LG U8130, U8138 and U8150

Discontinued
11th November 2004

The LG U8130 and U8138 are two handsets made by LG for the Hutchison 3 network worldwide. Of these, the U8130 is becoming available now and the U8138 very soon. Both handsets build on the success of the LG U8110 and later U8120, which were both relatively compact 3G units and proved to be big sellers for 3.

The LG U8130 (pictured right) is essentially a straight upgrade to the U8120. Almost identical in most respects, the main improvement area here is with call reliability. LG have done a lot of work to ensure that the U8130 can roam between a 3G and 2.5G coverage area without dropping out in mid call. Other features are a 176x220 pixel main display in 65,000 colours, a 96x64 pixel monochrome external display with 7 different backlight colours, a rotating VGA resolution camera (640x480 pixels for stills, 176x144 for video), 32Mb of internal memory (28Mb available to users), plus support for playing back a wide variety of video and audio formats. There's no Bluetooth on the U8130 though, but there is an infra-red and USB port. The U8130 also comes with a email client, Java and WAP 2.0 XHTML web browser.

The U8130 measures 96x50x23mm and weighs 126 grams, so it's still reasonably compact and lightweight for a 3G phone. When outside of a 3G area, the U8130 will roam to GSM 900/1800 and it supports GPRS, which means that the U8130 should still provide basic functionality in most places.

The LG U8138 (pictured left) is a more significant upgrade to the LG U8130 with a large 80x110 pixel colour display on the outside, which is one of the largest external colour displays on any clamshell, but like the U8130 it is exclusive to the Hutchison 3 network.

The U8138 is very similar to the LG U8150, which forms part of Orange's initial 3G lineup. The differences between the U8150 and U8138 appear to be primarily cosmetic (the casing is slightly different and the U8150 is silver), however the U8138 will still suffer from 3's "walled garden" approach to internet access.

We understand that both the LG U8138 and U8150 have a 262,000 colour internal display too, however they still lack Bluetooth or removable memory. Both the U8138 measure 99x50x24mm and weigh 126 grams with 2 hours talktime.

The U8138 should be available on 3 before the end of 2004. The U8150 will be released probably very early in 2005.

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