Quick look at LG Ally

We just got our hot little hands on the LG Ally here at CNET, so before we delve into the review, we wanted to give you a quick overview of the first LG Android phone to hit U.S. shores.

Despite its ties to the futuristic superhero action flick "Iron Man 2," the LG Ally doesn't exactly surprise us when it comes to design. In fact, it reminds us a lot of other LG feature phones like the LG enV Touch or the LG Rumor Touch. Still, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. The phone has a nice solid heft to it, and we like its overall soft-touch matte finish. It's quite a thick phone, so it might not feel so comfortable in the back pocket.

The display, as you might expect, is beautiful. It's a lovely 3.2-inch capacitive touch-screen display, and you also get the option of haptic feedback if you want that. The interface is the standard Android UI; nothing fancy here. We also didn't find the "Iron Man 2" augmented-reality applications with our model, but we hear that should be available in the models that hit stores next week. The Ally ships with Android 2.1 (code name Eclair) already installed.

You get all the keys you usually get with an Android handset on the front, along with a microSD card slot on the side, a 3.5-mm headset jack on top, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash on the back. The display slides to the right to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. We found the keyboard to be quite spacious (though it looks smaller than the keyboard on the Droid), and we really like that each key is separate and distinct from the others. The keyboard has additional navigation keys as well.

That's it so far for our quick look at the LG Ally. You can take a look at Natali Del Conte's video of it as well. We'll have our review of the LG Ally up soon, so keep checking back for our full take. The LG Ally is available for preorder now from Verizon Wireless before it goes in stores on May 20.