek) out for lunch. For simplicity we opted for Caffe Uno in the High Street. After chatting about normal things for a while, I got out the Shine from my pocket and plonked it on the table. Her eyes lit up. As did the girl behind us, and the girls sat on the opposite table. All of them were checking it out. Not me, alas, just the handset. 😉

Natalie recently churned from Vodafone and went to o2 because they offered her a slightly cheaper price plan and an LG Chocolate in Black (“I really wanted a pink one, but the black one is fine”). So Natalie is now and accomplished LG user and was, within seconds, flying through the various menus on the Shine, whilst i had a close look at the Chocolate.

It’s easy to see the appeal of the Chocolate with it’s sexy touch controls. The menu structure was readily familiar. I put the Shine next to the Chocolate to compare. The Shine is slightly wider and slightly heavier, on account, I think, of the metal construction and possibly a more powerful battery.

Natalie had a little sock for her Chocolate. She uses that to keep her handset clean of finger smudges and the like. What does she think of the Shine? Well, she reckons it’s absolutely wicked.

Would she have one tomorrow?
‘Yes, definitely’

What’s your favourite feature?
‘The mirror in the screen — plus it looks sexy’

We did some experiments with the camera. She reckoned that her Chocolate took ‘darker’ pictures that the Shine. We sorted this one out by her taking a picture with the Chocolate then bluetoothing it to the Shine. The photo was brighter and clearer on the Shine display.

There are no doubt quite a few differences in the specifications, however I don’t yet have those, so in terms of Natalie’s response, I reckon the most discernible difference is the mirrored screen and the titaniumy metally look.

Judging by the covetous and admiring glances from around Caffe Uno, the LG Shine is shortly about to become the next must-have handset. Guaranteed. Legions of Chocolate handset users will soon be presented with their upgrade path.

Now, the mirror is a brilliant addition. Not only is it absolutely appealing from a show-off perspective (“Look, the screen is in the mirror..”), it is, I imagine, rather useful for checking out your makeup. I’m no expert when it comes to makeup so I defer to Natalie’s ‘Oh yes, definitely useful’ summary of the mirror.

The Shine is no ‘multimedia computer’: It’s not about to rival the Nokia N95 with all its gizmos, memory and jack-of-all-trades functionality. Instead, I reckon the Shine will be quickly accepted as one of the best high fashion, uber-cool, no-nonsense handsets on the market. It’s got a good 2 megapixel camera, what looks like rather good battery life, gorgeous interfaces, a good looking MP3 player and of course, a legion of existing Chocolate fans.

What’s more, it’s been designed by people who clearly have a life, who like a bit of fun, and who’ve injected their passion into the Shine. For instance, there’s a wickedly good MP3 track included on the handset by the name of ‘Good Morning’. Play it and you’re greeted by a funky choir singing GOOOOOOD MORNING to a rocking beat! That is excellent.

I know Sony Ericsson have one or two similar default sounds, but they haven’t, to my knowledge, gone as far as LG. Heh. Fantastic.

One thing that really surprised me: I was talking to Natalie about how she gets her photos on to her computer from her Chocolate.

‘I just plug it in’

Right, but do you mean you bluetooth them?

‘No, I just plug it in with the USB cable and it comes up in My Computer’

Oh. Wow. Really? What? No software to install?

‘No. Just plug in the cable. I took the phone and cable over to my dad’s and put the photos on his computer.’

Gosh. Smart. I was imagining all sorts of paraphernalia required to get my LG Shine to communicate with my computer. Not a bit of it. You just plug it in. Heh. I like that a LOT.

So that’s all very well but what about Apple Macs? Well, I didn’t expect the LG to work with the Apple at all. Did I read the manual to determine if the Shine was compatible? No. Heh. I just stuck in the supplied USB cable and waited.

Within 2 seconds, Apple’s iPhoto had loaded, prompting me to click ‘import’. And there were the photos that I’d taken from the Shine.

That is just pure brilliance. Note: You can’t do this with a Nokia N93. You can’t just plug it in. In fact, you can’t plug the N93 into any Apple. There’s zero support. So ultra kudos to LG for sorting that support out. I imagine it’s either been standard or is now standard across their handsets.

So how does it look sat on your desk?

That’s not an LG supplied photo. I took that one! Doesn’t it look gorgeous?

I’m going to stop there for now and write some more after I’ve used it for a little while. If you’ve any questions, mail me or add’em in the comments.