Fridae

The LG GW620 and the Motorola Dext (known as the Cliq in the US) have a few things in common. The GW620 was released in September last year shortly after the announcement of the Dext. Both come with a landscape slideout QWERTY keyboard and run on Android 1.5 (more on this in the review). Most importantly, the GW620 and Dext are the companies' first Android smartphones.

Design

Don't judge us, but the gunmetal blue keyboard with horizontal grain design running on the sides was the only design style that caught our eyes on the GW620. The matte buttons on the five-row keyboard have a good size, smooth texture, excellent tactility and are one of the best implementations in a QWERTY that we've come across. The color contrast on the handset is refreshing and doesn't look tacky.

The sliding mechanism is very smooth and, once past the halfway mark, the built-in spring takes over. The screen snaps into the final position rather suddenly, but the entire sliding action is very fluid, if not a little loose.

Close, the GW620 loses part of its charm. The 3-inch touchscreen is flanked by a brushed metal section above and glossy black chin below. Around the back, the soft touch plastic completes the juxtaposition of materials used for the chassis. The main Home and Back controls are touch-sensitive, though we keep thinking that these are physical keys. Ironically, the Enter button, which can be pressed, was rarely used.

The top/bottom edges of the phone slope gently from the front to the back when the phone is facing the user. This results in a rather streamlined profile if you are looking at it from the side. LG has kept the GW620 relatively slim, so it doesn't feel bulky in the hands even with a slideout keyboard underneath the display. The build quality and overall finish are also sound.

Features

The GW620 runs on Android 1.5 with a half-baked LG software. When you switch to the LG interface, the default menu tray is replaced with a row of four icons. Instead of dragging the tab upward on the screen like you would on the standard Android platform, you tap on the dice icon on the right to get to the main menu. This is sorted into Communication, Multimedia, Utilities, Google and Downloads, relatively similar to the layout of the S-Class interface. You can drag-and-drop to rearrange the icons or add them to the home screens. It's functional, but there's nothing else to look forward to. The interface falls flat in the face of Motorola's Motoblur and HTC's Sense.