The LG GD880 Mini is a looker. Quite the way to start really, but the Mini isn’t all about looks. From the hardware design through the high-res screen to the software – everything was crafted by skillful hands. Beauty is function in design – nothing is more complex than it needs to be, but beneath the deceptive simplicity there’s a myriad of functions.
The LG GD880, despite its name, is not a small phone, in the sense of some recent minis (*cough*X10mini*cough*). It is darn small next to the LG BL40 New Chocolate, but by no means tiny.
Indeed, Mini also refers to the design concept – there are barely any hardware keys on the device, and the GD880 has one of the cleanest faces in business.
Minimalism does not mean lack of functionality. The scratch-resistant 3.2” display of the impressive WVGA (480×854 pixels) resolution opens the door to HTML5 and Flash capable browsing over a zippy HSPA connection.
Then there’s the multitasking, the social networking, and the multimedia features. Here’s a list of goodies that make the Mini quite big in terms of functionality.
Key features:
- Quad-band GSM support and dual-band 3G
- 7.2Mbps HDSPA and 2Mbps HSUPA
- 3.2″ 256K-color TFT capacitive touchscreen display of WVGA (480×854 pixels) resolution; multi-touch support, scratch resistant surface
- Latest S-Class UI; Flash and HTML5 support
- Cool minimalist styling and great build quality
- 5 megapixel auto focus camera; image stabilization, geo-tagging, face detection, Smile Shot, Beauty and Art shot
- VGA@15fps video recording
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with DLNA and built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support
- Bluetooth with A2DP and microUSB v2.0 (chagrining)
- Hot-swappable microSD card slot; up to 32GB cards supported
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- 3.5mm audio jack and Dolby mobile
- DivX/XviD support
- Social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter)
- Accelerometer sensor for automatic screen rotation; proximity sensor
- Office document viewer
- Smart dialing
Main disadvantages:
- Laggy software
- Display has poor sunlight legibility
- Flash and HTML5 support not good enough for watching videos
- Below-par audio quality
- GPS functionality is left bare, not even Google Maps preinstalled
The LG GD880 Mini runs LG’s S-Class OS, which keeps it outside of the smartphone tussle, but it also gives LG complete freedom to design it – and they’ve spared no effort to draw out each element in great detail, shadows, gloss and all.
LG GD880 Mini live shots
Make it simple and make it beautiful too – this seems to be the clear objective and LG did well for all we’ve seen so far. But we know you’re keen to see looks translated into performance, so let’s get started.
The retail box that the LG Mini comes in is not nearly as inspiring as the phone itself. It covers the basics – a mini charger that uses the supplied data cable to charge the phone, a one-piece wired headset, some manuals and a disk with software.
The LG Mini comes in a modest retail package
There’s no complimentary microSD card so you’ll have to get one – the 330MB of internal memory won’t do for all the DivX videos you’ll probably want to put on the Mini.
LG GD880 Mini 360-degree view
The LG GD880 Mini measures 102 x 47.6 x 10.6 mm. That’s smaller than, say, the LG KP500 Cookie. At 99 grams it’s light, but not too light – there’s a pleasantly solid feel to it.
The Mini is the thinnest LG touch phone to date – not the thinnest on the market overall, but it’s at a point where any thinner would’ve ruined the industrial feel without making the handset noticeably more pocketable.
Design and construction
The LG GD880 Mini is button-phobic – it’s got only 4 physical keys in total and that’s if you count the volume rocker as two keys. The front is defined by the touchscreen – if a touchscreen can replace several buttons it can replace them all.
The LG GD880 Mini will make cubists proud
The few hardware keys on the phone are necessary compromises – removing them would have hurt the usability. The lack of an actual center key takes some getting used to – force of habit will have you pushing on the LG logo for a while.
Above the display we find the earpiece covered by a fine metal mesh and the video-call camera, both placed on a strip of brushed metal. Bellow that on the black bezel around the screen, there’s a proximity sensor to automatically lock the screen during a call, as well as an ambient light sensor.
The earpiece and sensors above the display
The clean line on the left side of the phone is only broken by the volume rocker. The right side accommodates the shutter key and the microSD card slot. The microSD slot is sealed with a sliding cover.
