LG Chatterbox Plus Review
LG launched the latest iteration of their Chatterbox feature phone with no small amount of fanfare.
Not only did the LG GT350 Chatterbox Plus receive a launch event worthy of a far more high end device, it also got a competition as part of a marketing campaign where winners would receive national (Protea) colours from Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA).
At first it seems curious to think that LG would go to the effort of arranging a launch event and competition with national colours on offer for such a comparatively low-end phone.
The reason for the extensive marketing campaign became clear when Robbie Johnson, business unit head of mobile at LG Electronics South Africa, revealed that their previous Chatterbox handset sold 500 000 units in South Africa.
No doubt the electronics company is hoping the new handset does as well as its ancestor.
If sales were linked to specifications and performance then the Chatterbox Plus would probably not sell very well, even though Johnson announced that LG planned to price the device just under R1,500.
While the full QWERTY hardware keyboard of the LG GT350 is decent, the device is let down by sluggish touch response, lack of 3G support and lack of support for any social network but Facebook. The appearence of a few bugs doesn’t help its case either.
The Facebook application has its own “Social Network” menu option, suggesting that somewhere in the phone’s development cycle it was meant to have more than one social networking app. Maybe there were once plans to add support for services such as Twitter at a later stage, but even some months after the launch of the device such an update or add-on hasn’t been released.
According to the specification sheet, the phone does support Java (MIDP 2.1), but one would expect that a device aimed at young, social users would include at least a client for Twitter.
The text messaging interface also seems to contain a minor bug. Most users probably wouldn’t come across it often, but it’s incredibly frustrating when it does happen.
When typing a text message for sending via SMS you might find that the view of your text editor bounces back up to the top instead of letting you see what you’re typing at the end of the message. This happens should you need to edit an earlier part of the message and scroll back up to do so.
At the relatively low recommended retail price announced by LG one doesn’t expect the Chatterbox Plus to perform like a high-end smartphone, but a sluggish user interface frustrates smartphone and feature phone users alike.
The LG GT350 Chatterbox Plus also lacks too many features to really cut it as a messaging device aimed at social network users. Those who use Facebook and nothing else might be satisfied with the applications on offer, but without 3G, Facebook is an awful chore to use.
LG Chatterbox Plus Review << Comments and views
Loading ...