LG KE970-Shine Cell Phone
 LG's KE970 "Shine" is one of the most gorgeous mobile phones - nay, one of the most gorgeous handheld objects - I've ever come across. I drooled over it at CES in Vegas this past January, and again at CTIA in Orlando in March. I tend to favor a combination of features and style in my gadgets, but from the moment I first saw Shine's TFT display emerge from beneath it's mirrored front panel, I was in love. It almost didn't matter what Shine had under the hood - I wanted to be near its beauty.
Thanks to Corey from MobilePlanet www.mobileplanet.com , I got to be up close and personal with Shine for a few weeks. I got the unlocked GSM KE970 version (LG recently introduced a 3G-enabled version, the KU970), which wasn't meant for North American soil but works just fine with a T-Mobile or Cingular SIM card, provided you're not in a 850 MHz only service area.
From its mirrored front to brushed silver rear and side panels, and from its luxurious metal construction to solid sliding mechanism, Shine screams "quality." But does it perform as well as it looks, or is Shine's beauty only skin-deep? As with all things so powerfully alluring, the answer is a combination of good and bad.
Honestly, Shine might be the best looking cell phone I've ever seen, and it feels as good to hold as it does to gaze upon. The all-metal housing is finished in brushed silver with mirror-finish accents and, of course, a mirrored front panel. You've really got to see the phone's front panel to truly appreciate it - you can literally check your smile, fix your makeup, or just stare at yourself in it until you activate the phone. The 2.2" TFT LCD display then appears like magic from beneath the mirrored lens. The effect is super cool.
Measuring 99.8 x 50.6 x 13.8 mm, Shine is neither small nor large as far as current handsets go. Combined with its 119g of weight and luxurious build, Shine's size gives it the feel of a luxury object. It's small and thin enough to tuck away neatly inside a pocket or purse, but has the pleasant heft of quality construction. The sliding mechanism adds to this feel, with a smooth movement and satisfying "click" in both directions. Oddly, however, I felt a discernible creak when pressing either softkeys with the phone in the "open" position. The top half of the slider seemed to rock back and forth a bit in its slider track. Unfortunate to say, but this kind of thing detracts from a handset so clearly focused on look and feel.
A slider phone, Shine shows relatively few buttons when closed. Beneath the display on the front panel resides a scroll wheel flanked by two cylinder-shaped buttons, and two subtly marked softkeys beyond those. Sliding the phone open reveals a laser-etched dialing keypad on the bottom portion of the handset: the standard 12 dialing buttons plus an additional row of call, clear, and cancel keys. These buttons actually account for most of Shine's shortcomings.
The three-way (up/down/select) scrollwheel is particularly difficult to manage, as it tends to be a bit slow to respond at first and then hyper-sensitive when you've finished scrolling and push it to make a selection. I repeatedly wound up "choosing" the wrong menu item due to the scrollwheel jumping an extra spot up or down as I pushed down on it. At first I thought maybe I'd gotten a defective handset, but reading other reviews and asking around confirmed that Shine has a wonky wheel, plain and simple. The adjacent buttons are also a bit tricky to deal with, due to their being both small and somewhat crammed in between the scrollwheel and raised metal ridges that seem to have been meant to add to the design aesthetic and/or tactile feedback of the navigation array. While the phone isn't impossible to work, the controls do detract quite a bit from the overall experience of using it. Shine is a beautiful device with quite an elegant user interface, but it can be a pain the neck to actually use.
Flipping the handset over, Shine looks more like a high-style digital camera than a phone. The back panel is finished in sleek brushed metal with the camera sensor, self-portrait mirror, and flash assist light housed in a mirror-finished inset tucked into the upper right corner (when the phone is held the long way). Subtle logos and rounded corners complete the chic camera effect, and almost the entirety of the rear panel detaches for access to the battery, memory card and SIM card slots. The entire left panel of the handset is blank save for a tether loop slot in the upper corner. Along the right side we find four buttons - camera, mp3, and volume up/down - in addition to a rubber capped charger/headphone accessory port. While the decision to mount so many controls on one side of the phone while leaving the other side blank is a bit odd, I didn't find that it made Shine any easier (or harder) to use than handsets that split the buttons between both side panels.
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Like I always say, different strokes for different folks. BlackBerry Bold 9700 doesn't tickle your fancy? iPhone too cliche for you? AT&T has you covered with two new device launches in the next few weeks.
Sporting a 320x240 display, 512 MHz processor, 256 MB of memory, EDGE connectivity, an optical trackpad, Wi-Fi (simultaneous voice and data while using Wi-Fi - I like it), and a 2-megapixel camera, the BlackBerry Curve... If it was for sale it'd cost two grand. But it's not for sale. Well, maybe. It's the gold-plated Iron Man phone from LG - think Shine in red with extra bling.
LG has announced that they'll turn up their efforts to market high end phones in emerging markets this year, and that they're all but giving up on the lower end of the handset marketplace. Korea Times reported the story along with the news that the electronics giant launched the Venus-like KF600 handset in Brazil and China.
``We cannot compete with such industry leaders as Nokia and Samsung Electronics with low-priced phones. We have... Starting today find the LG Shine available with a new AT&T calling plan for only $69.99 from online authorized dealer Let's Talk. The LG Shine CU720 slider style cell phone is 3G enabled with a large QVGA display. Other great features include a 2 megapixel camera phone, expandable memory card slot, music player, video recorder, and voice dialing.
So take advantage today of the great special offer from Let's Talk for the LG... LG's KE970 "Shine" is one of the most gorgeous mobile phones - nay, one of the most gorgeous handheld objects - I've ever come across. I drooled over it at CES in Vegas this past January, and again at CTIA in Orlando in March. I tend to favor a combination of features and style in my gadgets, but from the moment I first saw Shine's TFT display emerge from beneath it's mirrored front panel, I was in love. It almost didn't matter what Shine... Shine boasts a solid feature set, and being an unlocked/unbranded handset, it ships without any "carrier deck" items (Cingular Music, Sprint TV, Verizon VCast, etc.). This is either a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective. From my point of view, it makes for a clean look and feel without a bunch of unwanted carrier logos. Most WAP-based carrier services can still be accessed by setting up browser bookmarks. ... No user reviews available yet...No reviews have been submitted for the LG KE970-Shine. Be the first to share your opinion and experience with this product or service and influence others and their buying decisions. Hi, I have an LG ke970 model telephone, and I am trying to dial a number and it is telling me that hte network in unavailable? No one seem to know what to do to correct the problem. Buying choicesWith new service  This item is not being sold with a service plan by any online merchant. With pre-paid service This item is not being sold with a pre-paid service service plan by any online merchant. Purchase phone only Accessories Purchase compatible accessories for this phone Ringtones & MediaShop for compatible mobile content for this phone
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Now i bay one lg ke970 external memory when i issue bad format error how can the is propalam cleear, when memory status pressing please insert external memory like that coming so sendig to teetall my emill
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anverdeen