LG Crystal Review

Phone rating:

In a nutshell: The Crystal continues LG's tradition of innovative design, with the world's first transparent keypad! The slide-down keypad is touch-sensitive and completely transparent, and the main display is touch-sensitive too. The display is fantastically high in resolution with 800x480 pixels and 16M colours. The Crystal also features an 8 megapixel camera, MP3 player, FM radio, 1.5GB memory plus a memory card slot, HSDPA and WiFi. It's very expensive though!
Best buy: *Free* with half-price line rental from Mobiles.co.uk.

Review: July 2009.

LG are well known for innovation in their designs, and the Crystal is another unique design concept. It's the first mobile with a transparent keypad. Like the Samsung Tocco Ultra, the LG GD900 combines a touchscreen user interface with a slide-down numeric keypad. The difference here is that the keypad is touch-sensitive too and is completely transparent! There are no individual keys, just a flat transparent surface with numbers etched on it. You just need to press the right part of the surface to enter numbers. The main display is a large touch-sensitive screen, with a phenomenally high resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and 16 million colours. It's larger than the Tocco Ultra screen too, at 3 inches diagonal. The main display uses LG's S-Class user interface with its hallmark rotating cube, as featured on phones like the LG Arena and Viewty Smart. There are some extra features such as gesture shortcut (draw a character on the touchscreen to access your music, inbox, etc - gimmicky!) and multi-finger touch (to control zooming, etc.) We like the user interface and we absolutely love the hi-res screen. Despite the novelty factor it works well and is perfectly usable.