Volume rocker on the left
The sides of the phone are made of metal with long thin grooves. The buttons bulge slightly but have the same finish to blend in with their surroundings.
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The microSD card slot and shutter key on the right
The material used for the top of the LG GD880 Mini is slightly (but noticeably) different than the side finish. It’s not a big deal, but it looks like the phone has been repaired with a non-original part.
The sliding cover of the microSD slot is made from yet another material – we wish LG were more consistent with their choice of materials.
The top hosts the 3.5mm audio jack, a covered microUSB port and the Power/Lock key. Both are easy to access and nice to use. The Power/Lock button is slightly raised to make it easier to press.
The bottom has the loudspeaker grill and the mic hole.
Top: Power/Lock key, 3.5 mm audio jack and microUSB port • Bottom: loudspeaker and mic hole
The back of the LG GD880 Mini is clinically clean – only by design though, in everyday use it readily collects ample amounts of fingerprints. The soft rubbery plastic is nice to the touch and helps a comfortable grip.
There’s no flash to help with troublesome lightning and nothing to protect the camera lens from scratches.
5MP camera on the almost featureless back • a look under the hood
The back cover comes off easily in a slide to open fashion. It holds firmly though, no wobbles or creaks. Underneath is a 900 mAh Li-Ion battery and the SIM card compartment.
The LG GD880 Mini has a palpable air of luxury – it can easily be a fashion accessory. So it will easily stand out among most of today’s phones that are caught in the numbers game – this one has more megapixels, that one has a faster CPU, etc.
The LG BL40 New Chocolate dwarfs the GD880 Mini
The Mini’s look is posh and techy at the same time. In the end though, it’s what the user thinks they’re getting – a cool expensive gadget or a fashion accessory.
The GD880 Mini, true to its name, fits easily in the hand and in the pocket. It’s got that solid luxury feel – without being too flashy. We’ve no reason to question its long-term durability.
LG GD880 Mini held in hand
Pixel-dense screen makes for crisp text, vivid pictures
The screen is the centerpiece of the GD880 Mini – it’s where you get to enjoy the S-class interface, where the HTML5 browser does its magic, and the DivX/XviD videos are played. And it’s a very good display.
The display is amazing: short for high-resolution, capacitive, multi-touch-enabled
With 480 x 854 pixels on a 3.2” diagonal, it’s easily one of the most pixel-dense displays we’ve seen. And the image quality is great – watching videos and browsing photos is a treat and text remains legible at very low zoom levels, which is great for web browsing of full-featured web sites.
The black colors are deep enough, but sunlight legibility is unimpressive – it’s on a level with the LG Arena. And phones like the Samsung S8500 Wave have raised the sunlight legibility bar too high it seems.
Indoors however, the high-resolution screen renders a crisp, vivid picture. It has a scratch-resistant finish too to keep it from getting damaged.
The updated S-Class UI: new homescreen, widgets and menu
The S-Class UI has already earned its place among feature phone user interfaces. Since the first S-Class device – the LG KM900 Arena – the BL40 New Chocolate was the only one to bring some changes in both functionality and looks. LG GD880 Mini carries the improvements on with even bolder decisions.
The original S-Class Cube interface is now gone – the four homescreens are now replaced by one extended desktop that nods at Android. It’s three times the size of the display (side-scrollable), giving you enough room to organize all the items you want to put up front. And there are plenty of things that can go up there. The screen shows you one third of the actual homescreen and you can sweep left or right to get to the other panes.
The new homescreen
You can add different items on the homescreen with the dedicated virtual key in the bottom right corner of the display. In edit mode you can also shake the phone to auto align all the stuff on the homescreen.
If you’re about to add a new item you will first have to choose between widget, bookmark or shortcut. The widgets are similar to what we’ve already seen in previous S-Class handsets, some of them with small visual changes. There are two new major additions – the Facebook and Twitter widgets plus their mini versions, but we’ll talk about them later.
Besides widgets, you can also put bookmarks or shortcuts to almost anything in your phone. They look exactly like the iPhone’s icons and work in a similar way.
