LG U8550
Discontinued 26th November 2005
The LG U8550 is an unusual 3G phone,
currently available on the 3 network in Italy. What
sets the U8550 apart from other phones is the screen
- it's a 2.2" 220x220 pixel TFT panel panel
in 65,000 colours. The square format at the U8550's
screen is designed to be easier to use with video clips
and streaming multimedia, where the "tall"
orientation of most phones causes a problem.
As
a result of the wide screen, the U8550 is itself quite
a wide handset at 55mm across. Compare this with 50mm
for a standard LG 3G phone, 53mm for the Motorola
RAZR V3 and just 44mm for the Nokia
6230i and you can see that this is a very wide
handset indeed.
It's a multimedia handset, and it comes
with 20Mb of internal memory plus a TransFlash/microSD
slot. The U8550 plays back a variety of multimedia formats
including MP3, AAC, MPEG4, WMV and H263. There are external
media controls, so the U8550's multimedia functions
can be controlled without opening the handset up, and
there's a large 128x160 pixel external display too. The
LG U8550 also comes with a multimedia stand (called
the "SoundSystem" pictured below) that has
a large pair of external speakers so that it can be
used as a mini hi-fi system or video player. Confusingly,
there's a "TV" button on the inside of the
phone, but as far as we can tell this is just to connect
you to streaming multimedia content via 3G - the U8550
doesn't have a terrestrial TV receiver.
The
main camera is a 1.3 megapixel unit, with a secondary
camera for video calling. As with most LG 3G phones
now, the U8550 has Bluetooth, and XHTML web browser,
email client, Java support.
Surprisingly the large screen doesn't
add much to the U8550's weight - at 135 grams this phone
weighs about the same as other LG 3G phones. Overall
size is 90x55x25mm, which is a little on the large side.
Battery life is not known at the time of going to press.
This is certainly an interesting handset,
although the colour schemes leave a little to be desired.
And although this is a very wide phone, the U8550 makes
better use of its width than the RAZR because of the
unusual display. It's a bit of a shame that the LG U8550
doesn't come with a higher resolution display (e.g.
320x320 pixels), but it's a novel approach which perhaps
other manufacturers will follow.
The LG U8550 is currently only available
from 3 Italy. As yet we do not know of any plans to
bring the U8550 to other parts of the Hutchison 3 network.
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LG
U8550 at a glance
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Available:
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Now
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Network:
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UMTS
(3G) + GSM 900/1800/1900
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Data:
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UMTS
(3G) + GPRS
|
Screen:
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220x220
pixels, 65k colours (main) 128x160
pixels, 65k colours (sub)
|
Camera:
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1.3
megapixels (main) 176x144
pixels (sub)
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Size:
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Wide clamshell 90x55x25mm
/ 135 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Infra-red:
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No
|
Polyphonic:
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Yes
|
Java:
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Yes
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Battery
life:
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Not
specified
|
|
|