Review: LG U880
January 27, 2006

LG were earlier a little behind the others at the 3G-market. But now they´re catching up. The new phone U880 will be a success. LG has made an even smaller 3G-phone than the thin 3G-Razr (V3x) from Motorola. And the new LG U880 is really convincing.

Slim size.
The external display.
U880 open with the operator 3's own music player.

Forget the earlier 3G-phones by LG - the noisy ones with antenna. This one is slimmer and have an internal antenna, the software is improved compare to the old versions of 3G-phones by LG.

The buttons and the design of the phone make a great impression. Thanks to the size there´ s still room for buttons big enough for a comfort use, it feels quite well to use. On each side you find volume buttons and camera button covered by a protective rubber, the entire device feels solid and good.

A big central menu button is placed ahead of the numeral buttons. It also works as a shortcut to the most common functions. In the basic position you push right for messages, left for sound profiles, up for menu and down for contacts. Easy and simple. The main menu is the same in the latest 3G phones by LG, U8380 and I8360. The menu is clear and simple with twelve icons, in rows of four. On one side of the phone is the place for the external memory card, which is very handy, though you not need to open the entire phone to change the memory card. U880 is constructed for cards like Transflash / Micro-SD. I placed my 256-megabyte card in the phone and enjoyed some good jazz tunes.

It´s definitely possible to use U880 to enjoy music. You can use the media player to mp3-music and the operator Tre has put their own new media player, 3Player in the phone, and it feels real good.

The interface with artists, albums and music reminds of other new music mobile phones and mp3-players, such as Sony Ericsson´ s Walkman-phones. But the difference is that 3Player is integrated with the music store at Tre. There you are able to “circulate” among the artists, and you both are showed those you can download from the store and those you have on your memory card. My jazz artists were shown in this menu. Different colours indicates which ones of the artists you already have on the phone and which ones You can download from the music store.

You can manage the music player folded up. Below the outer screen are buttons for play/pause, forward and rewind. Tre will Further more introduce U880 equipped with a music package including Koss-headphones, memory card reader for the computer and a hifi-wire to adapt the phone and the music to the stereo.

U880 has other excellent features. The e-mail software is easy to adjust, and you are able to fetch e-mail automatically every quarter, every half an hour or every hour. The address book have room for a large number of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, postal addresses, notes, pictures- and individual phone signals. The calendar is also approved by us.

Menus and functions works smooth and are easy to use. When you send a message you don't have to wait; the messages are placed in the outbox in a hundredth of a second.

The camera is a shortcoming though. It´ s a 1,3-megapixelcamera but the pictures barely manage to pass our test. The pictures sharpness is weak and the camera have problems to readjust to the light, both in darkness and in sunlight. For those who thinks that the quality of the mobile camera is of a great importance this is a “ aber” of course. But otherwise this is a excellent phone that will be a success, without any doubt.

By: Linus Brohult