LG KE970 Shine review

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The LG Shine marked the final transition for LG from uninspiring, snap-shut clamshell handsets to sexy stylish mobile fashion icons, a reformation that began with the exciting Chocolate and continued with the classy touchscreen Prada phone. The Shine once again changed the mobile landscape and proved that LG have added a serious dose of fashion to their phone range.

The Shine is housed in an entirely metal shell, giving the impression of a sturdy, solidly built handset, which, though heavy, feels comfortable rather than cumbersome. It is not a large handset at just 99 mm tall and even though it is not the thinnest phone on the market, its sleek lines give it a slimline feel.

The name Shine presumably comes from the outer surface of the screen, which reverts to a mirror when the display is off. Whether this is a feature that will appeal to men and women alike is debatable, but the Shine is certainly a unisex handset, slim and sexy, yet solid and packed with gadgets.

The Shine uses a scroll bar for navigation, an unusual feature on phones these days, and this can take a bit of getting used to if you haven't used one before. On first try it appears to be a little clumsy and unresponsive but we got used to it after using it for a while. The little buttons to the right and left of the scroll bar are also navigational buttons; so don't ignore these when using the phone for the first time!

The display is one of the Shine's strong points, well laid out, easily navigable with a clear display even in strong light conditions. Soft keys call up the main menu and the contacts book from the start screen, and the menu can be ordered either as a 3x3 icon grid or in list view. All the subsequent menus are in list view. A nice little feature that more phones should employ is the use of numbers next to each of the menu headings as shortcuts, which makes the Shine a very simple phone to navigate. Another quirky little feature (that we're not sure how excited we should be about!) is the option to change the number input display when making a phone call into a range of different, vaguely comic fonts!

The contacts book is very user friendly and allows you to assign pictures to each individual contact, though we did find that this cramped the information for the contacts a little. You can also assign a different ringtone to different contacts and place your entries into different groups according to their relation to you!

The messaging service is an improvement on the old Chocolate interface and it automatically saves a draft of each message should you suddenly exit the message screen. It also offers you a list of your most recent message recipients when you come to send a message, one of the features we particularly liked on the Sony Ericsson K810i.

The LG Shine is a fairly well equipped phone, with a decent MP3 player that continues the work when you navigate away from the music menu, and a good camera with auto-focus and the Schneider-Kreuznach branding also seen on the Prada phone by LG. There are admittedly phones out there that feature stronger cameras and cleverer MP3 players, but the Shine puts on a good showing, and adds a good deal of style into the bargain!

LG KE970 Shine specs and features

• Tri-band
• 2 Megapixel Camera
• MP3 player
• 50MB internal memory
• GPRS
• Bluetooth™
• Mirror effect screen, full metal body
• WAP Technology
• Dimensions: 98 x 51 x 14 mm
• Weight: 115 grams
• Standby Time: Up to 280hrs
• Talk Time: Up to 3hrs