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We’ve been lured in by some of the pink products appearing on the market recently, but as we said in our last review they are always missing a couple of things. Finally our prayers have been answered and the LG Pink Shine comes with a mirror as standard!
Despite all the pink phones being launched on the market to draw in the female crowd, the Shine stands out for quality, style and those finishing touches that come from LG’s attention to detail. It feels sturdy and not like a toy phone that could break at any moment. If it fell out of your bag you wouldn’t worry it’s going to shatter, as you might with some comparable phones. And with its mirrored screen that disappears when you open the phone to show off the colour display, you might be ‘accidentally’ dropping it out of your bag in certain company.
Calls are clear when you’re chatting away – the Shine is a good length and is set out so it’s really easy to talk and hear your friends. The hang up button is also set away from your face so it won’t be switched off by chunky earrings. In fact, the only thing missing is a little cloth to wipe your makeup off after you’ve finished a call (or you could just wear less foundation :>).
Scrolling with the navigation wheel works well as it’s not as quick as something like the iPod scroll wheel, which sees you missing your stop and popping back a couple of menu items. Usability for those everyday tasks is one of the phone’s biggest plus points. It’s extremely easy to dial, and everything is where you’d think it should be when it comes to texting.
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The Pink Shine also adds some great new backgrounds that are in-keeping with the pink theme, such as an Edwardian dressing room (including shoes). On top of that there are cute “Flashes”, which give you animated screen backgrounds.
The camera is extremely good on the highest settings (pics start at 320 x 240 and go all the way up to 1,600 x 1,200), producing quality pictures in sunny environments. If the sun has ducked behind some clouds there’s an optional flash, which could easily double as a torch. The autofocus is handy but the shutter is slow.
Video isn’t quite so impressive. Resolutions only range from 128 x 96 to 176 x 144 and there’s an annoying delay while you scroll across your subject until everything comes into focus. There’s only 50MB of built-in memory to store images or videos on, but the expandable microSD slot opens that up to 2GB.
This particular version of the Shine is locked to Orange and available exclusively on that network. While that shouldn’t be a problem we had a tough time getting it registered. Eventually we went for assistance in an Orange shop, where the staff didn’t know what to do as the phone has only just been released – despite the fact it was on their shelves.
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Another annoyance was that LG’s software doesn’t come set up to sync your contacts with Microsoft Outlook – a crime when Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc all offer this with their sync programs.
Overall, though, the LG Pink Shine triumphs with its usability and the fact that it looks like a top-of-the-range item. Sit it next to an iPod and see what we mean – it looks like an item of equal quality, rather than making it look like you spent all your wages on the music player and none on your phone. Speaking of which, it comes free on all 12 and 18 month Orange contracts over £30 or £99.99 on Pay As You Go.
And thanks LG for sorting out the mirror, all we need now is the lippy.
Rating: 8.5/10
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