Adding a new homescreen item
A Task manager virtual button is always available in the bottom left corner of the screen, except on the homescreen where it is replaced by the virtual green receiver key. This time around, the task manager is more user-friendly and resembles Symbian by popping up to show the running apps. You can terminate or switch between the currently running apps.
In the bottom right corner of the screen you will always find a red receiver button. In addition to its main purpose, it will also terminate any app you are currently using and take you back to the homescreen.
The task manager
LG have got it right again and the S-class interface is as visually impressive as before, and perhaps more mature.
Everything from homescreen to dropdown menus roll, sweep in, unfold and rotate extra smoothly with a responsiveness that suggests some powerful graphics acceleration.
The lockscreen is the “Press & Hold to Unlock” kind, which is the same as in the LG Arena, Viewty Smart and the Crystal. In addition, the Mini has gesture lock too. You can assign up to 9 shortcuts to different phone features – contacts, call log, alarms, music, etc.
The familiar locksreen • assigning gestures for quick app launch from the lockscreen
Tapping the Status bar at the top of the screen launches a semitransparent quick switcher that can be used to toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off, change profiles and view recent events.
The status menu
The main menu is accessible via the dedicated shortcut on the home screen. It has been completely redesigned. Instead of the four scrollable rows structure it is now page-organized. Similar to the homescreen you now have three pages housing all the usual S-Class icons. You can scroll through the pages with finger sweeps and rearrange the icons by tap-and-hold. We’ve seen that elsewhere, haven’t we?
The new main menu
Unfortunately, because of the new menu organization, there is no landscape view.
S-Class finally socialized
LG have finally added native Twitter and Facebook clients on the S-Class. They are nicely touch optimized and have similar looks and functionality as the respective apps for the iPhone and Symbian.
The native Twitter and Facebook clients
LG also offer nice homescreen Facebook and Twitter widgets similar to those on Samsung’s TouchWiz. They show your friends’ latest status updates. A tap on them will get you to the respective social-networking app.
Facebook and Twitter widgets
Typical phonebook
The S-Class has an attractive and thumb-friendly phonebook. The Contact list has tiny separators with the corresponding alphabetical letter. The phonebook displays every contact with a picture, name and a green call button for quick dial.
Tapping on a contact will take you to a next screen with details and Call/Text buttons. The option to locally expand the contact info straight in the contact list is not available this time.
The novelty on the contact’s detail screen is recent history – all calls, messages and emails to and from this contact can be found here.
Like most of the interface, the phonebook is highly touch-optimized and features kinetic scrolling. It’s fluid enough with only occasional motion jerks – pretty much the best we’ve seen so far from LG.
Phonebook • Editing a contact • Contact history
Of course, there is a search option and it’s available on top of your contact list. The good thing is it’s now visible at all times regardless of your position in the phonebook. None of the previous S-Class powered handsets, or even the iPhone, have that.
Users no longer have the option to place a specific contact on the contact homescreen by tapping the small star button. The star is still there but only to indicate your favorite contacts. The adding of contacts to the favorite homescreen is now easily available right on the homescreen itself.
Excellent telephony
The GD880 Mini handles phone calls flawlessly, as you have every right to expect. The phone dialer works with an on-screen standard numpad.
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Phone dialer • Smart dial
The green receiver key is available on the dial pad and takes you to the call log. It switches to its default function (dial) as soon as you punch some numbers. You can also access the call history from the homescreen by hitting the green receiver key, while the dial pad itself has a dedicated shortcut above it.
Rejecting and receiving calls are two operations that are in dire need of their own hardware keys. If not for anything else, the Off key would have been quite comfortable for muting and subsequently rejecting an incoming call. Now your only way to do that are the virtual keys on the screen itself (Accept, Reject, Silence and Excuse Message) – which, believe it or not, are not that easily recognizable in direct sunlight.
Smart Dial is of course available and works like a charm – the implementation on the GD880 Mini searches both contact numbers and names.
