Hi.
I'm Kent German, Senior Managing Editor here at CNET.
Today, we'll take a first look at the LG Optimus Regard.
This phone is definitely more in a mid-ranged to low-end category.
Now, that's not surprising considering it's come from Cricket Wireless, it's got a pretty basic design, not a lot of exciting features, pretty affordable as well, $299, and that's without a contract, so that's pretty fair.
It is also have LTE, it's one of the few Cricket phones to do so.
So, that's pretty cool.
As I said, pretty simple design,
a 3.5-inch display, I found the screen a little cramped when I was using the phone dialer or when I was typing messages.
Not so bad when, you know, you're just going through menus but personally, I think I'd like something just a little bit bigger.
Also, don't expect your grade screen resolution, that's not really surprising considering it's a mid to low-end phone.
Do have a few home screens that you can populate.
It is an Ice Cream Sandwich phone.
Of course you can populate the home screens with all the icons and features and shortcuts that you like and then if you go into the main menu, put a simple design, you just see that it has those
three pages, you can customize as you like as well.
Down below to the standard touch controls for getting to the menu, also for going back and also for going to the home screen.
Up on top, you'll see there's a 3.5mm headset jack, along with a power control.
Over in this side, there's a volume rocker and a micro USB charger port.
Around back, you have a camera lens for the 5-megapixel camera, that's the main camera of course, and then a flash, and then upfront, above the screen is the VGA or actually it's 1.0 megapixel
camera and that is also a sensor as well.
Inside, camera application is probably the most futurist thing we'll see on this phone, had a lot of options.
One that I found particularly interesting was actually when you press the camera lens, it will keep shooting photos until the shutter actually closes.
So, what that does, it shows you up to 6 shots then you can actually choose which picture you like and save it.
So, that was a nice thing.
They do have the audio camera shot as well, so when you say something, you can say cheese, you can say whisky of all things, and you could say kimchi,
the phone will-- or the shutter will actually close and you don't have to press the body.
Otherwise, we have a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, ran pretty well, of course not particularly fast if you're using something a lot speedier.
Actually the phone has 2 browsers, so that's the standard browser and a Chrome browser.
Chrome browser is nice because you can sync the phone with the desktop of a tablet with your tabs, with your bookmarks, so, that's kinda nice.
So, but otherwise, not particularly exciting phone.
Some webpages especially for webpages like that of CNET or American Airlines took almost a
minute to load, apps took almost 2 or 3 minutes to download.
So, if you really want a speedy phone that's gonna cover a lot of places, this is not for you.
What I really like about this phone is it does have that LTE connection, again, one of the few Cricket phones to do so, relatively affordable within the $200 or $250 range, that's without a contract.
If you just want something entry-level to mid-range, it is easy to use, provides you a good performance.
The LG Optimus Regard is a great option.
I'm Kent German here at CNET for the first look at the LG Optimus Regard for Cricket.
