LG S5200
Discontinued 5th December 2005 Discuss
this handset in our forum
At first glance, the LG S5200 looks
like a copy of the popular Samsung
D500, but it isn't.. it's much too poor a handset
to be considered a copy.
These are harsh words, and we don't
want to say that there's anything physically wrong or
defective about the S5200, but the cosmetic similarity
is remarkable, and must surely have been spotted before
the S5200 was released.
One
reason this is so shocking is that LG have stated that
in 2006 they want to be seen as a leader, rather than
a follower, when it comes to mobile phone design. Recently
we looked at the LG
U8550 which shows that LG can think outside
of the box, the compact and appealing U880
and also there's the upcoming LG
P7200 which shows that LG can make high-spec
and visually attractive phones (we will cover the F7200
shortly). So given that LG have shown an intention to
be innovative, it's a bit of a shock to see something
that is so blatantly similar to one of their rival's
handsets, and an old one at that. In fact, we understand
that the LG S5200 was almost cancelled because it looked
too much like the D500.
Now, we like the Samsung D500 a lot,
but you can tell just by looking at the specifications
that this is an inferior model. For starters, the LG
S5200 only has a 128x160 pixel display (the Samsung
has 176x220 pixels) which is frankly pathetic when you
consider that it has a 1.3 megapixel camera. The camera
itself is a standard affair, hidden behind the sliding
mechanism in the same way as the D500. Internal memory
is just 68Mb compared to the Samsung's 96 Mb. And the
S5200's talktime is a very poor 3 hours, compared to
up to 6 hours for the Samsung.
It's
a bit smaller and lighter than the Samsung, the LG S5200
measures 93x46x21mm and weighs 95 grams (the Samsung
D500 is 94x46x24mm and 99 grams), but given the poor
battery life and screen we feel that it should be much
lighter. There's an MP3 player, but the internal memory
will struggle to squeeze even a single album on and
there's no way of expanding it.
This is a poor handset in terms of specification
and lacks innovation when it comes to design. We can
only hope that this handset is cheap, because we can
only see this competing with budget handsets given its
limitations, although we do not know what the price
of the S5200 will be.
We know that LG can do better than this,
but this is basically just a poor copy of year old handset
from a rival. In our view, it would have been better
if the S5200 was cancelled and had never been brought
to market.
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LG
S5200 at a glance
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Available:
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Q4
2005
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Network:
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GSM
900/1800/1900
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Data:
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GPRS
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Screen:
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128x160
pixels, 256k colours
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Camera:
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1.3
megapixels
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Size:
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Medium
slider 93x46x21mm / 95
grams
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Bluetooth:
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Yes
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Infra-red:
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No
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Polyphonic:
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Yes
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Java:
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Yes
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Battery
life:
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3 hours talk / 8 days standby
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