The LG GD880 Mini scored a Good mark in our loudspeaker performance test.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Pink noise/ Music, dB | Ringing phone, dB | Overall score |
| Apple iPhone 3G | 66.1 | 62.1 | 71.7 | Below Average |
| LG GD880 Mini | 67.7 | 66.5 | 76.1 | Good |
| LG KM900 Arena | 70.9 | 68.2 | 78.3 | Good |
| Samsung S8000 Jet | 75.5 | 68.1 | 77.9 | Very Good |
| LG GC900 Viewty Smart | 75.7 | 69.5 | 76.7 | Very Good |
| LG KP500 Cookie | 78.1 | 75.7 | 82.7 | Excellent |
Messaging
There are two major sections in the main menu – Messaging and Email. The LG GD880 Mini supports sending and receiving SMS, MMS, and email messages. SMS and MMS share the same editor.
SMS and MMS sender
The messages are neatly organized in a standard list view and sorted by date. You can choose a filter – SMS, MMS or notifications. Naturally, the Inbox is the default location when you enter the Messaging menu, but you can change it to Outbox, Sent, Drafts or My Folders. There is also a threaded view option.
You can either type on the standard alphanumeric keypad or flip the Mini landscape and enjoy the QWERTY keyboard. There is touch feedback either way, and typing is accurate enough, even though the QWERTY keys are smallish. Each symbol you tap is clearly marked by iPhone-style pop-ups.
There are also larger Favorites and Contacts shortcuts on the SMS screen, which have replaced the small square buttons from the past.
The QWERTY keyboard
When it comes to email, set up on the LG GD880 Mini is hassle-free. Adding an email account is a breeze thanks to the clever set-up scheme. For a Gmail account for example, all we had to do was fill in the account and password fields – the connection settings were retrieved automatically.
In case you have to setup your email account manually, there is a host of settings that you need to enter. Both POP3 and IMAP4 protocols are supported and you can set the handset to auto retrieve new mail at a preset interval with a dedicated setting for roaming. The email client supports SSL encryption too.
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The Email section • settings
Maximum attachment size for both outgoing and incoming mail is 2.2MB.
Quite naturally, archive files such as ZIP or RAR are not among the supported file types for attachments, but you can still save those to the phone memory when you receive them. You can open and preview MS Office and PDF attachments directly inside the email client.
Once you’ve downloaded your messages, you can use the search feature to find specific emails or you can sort them by various filters such as date, sender, priority, read/unread, subject, size, etc. There is also an option for setting multiple emails as “Read”.
Multi-touch gallery
The LG GD880 Mini offers two gallery modes depending on the handset’s orientation. In portrait mode images and videos are displayed in a grid sorted by date, type or name, while in landscape mode you get nice spatial view.
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The image gallery grid and spatial view
The landscape 3D gallery has been changed yet again since the LG BL40 New Chocolate. While in the original S-class interface you only had three images visible at a time, the BL40 had a lot more with options to change the viewing angle and zoom level. The Mini now shows 5 pictures at a time within a virtual arc containing all the images in your handset.
There are no viewing options available or different arcs sorted by month. Performance-wise it’s really ok – it’s as fluid as it gets.
Thanks to the multi-touch enabled capacitive touchscreen, you can pinch-zoom on images but the zooming and panning are unfortunately very slow. The notable lag will disappoint most of the users.
The opened images also rotate automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer.
Viewing an image • options
Apart from the standard options in the gallery such as rename, delete, print, send and info, there is also a slideshow mode. You can choose the time interval, the display order (shuffle or not) and the transition effect.
Sending options include Bluetooth, Email, Postcard or Message, while the only web upload option is to Blogger. It would have been nice if LG implemented some easy upload to Facebook or Twitter, but not this time obviously.
Nice music player
The music player has also been changed since the last time we saw it in the BL40 New Chocolate. It now has an independent “now playing” screen with a nice spinning vinyl for visualization (when album art is not available).
The music player • landscape view • equalizers
Turning the phone sideways takes you into landscape mode where you have all tracks in a iPhone-like cover flow. In both modes you have the usual music controls at the bottom of the screen.
Equalizer settings are also available. While most of them are pretty standard, you surely will notice the Dolby Mobile, so typical of LG.
