LG Watch Phone (GD910)

By Kelvin Low, CNET Asia
Nov 11, 2009

Excuse me, my watch is ringing. As far as phones go, the watch form factor has to be one of the weirdest that we've come across. Highly featured by comics and TV cartoon series such as Dick Tracy and Power Rangers, these shows made the concept of wearing a communication device cool. Still, that hasn't stopped LG and Samsung from trading blows with the GD910 and S9110 watch phones, respectively. So, will this quirky form factor take off, or will it be consigned to the darkest depths of phone history?

Design

Forget everything you expect from the GD910 at first sight. The LG watch phone will pass off as a watch at first glance. But a peek at the right side of the watch gives its identity away: Here reside the Send, End and Back buttons.

The front of the watch is covered with glass and a stainless steel border. The rear is fully decked out in "solid stainless steel", according to LG. This is also where you find the round SIM cover, which will require the included special tool to remove. The charging pins as well as the mic are located on the back as well, though we find that to be the oddest side of the phone for a mic to reside on.

The leather strap is slightly stiff but easy enough to adjust to fit our wrist, although it took some trial and error with the clasp mechanism to get the fit right. The build quality overall is very solid.

The rest of the phone's body is decked out in matte-black plastic which, as we found out, was good for shrugging off the daily scruffs and bumps without scratching. The amount of stainless steel present weighs down the LG to 92g, which is a tad heavy for a watch but still lighter than most smartphones in the market today. With the main body of the watch measuring 49 x 39 x 13.8mm, it is not exactly svelte, but nor is it too big.

Features

The biggest feature of the G910 would be its 1.43-inch capacitive touchscreen. From the main screen itself, you can switch between eight clock displays by flicking your finger up or down. Flicking left or right will call up four different screens-- the status display, main menu, calendar and quick dial.

If you're used to smartphones with built-in internet browsers and more-than-1-megapixel cameras, don't hold your breath. The GD910 doesn't have any of those features. Still, it packs a built-in 80MB memory, Bluetooth connectivity, MP3 playback, voice commands and a VGA camera.

Scrolling on the menus is fluid, although we noticed occasional jerkiness. Don't expect multitouch capabilities or an onscreen keyboard. That said the watch phone relies heavily on the T9 predictive text input on the onscreen keypad (we have a video of it here). Punching the correct buttons on the panel would be a challenge for those with large digits, and typing out a SMS can prove to be quite frustrating. Smart dialing is available, too, so you can get to your most-dialed contacts quickly to make a call. There's also a history log which shows the calls you've received or sent.

The MP3 player is very basic and the camera is just limited to VGA resolutions and can take only stills. The phonebook is equally barren, offering simple contact grouping over the standard set of features. The organizer, although a good feature to have on a phone, is quite a hassle to update given the tiny size of the device and onscreen keyboard. A nice accessory included to take advantage of the Bluetooth capabilities of this watch phone is the LG HBM-900 headset. The Bluetooth headset comes with two ear loops and four differently-sized eargels. However, this phone is compatible only with the HSP profile and not A2DP stereo.

The phone's 105mAh battery is built-in, and to charge it, you will have to clamp the phone in the included cradle which then plugs into the included AC charger. The user has the option of using the included dual charging cable which will charge the phone and the headset simultaneously. You can also hook the phone up with the included USB cable to enable PC connectivity, where the LG PC Suite software will enable syncing of contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists and memo data. With the USB cable, however, dual charging the phone and headset is not possible. Charging time was kept to under 2 hours on average, with the USB method taking 15-20 minutes more than on AC power.

Tags: Camera, headset, cable, built-In, LG Electronics Inc.

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