LG Phone Gets the Message
The keyboard-enabled F9200 does e-mail, IM, and photos--and it's reasonably priced, too.
You don't need to tote a notebook or a PDA if you want to stay connected to e-mail and instant messaging. A cell phone with a built-in QWERTY keyboard and e-mail and IM clients will do the trick.
One good example is the new LG F9200. This easy-to-use and affordable model is the latest in a growing number of keyboard-enabled handsets on the market.
The F9200 costs $150 with a two-year Cingular Wireless service contract, making it less expensive than other recently released keyboard-enabled phones such as Samsung's $200 D307 (which I reviewed in November 2005).
I find the F9200 much easier to use than Samsung's phone, too. I particularly like its simple design and user-friendly keyboard. At 4.7 ounces, it's light and easy to carry, although it's chunkier than I'd prefer. It comes in an eggshell white finish with silver numeric keys. The 128-by-160-pixel screen is bright enough in most settings, but its slight graininess was bothersome. The hidden keyboard slides out in a horizontal orientation; when you slide out the keyboard, the display automatically changes to landscape mode. The F9200 also has a built-in 640-by-480 VGA camera.
What I like best about the LG F9200 is that you can use its keyboard for various functions, including Web browsing and changing settings. The older version of this phone, the F9100, allowed you to use its keyboard for IM only.
Like the older model, the F9200 allows you to exchange instant messages using AIM, Cingular Wireless, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger. Plus, with the LG F9200 you can send and receive e-mail using your AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail accounts.
I like the navigation flexibility that the F9200 provides, too. To navigate the on-screen menu, you can use the tiny joystick on the regular phone pad or the up/down/left/right arrow keys on the keyboard to scroll through options. To make a selection, you have three options: pressing the joystick, pressing Enter on the keyboard, or pressing the hot key below the screen. I was, however, a little disappointed that the F9200 doesn't let you use the keyboard when playing games; I had to use the number keys on the dial pad to play a game on the phone I was testing.
To send and receive e-mail, you use the F9200's included e-mail clients. If they aren't already installed, you need to download the programs from Cingular and pay a fee for each app (plus any airtime fees if you aren't subscribed to a data plan). Typing a message on the keyboard was fairly comfortable, although having to press a special key for entering numbers and symbols stumped me a few times. I did get used to it after a while, so it wasn't a huge problem. Overall, the phone worked well for sending and receiving e-mail and exchanging instant messages.
Reading e-mail can be cumbersome on the small LCD, which displays up to eight lines of text; be prepared to do a bit of scrolling to read a lengthy message. And because the phone supports the GPRS data standard, downloading a file can take several minutes. Typically, GPRS is capable of receiving between 32 and 48 kilobits per second and sending between 8 and 12 kbps.
LG's site indicates that the F9200's battery lasts for up to 4 hours of talk time and up to 12.5 days in standby mode. Of course, times will vary depending on how you use the phone.
Overall, the F9200 is a major improvement over its predecessor. It's affordable; it's simple to use; and it just plain works. If you're an e-mail or IM junkie, it's worth a look.
Grace Aquino, special to PC World