Video player has full DivX/XviD support, works flawlessly
While the music player brings no functional changes, the video player is a big surprise. It now supports all kind of DivX and XviD videos up to WVGA resolution.
The video player
It played all the DivX/XviD videos we tried without breaking a sweat – no dropped frames or other issues. We even tried a full length movie and it ran excellently. Subtitles are not supported but anyway, well done LG!
Dolby Mobile is available in the video player too and is turned on by default. And just so you know, its potential is best appreciated on the headphones.
FM radio
The Mini comes with an FM radio that you can listen to both in the headphones and the loudspeaker. In either case you’ve got to have the headphones plugged in as they serve as an antenna.
The radio stores up to 50 stations and there is support for receiving two-line radio station info over RDS. Scrolling stations is very easy and intuitive – you have quick access via the two rows of buttons below the main window.
Much like the music player, when the FM radio is running in the background you can control it using the home screen widget.
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The FM radio
Disappointing audio quality
Unfortunately one of the corners that LG had to cut in order to make the LG GD880 mini concerns the audio quality. The LG GD880 mini is by far not the loudest handset around but its audio output isn’t too clear either.
The extreme bass frequencies have been cut-off, while the distortion levels are way too high. The signal-to-noise ratio is also far from spectacular and so is the dynamic range. All this adds up to one of the worse performers we have seen recently and the LG GD880 mini is certainly not to be recommended to audiophiles.
Check out its performance compared to some of the other handsets we have tested in the table below.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| LG GD880 mini | +0.36, -4.09 | -59.9 | 59.9 | 1.183 | 1.012 | -72.2 |
| LG BL40 New Chocolate | +0.25, -3.04 | -85.9 | 87.8 | 0.030 | 0.341 | -81.3 |
| LG KM900 Arena | +0.09, -1.61 | -91.6 | 91.7 | 0.0017 | 0.101 | -90.4 |
| Samsung S8000 Jet | +1.01 -2.03 | -87.9 | 87.0 | 0.015 | 0.060 | -85.9 |
| Sony Ericsson W910 | +0.25, -1.25 | -81.5 | 82.7 | 0.0071 | 0.028 | -81.9 |
| HTC HD mini | +0.15, -0.68 | -83.7 | 86.7 | 0.024 | 0.158 | -84.1 |
| Apple iPhone 3GS | +0.01, -0.05 | -92.1 | 92.1 | 0.0035 | 0.011 | -95.0 |
LG GD880 mini frequency response graph
5 megapixel photos will do
The GD880 Mini sports a 5 megapixel camera. It’s capable of taking photos at maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels and offers geotagging, face tracking and smile detection.
The Mini comes with a camera interface similar to what the previous LG full-touch handsets offered. It’s slightly improved since but still has some to catch up with the best on the market.
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Camera interface
Our main regret is that you need to go to the advanced settings to access most of the customizable options. You get the virtual buttons for exposure compensation, digital zoom, focus modes and the camera/camcorder switch onscreen at all times but that’s that.
The improvement mentioned is mostly in the fact that the rotating settings dial now shows five settings at a time. We still seem to prefer Samsung’s approach but the difference isn’t as great now.
In the advanced settings you will find image quality options, white balance, color effects, picture size, scenes, etc. There are also ISO settings and focus options in case you are into using them.
The LG GD880 Mini produces nice photos with decent levels of detail and pleasant colors. The noise levels are tolerable, though sometimes they can be a bit higher than usual. In some places there’s extreme oversharpening, but it’s rare enough and definitely something you can live with. There are aspects that clearly need some more work, but our overall feeling about the image quality remains positive.
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LG GD880 Mini camera samples
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Mini.
LG GD880 Mini resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Samsung S8000 Jet resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Video recording
Unfortunately, the video recording is not quite the LG GD880 Mini element. The handset pulls of the passable VGA-resolution videos but the choppy framerate (15fps only) takes most of the fun out of them.
Camcorder interface
Rich connectivity options
Wireless connectivity support is complete on the LG GD880 Mini. Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE is on board and so is the dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps support.
The phone also supports plenty of local connectivity standards – Bluetooth, USB and Wi-Fi are all on board. The Bluetooth version is 2.1 with A2DP support for stereo streaming and 802.11b/g for Wi-Fi.
