Otherwise known as the "projector phone" since LG and ATT sell a clip-on pico projector for the eXpo for presentations on the go, the LG eXpo is the first 1GHz Windows Mobile smartphone offered by a US carrier. Yes, the lovely HTC HD2 runs on the same 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, but it's not yet offered by a US carrier.
The eXpo has a large and lovable slide-out QWERTY keyboard that rivals the HTC Tilt 2's excellent keyboard. It has a 3.2" resistive touch screen running at 480 x 800 with an accelerometer and proximity sensor. That resolution is a bit high for the screen size and you'll be wanting to carry the stylus with you.
Other features are the usual smartphone goodness: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and a pretty good 5MP camera. The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional and has LG's Class UI which you can disable if you wish. It sells for $199 with a 2 year contract. We'd still opt for the Tilt2 because the eXpo is just too vanilla Windows Mobile and LG's Class UI can't hold a candle to HTC's TouchFLO 3D. But watch the video and decide for yourself.
Here's our 8 minute video review. Our full written review will follow in the coming days. Feel free to post questions.
Given a number of early complains re: battery life, I'm curious what this review will find. I just can't believe how the HD2 could easily last a day while the expo just dies. Is 3G that bad? I don't find a huge difference on my Fuze.
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LisaG
Head Honcho
Reged: 07/11/02
Posts: 6664
Loc: Texas
3G does have a significant effect on battery life. I suspect the HD2's battery life would plummet if I could run it on 3G. The 1GHz Snapdragon is also much more power hungry than the 528MHz CPU usually used in WinMo devices like your Fuze. I really do wonder why LG went with the 1GHz CPU since there's no software on board that really makes use of it.
We're still running tests, but so far the eXpo's battery life isn't looking good.
I've been using the eXpo for about a week now and I must say that I really like it quite a bit. I have pretty ridiculous standards when it comes to mobile phones and many fail to live up to my expectations, but the eXpo definitely is one of the best WM phones I have ever used. It's not without it's faults, but so far the eXperience has been great! The fingerprint reader is FANTASTIC and is a big time saver, especially if you are using the phone on a corporate account with activesync that enforces a PIN policy.
Some bad qualities of the phone: *Settings are spread all over the place. For example, the fingerprint recognition settings must be accessed thru the LG menu settings for PHONE and cannot be accessed thru regular WM settings menus. *Email & SMS alerts are noticeably missing from the standard WM Sounds & Notification control panel. I have heard you can access these settings thru another LG Menu but I enabled them thru some creative registry edits. *Screen sensitivity seemed a little weak to me, however, this might be subjective as I am coming from a FUZE with a custom ROM. *The phone wakes up with SMS alerts...the phone should altert/vibe but not wake up. *No 3.5mm headphone jack...really?!?! *The LG UI sucks pretty bad and I hear it is a bit of a drain on the battery. I am using the WM 6.5 home screen and it's great!
Other Concerns: *The earpiece seems to have a slight rattle at higher volumes but it may just be due to the fact that this phone can get LOUD! I never talk much about 50% volume. *Battery life does seem to be a bit weak. The eXpo uses a 1500mAh Lithim POLYMER batter which is really nice as the LiPo batts are much lighter than typical Lion batteries. I am more of an email/text user and probably only speak 30 minutes a day. With Exchange Activesync set to immediately deliver emails, I tend to be around 40% remaining in the late evening when the phone goes on the charges so there is more than enough battery to get me thru a day...but this might not be the case for heavy talkers.
Wrapping things up...there are some features that make this phone a winner in my book: *Fingerprint reader - this is an AWESOME feature that allows you to do away with entering your pin multiple times a day. Using it as a d-pad is not that great but as a fingerprint reader it is stellar! *1GHz Snapdragon CPU make the phone EXTREMELY snappy. Actions that create considerable lag on older ARM 528MHz phones are very quick on the eXpo. Some examples would be theme switching. On my Fuze, switching themes would cause it to hourglass for as much as 5-7 seconds. With the eXpo, theme switching is nearly instant. Also, web browsing (Using Opera 10 beta ;-)) is REALLY fast on WiFi. You can really see that the CPU is not so much of a bottleneck. Even 3G browsing seems snappier, as the phone finally has the horsepower to quickly render media rich web pages. *The 5MP camera is probably the best I have ever seen on any phone. Finally a decent camera on a cell phone! *GPS works great - initial locks from a cold boot are very quick in my case, usually withing a minute or so. *The build quality is fantastic...the keyboard feels great and the slider mechanism really feels solid. *The 480x800 screen looks GREAT and although it's a bit smaller than the Tilt2, the phone feels more compact and slim in hand than the tilt2. It's a very pocket-friendly phone.
All in all, it is by far the best WM phone I have ever used. I've put several apps on the phone including some goodies from XDA-devs and I am very pleased with the experience.
I don't remember the exact percentage but I seem to think on the Fuze it was around 60% or so by the end of the night...
I do remember that I couldn't go two full days on the fuze...If I didn't charge it every night, it would be dead before the next evening. I think it's the Exchange Activesync option that delivers messages to the phone on arrival...that keeps sending a heartbeat to the exchange frontend server every so often which burns the 3G data a bit...
Hey, hey Carson-- how are ya? So do you use LG's Class UI and launcher software or do you just stick with stock Windows Mobile? What do you think of the included lipstick style stylus?
I tried using S-Class for a while, as it looked pretty cool, but the main screen seemed like a waste of space. It would be nice if you could add some permanent widgets in the main screen. In the end, I found it a bit more work to get around than the default titanium home screen. If I remember, AT&T actually ships it with the WM6.5 default home screen active.
I was a bit disappointed that the stylus is not internal....I decided to just use my fingernails...which works most of the time although it is not as precise as using a stylus.
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