Digital Trends

 

As a thin black clamshell, this quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE world phone is sure to remind folks of the Motorola RAZR; at 3.8 by 1.95 by 0.76 inches, the CU500 is roughly the same size and at 3.7 ounces, just .21 ounces heavier. What's radically different about the CU500 from the RAZR are the front music transport controls and external access to the camera/video recorder functions, with the external 1.2-inch screen serving as a viewfinder. Up top is the camera, mounted in a swivel barrel that rotates 180 degrees. The earpiece is actually a stereo speaker array.

 

Highlighting the cleanly laid-out, well-spaced keypad and navigation array inside the clamshell is a unique and handy soft-key “My Menu” button, oddly labeled "Options" on-screen. Listed in this “My Menu” menu are direct access to Bluetooth, calendar, instant messaging, Cingular Video, and alarm clock, as well as seven more unassigned slots. There are also dedicated music and camera keys.

 

But LG giveth and LG taketh away. Instead of the usual side slot, the microSD flash memory card slot is located underneath the battery. This location is especially awkward since the only way to get music into the phone is to insert the card in its adapter into a PC and drag-and-drop tracks from your own collection. A USB cable is available only as a $25 option, and at press time, Cingular hadn't yet opened its online music store. Bluetooth is too slow to be a viable mass music transfer option. All this means that you have to power down the phone every time you want to get the card to load it up.

 

Cingular offers a wide variety of subscription video options including Cingular Video and MobiTV and MobiRadio. There are also a couple of games included, such as the addictive Tetris, along with four instant messaging options (AOL, Yahoo!, ICQ, and MSN), and the by-now expected group of convenience applications—alarm clock, calendar, notepad, calculator, tip calculator, world clock, to-do task listing, and a stop watch, along with three unique apps: a unit converter (imperial-to-metric), a date finder (which calculates the date in X-number of days from a specific date), and a D-Day counter (the functionality of which escaped us).

 

Image Courtesy of LG Electronics