WLAN is set up via a simple interface – you choose the desired network, type the pass key and voila – you’re connected. Of course there are plenty of advanced options available for the geeks out there.
The last and most important thing is that every installed Java application, which requires internet access prompts you to choose between UMTS and Wi-Fi, which is a great option.
LG have their own sync service now – the LG Air and they are introducing it along with the LG Mini. You need to create an account on your desktop browser, then log in on your device, authenticate it and start the sync process. We added our Google exchange account and it imported all of our contacts and calendar events. The interface is very simple, but the sync service gets the job done and that’s more than enough.
Mass storage mode is supported when you connect a microUSB cable but you can also remove the microSD card and transfer data through a card reader you have at hand. It’s not quite as convenient but it gives you better speed if you are to, say, copy several gigabytes worth of data.
The standard 3.5mm audio jack lets you plug in your favorite pair of headphones but you’ll have to live without the microphone, as the original pair is one-piece.
Multi-touch web browser, HTML5 and Flash support onboard
The Mini web browser is one of the features that LG were most keen to promote. It is entirely redesigned and now serves the user much better. They made a big deal out of HTML5 support, but the improved speed is what we liked most about it.
Loading speeds are great, unlike previous S-class browsers that we have tested. It falls just short of the best in business and it’s probably among the best in the non-smart category. Not to mention that the high resolution counts big time here as it allows much more content to fit on the screen.
The interface has also been redesigned – if you can say that about something that’s virtually free of any chrome. Only the address bar and the reload button are visible in full screen mode and you have to press the down-pointing arrow to reveal the remaining browser controls: Back, Forward, Favorites and Tabs (yep, the browser can handle multiple tabs). Another press is needed to see the rest of the options.
The Mini web browser
In portrait mode the top and bottom taskbars are visible by default, so this is one point in its favor over full screen mode. That’s hardly enough though.
The pinch zoom also works in the browser. LG have done a good job here and the actual zooming is a very fluid. Besides panning speeds are pretty decent too, so it’s either that the Mini has some powerful processing hardware inside (but where is it when panning and zooming in the gallery?) or LG have optimized the software perfectly.
Naturally, landscape mode is also available and it is toggled automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer.
The rest of the features include visual history and search-on-page. Unfortunately, Flash support is pretty limited and Flash videos do not play straight in your browser. One possible work-around for this is to use the HTML5 versions of sites (which are very few anyway) but it is hardly the real deal.
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Loading HTML5 video in YouTube • settings
Organizer duly covered
Keeping a schedule is an important part of the LG GD880 Mini and it has several applications to help you.
The nice Organizer combines a calendar with monthly and weekly views and a task list. Event alarms can be set to go off up to a week earlier to give you enough time to prepare.
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Organizer • Different views • adding a task
Choosing Monday or Sunday as the first day of the week is also an option. You can also mark some days as holidays and override the Alarms set. ‘Holidays’ are not repeated annually so it’s more useful to mark your vacation with them rather than national holidays.
A To-Do application lets you keep a list of tasks sorted by their importance. If those reminders aren’t enough you can always jot down a Memo.
The Memo
The LG Mini can store up to 500 calendar events, 500 To-Do notes and 100 memos. Making a back up to external memory is just a few clicks away.
The alarm functions are typical S-Class. Apart from the default alarm you can create as many alarms as you want. This gives you access to another eye-catching interface – an analog clock where you set the hands at the desired time. There is a digital one for those who prefer it. The other available settings are alarm tone, vibration, and snoozing.
Alarms
Naturally, you also get a calculator with a new touch-optimized interface and a wide array of functions (basic and advanced mathematical functions), a Unit Converter, a World Clock and a Voice recorder. Voice recordings are not limited in duration and can be sent via MMS, email or Bluetooth.
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Calculator • Unit converter • World Clock
GPS enabled, nothing on board to use it
Despite the fact that LG GD880 Mini has a GPS chip, it comes with no navigation software pre-installed, not even Google Maps. You still can use the browser version of the GMaps and you will be able to get GPS lock there. Or you can install the Java version, but it looks bad on the hi-res display. Whatever happened to the Wisepilot for LG?!
