LG Esteem (MetroPCS)
-Hey everyone, I'm Jessica Dolcourt for CNET.com.
This is your first look at the LG Esteem for Metro PCS.
Now, this is a 4G phone and you remember that Metro PCS was first out of the gate with its 4G LTE network, but since then it's been slow trading out the phone.
So, this is only the 3rd phone and it's the second 4G smartphone.
This is also the carrier's best smartphone to date.
It's got a very large 4.3-inch touchscreen display.
It runs android 2.3 Gingerbread.
That's why it's really clear and bright, which very nice, 4 touch sensitive buttons below.
For the external, it's got an HDMI out port, 5-megapixel camera with auto focus and flash and it also has a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the quality on both these cameras, very nice.
For the internal, it got 5 gigabytes of internal memory, but it does have an external storage card
that will hold up 32 gigabytes of external memory.
It's also running on a 1 gigahertz snapdragon processor.
So that keeps things moving pretty quickly.
When it comes to the phone body and soul, this is a pretty tough phone, really big, heavy, weighs 6 ounces.
Usually, you don't see that.
It looks there is a lot of metal and a keyboard.
There is a little bit of metal.
No keyboard on this.
So, it looks like it can really take a bidding.
In fact, that was in my bag next to a phone that did have a case on it and I could not tell which was which.
So, I would not worried about breaking this one any time soon.
One of the biggest cons with this phone is the battery life it's got a rated talk time of only 3-1/2 hours and that's not including daily usage, so I found that the battery life drain pretty quickly and that can turn some people off really fast.
When it comes to 4G speed, Metro PCS isn't known as having the zippiest network, but it's 4G speed especially on the Esteem are considerably faster than Metro PCS's regular network, which only clocks 2.5 G speed.
This is about $250
after $100 mail in rebate and when you compare this to the Samsung Galaxy Indulge, which Metro PCS's other android phone for 4G and it's about $50 more.
The other one has a slide out QWERTY keyboard but the specs on this one are much better, so that's pretty fair value and that's with a new contact price.
Specs-wise, this definitely Metro PCS's best smartphone.
The battery life could pose a problem though to some people on the go.
Otherwise I've really encouraged you to take a look.
I'm Jessica Dolcourt for CNET.
This the LG Esteem for Metro PCS.
You can find the full review on CNET.com
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