Hands on with the LG Mini and GT540

One company that didn't make a great deal of fuss at MWC 2010 was Korean manufacturer LG. We sneaked into the company's secret location just outside the main exhibition area to take a look at two of LG's upcoming Australian releases.

The LG Mini is a handset that strikes a favourable first impression. It's lightweight and nice to hold, and its touchscreen display is bright and colourful.

The Mini is like a solid block of metal and this grille design on the side gives it a chic industrial feel which we think is really cool.

We weren't the biggest fan of LG's S-Class UI, and we made no bones about it. This latest iteration is a step in the right direction with less clutter on-screen.

This photo shows a few home screen widgets, but it also depicts a shallow range of features that we sensed when we toyed with the Mini. It is, of course, a production model and anything can change before it's released, but we feel the Mini needs more than just page after page of hot-links to websites — it needs apps.

A top-mounted 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro-USB port are parts of any good media playing mobile. The Mini also sports DLNA wireless connectivity for streaming media from the phone to a compatible media player, like the PS3.

This is the LG GT540, a classy-looking Android that LG in Australia is hoping can be the first truly low-end Android, if not its first prepaid Android, for down under.

Like the LG Mini, the GT540 has a brushed-metal finish. Only, the GT540 is plastic with a faux metal finish to help keep it in that low-end price range.

The GT540 strikes quite an interesting silhouette, similar to the Sony Ericsson X10.

Yet another interesting design choice, the GT540's bubbly mechanical nav-pad. Also you'll notice the on-screen menu controls; this is the S-Class overlay on top of the stock Android UI.