The mobile comes with a decent VGA camera that can take pictures in 640x480, 320x240, and 160x120 resolutions. You also get a choice of four color tones (Normal, Sepia, Black and White, and Negative), three quality settings (Fine, Normal, and Economy), and three shutter sounds; there's also a silent option, or you can record your own sound. Other controls include adjustable white-balance and brightness settings, a self-timer, and an 8X zoom, the last of which is usable at only the lowest resolution. When finished, you can send your shots via a multimedia message; you can also store 20 images at the highest resolution or 96 at the lowest. On the downside, we weren't terribly impressed with the photo quality. There is no flash, and even stationary subjects were washed out and blurry. In fact, if you look at your small distorted image in the self-portrait mirror, that is pretty much what you will get when you click the shutter.
When connected to the Web, the PM-325 can play demos of streaming video from MobiTV, the Weather Channel, and ESPN. You can purchase full access for $9.99 per month, but the jerky clips are barely watchable as the phone operates on Sprint's present 1xRTT (2.5G) network. You can personalize the mobile with a variety of color themes, screensavers, and sounds, and you can download additional options, applications, and ring tones from Sprint. As for games, you get only demo versions of Ms. Pac-Man, Jamdat Solitaire, and Tetris Deluxe, but you can buy the full versions if you so desire.
We tested the LG PM-325 on the Sprint PCS network in the New York metropolitan area. We were able to consistently find a clear steady signal, and callers remarked that our voice was exceptionally clear. There is no headset included with the phone, but it would make sense to acquire a Bluetooth set. Enabling the Bluetooth transmitter on the PM-325 is a simple process, and we were impressed with the ease with which it recognized our Jabra FreeSpeak BT250 headset.We managed to coax a relatively meager 2.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. That's more than a half hour short of the rated time of 3.2 hours, but even that is not great. The standby time was approximately 6 days, compared with the promised time of 7 days. This isn't terrible, but if you are a heavy phone user, you should plan on recharging your phone almost every night. According to the FCC, the PM-325 has a digital SAR rating of 0.95 watts per kilogram and an analog SAR rating of 0.9 watts per kilogram.
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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 63 reviews
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15 out of 15 people found this review helpful
"Liked it when I bought (still do) but there are a few things to mention--"
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9 out of 12 people found this review helpful
"Bluetooth? Bluetooth? It ain't got no stinkin' Bluetooth!!"
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