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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 11 reviews
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Product summary
The good: The LG CU515 offers a simple, user-friendly design, decent call quality, and a solid feature set that includes 3.5G support, Push to Talk, stereo Bluetooth, and world phone capability.
The bad: The LG CU515 has a disappointing external display and it lacks a camera flash and voice dialing. Photo and streaming video quality were uneven.
The bottom line: The LG CU515 is great for making calls, but it's not AT&T's best cell phone for multimedia and wireless broadband use.
Specifications: Band / mode: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900; Talk time: Up to 210 min; Combined with: With digital camera / digital player; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 11/28/2007
Though LG's CDMA cell phones like the battery life and the digital SAR rating tend to get all the glory (at least in the United States), the manufacturer offers quality GSM handsets, as well. You won't find any at T-Mobile, but AT&T sells the
Design
With its minimalist design and clean lines, the CU515 looks somewhat like Sprint's
Front and center is the CU515's externa,ll display. It's not quite what we were hoping for on a phone of this caliber; not only is it rather small (0.98 inch, 96x64 pixels) but it's also monochrome, neither of which is ideal on a megapixel camera phone. The display won't function as a viewfinder for self-portraits and it doesn't support photo caller ID. It does show the date, time, battery life, signal strength, and numeric caller ID, but only the brightness level is adjustable. Completing the exterior of the phone are a volume rocker and the PTT button on the left spine while the microSD card slot and headset/charger jack sit on the right spine. The speakerphone button on the top of the rear face is a unique feature. Though we like that it lets us easily activate the speakerphone when we're on a call, we'd instead prefer to find such a control on the phone's side.
Fortunately, the CU515 offers a better interior display. At 2 inches (176x220 pixels), the screen is a decent size and its 262,000-color resolution makes it pleasing to the eye. Colors were bright and the graphics and animations were vibrant. The simple, user-friendly menus also looked good, and it performed nicely as a viewfinder for the camera. You can change the display's backlight time, brightness, and the dialing font size and color.
Below the screen is the well-designed navigation array, which closely resembles the LG Muziq. The arrangement is spacious, and although the controls are flat with the surface of the phone, they're tactile and easy to use by feel. There's a four-way toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, a camera shortcut, a Clear control, and the Talk and End/Power button. There's also a button for opening a multitask menu, and the toggle doubles as a shortcut to the Messaging menu, the instant messaging application, your Contacts list, and the My Stuff folder. The OK button in the middle of the toggle activates the Web browser when the phone is in standby mode; to open the main menu you have to use the left soft key instead.
The keypad buttons also resemble those on the Muziq. They're also flat with the surface of the phone, but their large size makes them easy to use. We avoided misdials, but even quick texters may need to look at the keys if they want to bang out a message. The numbers on the keys are larger, but the backlighting could be a tad brighter.
Features
The CU515 has a 500-contact phone book. That's a tad small, but there's room in each entry for five phone numbers, two e-mail address, and notes (the SIM card holds an additional 250 names). You can save callers to groups or pair them with one of 10 polyphonic ringtones. You can assign your contacts a photo, as well, but keep in mind they won't show up on the external display. PTT contacts are organized in a separate list, where you can save up to 99 individual contacts and 30 groups.
Basic features on the LGCU515 include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calculator, a voice recorder, a calendar, a tip calculator, a world clock, a task list, a stop watch, and a unit converter. Two unusual applications are a date finder, which shows you the current date, a future target date, and number of days between the two, and a D-day counter, which acts like a countdown timer. Higher-end features include instant messaging, USB mass storage, e-mail, and stereo Bluetooth. Unfortunately, the CU515 doesn't support voice commands.
The CU515's 1.3-megapixal camera takes pictures in four resolutions (1,280x960, 640x480, 320x240, and 160x120), and three quality settings (super fine, fine, and normal). Other features options include a self timer, brightness and white balance settings, a self timer, three color effects, and three shutter tones (plus a silent option). There's also an 8x zoom and a multishot mode, though neither is available in the highest resolution. When finished with your photos, you can use the integrated photo-editing tool to resize, crop, and rotate your images or change the color effect. The camcorder shoots clips in a 176x144 resolution with sound. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at 45 seconds; otherwise you can shoot for as long as the available memory permits. The CU515 offers 55MB of internal memory. That's a decent amount, but we'd recommend investing in a microSD card slot for good measure. The CU515 can handle cards up to 4GB.
As a 3.5G HSDPA device, the CU515 supports the full range of AT&T broadband multimedia applications. Cellular Video brings a wide variety of streaming video clips from such channels as NBC, Comedy Central, ESPN, The Weather Channel, VH1, and CNN. There's a special channel for kids as well, with programming from The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, The Cartoon Network and Muppets Mobile. Premium entertainment is offered from HBO Mobile and Music Choice for an extra charge. For a full analysis of the offerings see our
If you're more interested in listening to tunes, the CU515 also supports the
You can personalize the CU515 with a variety of wallpapers, calendar styles, and color themes. If you'd like more choices you can download additional options and ringtones via the AP 2.0 wireless Web browser. The CU515 comes with demo versions of five games: Brain Challenge, Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man, Tetris, Tower Bloxx, and World Poker Tour.
Performance
We
On their end callers said we sounded good. They could tell we were using a cell phone, but they didn't have problems understanding us, even when we were in noisy environments. The only complaint was that the sound cut out for a second or two at times. That could be because of their phones, but we heard it from more than one person. On the other hand, we didn't have issues with automated calling systems. Speakerphone calls were quite good. We enjoyed enough volume, and we could hear callers clearly, even though the phone's speaker faces backwards. Callers also said they were satisfied as long as we spoke close to the phone and we didn't use it outside.
The CU515 supports the 850 and 1900 UMTS/HSSDPA bands so our connection remained strong as long as we stayed within San Francisco proper. Streaming video quality was somewhat hit or miss, however. Clips took about 10 seconds to download, which isn't bad, but browsing through the Cellualr Videos menus seemed a tad pokey. Individual clips were variable; while some were smooth and crisp, others had noticeable pixelation and jerky movements. Also, when we tried to watch a preview of the The Mist, we received a message that said that because of popular demand, the clip was unavailable at the moment. That's a first for Cellular Video. That said, sound quality for the videos was decent. Voices matched the speakers' mouths and the speakers provided good output. Sound quality for the music player was satisfactory, as well, but headphones will provide the best experience.
The CU515 has a rated
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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 11 reviews
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