Games & Apps
The preinstalled Picsel viewer handles Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. Zooming in and out is done by – you guessed it – pinching.
There is a useful option to fit the contents in a single column but it only seems to work for doc files. The viewer makes full use of the accelerometer and auto rotates to take advantage of the wide screen.
Office documents and PDF are supported
The preinstalled games on the LG GD880 are all motion-based – Real Motion Fishing and Bubble Breeze.
Real Motion Fishing is a very simple game only meant to show off the accelerometer functionality. With a flick of the hand you angle and hope some fish will bite. Three attempts to score some points and game over. Simple, easy and pointless.
Real Motion Fishing • Bubble Breeze
Bubble Breeze is about making floating soap bubbles by blowing into the phone’s microphone. Suddenly, Real Motion Fishing doesn’t look all that pointless, does it?
Final words
LG will tell you the GD880 Mini is the phone users wanted – not too big, too expensive or too complicated. Now, that may be just marketing but we do see a point in such a claim. The LG Mini is a cool little piece of gear. Small, simple and good looking – they got that just right.
We’re glad to see LG haven’t given up on the S-Class. It definitely is a project worth continuing – given the ever growing market for touchscreen feature phones. The Mini is a good one to have the latest S-Class and we think the benefits are mutual. One of the most compact, and feature-rich, LG phones is running a capable UI, which just got better both visually and functionally.
So, we’re talking a gadget with great build quality and premium looks. This is usually where most touchscreen feature phones would stop but the LG Mini is trying to attract more advanced users and has the feature set to do it. The complete connectivity package and brilliant high-res screen (indoors anyway), are things to find on the top shelf. So is the brand new HTML5 ready web browser with Flash support, updated UI with tight social-networking integration and full DivX/XviD video player.
However, a top-of-the-line feature phone should be prepared to deal with some heavy competition – smartphone and dumb phone alike. Let’s take a look at the LG Mini’s rivals.
For a bit of background, S-Class veterans like the LG Arena, Viewty Smart and the BL40 New Chocolate were all supposed to make a splash back in their day. And with prices gone down to more than reasonable levels, they still might look quite tempting. We do think however that all comparison is undoubtedly in favor of the LG Mini.
LG KM 900 Arena • LG GC900 Viewty Smart • LG BL40 New Chocolate
It’s not such an easy call though when it comes to some of the real competition. Within this price bracket, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz and Samsung Galaxy Spica are two smartphones to offer plenty of features and flexible operating systems. Plus, the 720p HD video recording seems to seal the deal for the Vivaz over the Mini.
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Sony Ericsson Vivaz • Samsung Galaxy Spica
Even on the feature phone front the Samsung S8000 Jet is still quite a threat. Months after its release already, the Jet gives you an excellent still camera and D1 video recording, bigger storage, a snappy 800 MHz processor, TouchWiz UI and more. The Samsung contender is some 100 euro cheaper than LG Mini.
Samsung S8000 Jet
You might be thinking already the forecast doesn’t quite look too good. We’re back where we started – not too big, not too expensive or too complicated. Yeah, they got it right but not quite. The value for money comparison is far from convincing at this point. But the LG GD880 Mini has the courage to put up a fight. More importantly, it does have the looks and the attitude. Some people are just eager to spend a lot on a cool gadget. And here’s to common-sense buyers: the Mini will be a better deal once the inevitable price drop hits.
Thu 17 Jun 2010, 5:55 pm
Hi,
Is the quote below a misprint, or is there something wrong with my new GD880? . . . or with me ????
Cannot add specific contact to the Homescreen as stated int he article : “…easily available right on the homescreen itself”
On the Home Screen, you tap “Add”. You get a menu
Add to Homescreen
Widgets
Bookmarks
Shortcuts
Nothing in those 3 menus that leads you to a screen to select a specific contact. What gives? Thanks for any help!
“Users no longer have the option to place a specific contact on the contact homescreen by tapping the small star button. The star is still there but only to indicate your favorite contacts. The adding of contacts to the favorite homescreen is now easily available right on the homescreen itself.”