LG Crystal GD-900 Quickie

Summary: Style and substance merge in a slick fashion phone.

Best feature: Looks amazing.

Worst feature: Pictures from camera less than amazing.

The appeal of the LG Crystal GD900 is unmistakable, the phone trades on having an arresting transparent design and top-end specifications. Is LG’s latest fashion phone as transparent as its looks, or is there more than meets the eye?

Design

Well, the strength of the LG Crystal lies in the form factor, there is no doubt about it. Sporting the world’s first transparent design in a multi-functional touch keypad, LG’s handset pulls away from past looks to offer a phone chock full of personality, attitude and fun.

Looking at the Crystal straight out of the box, it provides all of the hallmarks of a 21^st century phone – a huge and imposing touchscreen (in this case, 3 inches of it), faux metallic accenting, and a distinct lack of buttons.

The ‘call answer’, ‘call end’ and ‘S-Class’ button nestled in the middle make up all of the keys on the front of the Crystal, all of which are touch sensitive as opposed to physical, allowing the front of the device to remain completely flush, with only a burnished metal finish drawing attention to their presence at all.

The power button doubles as a lock on the top of the phone, and a very discreet volume rocker and camera key on the right complete the paucity of controls, making for a very sleek and sexy device. The only other things of note on the front are the metallic earpiece, the border around the display and the pinhole  

The keypad’s seamless integration into the design of the Crystal is the handset’s crowning glory, a gorgeous clear multi-touch slider on the rear, entirely transparent on the lower half and slowly gradating to black at the top.

A single piece of plastic as opposed to metal, the numerical touch-sensitive layout is revealed, and when slid shut cheekily reveals the Korean firm’s logo on a battery visible through the casing. Opening the device causes the 12 etched keys and the periphery to glow brightly, and confirms the Crystal’s stylish status. After dark, this is certianly a phone to make a statement.

Opening the Crystal also unveils the 8 megapixel autofocus lens and LED flash on the back of the device, and a handy external microSD slot beneath it with space for up to 16GB.

Cue plenty of incredulous glances from friends and attempts to look ‘through’ the phone, and see if it really is transparent!  Whilst it passes the style test with flying colours, the build quality is the first hurdle for it to stumble as getting a hold of the device proves a slight disappointment.

Whilst looking like a phone hewn from the most precious of materials by vestal virgins, it feels distinctly…normal in terms of build quality. The Crystal touchpad feels on the plasticky side as opposed to the strengthened glass the style would suggest, and despite weighing 127g, it lacks the heft of materials in an expensive fashion phone.

The issue of scratching or getting fingerprints on a touch phone goes from one of rubbing the screen every five minutes to constantly buffing the entire device in the case of the Crystal! The touchpad, the rear and the front are all equally prone to looking thoroughly handled after a few calls.

Alongside high-end phones like the Viewty Smart, there might be a feeling that the Crystal is a tad less robust, but it is a heck of a lot more cool.

Features

The LG Crystal is no airhead in the fashion phone stakes, with a strong feature set and a wealth of connectivity options.

The 3” AMOLED touchscreen is clear and crisp, allowing the S-Class user interface to shine as an example of intuitive and appealing navigation. The now familiar cube from the Arena features here too, with the Crystal allowing single swipes to access important features like contacts, messaging and the like.

The see-through keypad also allows for touch controls interestingly, meaning the same swipes on the screen can be done on the buttons themselves. It begs the question ‘why?’ but it is cool that the extra touch functions are present when dealing with the web (more later).

 The S-Class UI is still fun to use, but the slightly over eager interface flips and spins all over the place whilst not providing too much more functionality than the iPhone-aping main menu tiles.

As impressive as S-Class is, we think users could have been happy with these four rows of sliding icons, which impressively all can be shown at once with a flick of the phone into landscape. Still, it allows people to use the handset in whichever way they like and choice is good, right?

Yet another way the Crystal is eager to please is by using gesture shortcuts, drawing fro a set group of shapes on the trackpad to teleport to favoured functions. Is opening the phone and drawing on the trackpad quicker than the usual method of swiping to access the function? Perhaps not, but then you would still be missing the point of the Crystal. It is a phone that screams coolness, fun and style rather than staid functionality.

The camera is an intriguing feature on the Crystal as it took great photos…compared to some other mobile phones.  As an 8 megapixel camera, the photos at full resolution were only slightly better than current Omio residents like the Samsung Jet, and markedly similar to the Viewty Smart.

The functionality is great, the switches and settings dials make the phone feel like a digital camera, but the images themselves came out pretty grainy when not on a 3” screen.

Video was much more impressive, with the D1 (720 x 480) resolution able to spit out crystal clear video at 30 frames per second.  The super slow and time-lapse modes were also pretty fun to use. A rare feature which we appreciated was the ability to take videos at night, with the LED flash turning into a light for easier recordings. Not night-vision, but a great addition nonetheless!

Calls and connectivity

The LG Crystal - and S-Class for that matter - is great in remembering the primary function of being easy to use for calls and texts.  The visual rolodex is cool for going through contacts visually, and the onscreen keypad is clear and simple for calling.

The touchpad is in fact a lot tougher than physical keys when it comes to texting messages, as the lack of feedback when a button is pressed on the smooth display causes some mistakes when getting overzealous.

Thankfully, the haptic feedback from the touchscreen and virtual keyboard is note-perfect for bashing out a quick mail. Thankfully, support for both POP and IMAP means that those quick mails will actually be received too!

An Office viewer makes short work of documents, and the usual suite of productivity apps translate nicely to being used on a touchscreen.

The Crystal touchpad is highly useful when browsing the web, on the other hand. The mouse pointer that pops up when using the slider as a trackpad seems a little useless when the screen is a far more immediate way to attack text boxes and the like, but multi-touch pinching is nice to use for zooming, and becomes second nature before too long.

Connectivity is almost a royal flush on the LG Crystal, with Bluetooth v2.1, Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbps HSDPA supported. A hole lies in the lack of GPS functionality, though, which is a bit more  

The proprietary browser won’t have you chucking your laptop out of the window and snuggling up to check your sites on a mobile, but it is functional. No Flash support, though.

Verdict

The LG Crystal is an antidote to the glut of uninspired handsets that have benn released in recent months.

Whilst many lacked an element of individuality, the Crystal has it in spades. The S-Class interface may be very similar to both the Arena and the aforementioned 8 megapixel brother, but the new and interesting ways the touchpad lets you interact with the GD900 is beyond refreshing.

Any disappointments with the build quality are immediately offset by the quality of the user experience and the headturning design, and the camera is acceptable if not great.

The LG Crystal is a phone of firsts and the unique transparent body, suite of cutting edge specs and awesome touch functionality in S-Class makes this a phone for true trendsetters rather than those that follow the flock.