LG Bliss – good mid-range touch screen phone

For:

Big screen, lots of features like HTML browser, GPS, EV-Do, 2 mega pixel camera. Call quality is excellent.

Against:

Exterior feel a bit cheap, no Flash Lite support for browser.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

LG Bliss is a CDMA2000 1X which supports CDMA2000 1X 1900/800 band, It has a candy bar design. The 3 inches TFT LCD display has a resolution of 240×400 pixels, or 262k colors. The 2 mega pixel camera has resolution options of 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480, 320 x 240. Self timer delay options are 10 seconds, 5 seconds, 3 seconds. Special effects include Negative, Normal, Sepia. Video resolutions options are 320 x 240 (QVGA), 176 x 144 (QCIF).

Accessories included are Portable stereo speaker, Touch screen stylus, Headset, USB data cable, AC travel charger, Battery, and USB cord. The LG Bliss’s battery has a rated talk time of four and half hours and the standby time is 13 days. On one side of the phone, there is a 2.5 mm head set jack. On the other side there is the camera key, screen lock key and charger jack. The microSD card slot is located behind the battery cover.

Razzle Dazzle:

LG Bliss is quite light weight and thin but is exteriors are disappointing because the plastic body looks cheap. You get color option of black and white for the handset and it looks OK but the feel of the device will certainly disappoint you. On the bright side, weighing in at 3.42 ounces, we thought the Bliss was quite light weight.

Inside Dope:

LG is a big player in the touch screen phone market. A lot of its products go to big carriers like AT&T Wireless (LG Xenon and LG enV Touch) and Verizon Wireless. A few of its phones make to U.S. cellular which is a regional carrier. This handset is a lot like LG Tritan but the Bliss doesn’t have a low resolution camera or physical keyboard. This product is quite slim and is packed with features, which is what you look to in a phone. The Bliss has built-in accelerometer which gives you a full size QWERTY keyboard when you turn the phone. The buttons on it are spacious and easy to type. It has a 2.0 mega pixel, something that we were disappointed with. Usually you’d expect a 3.2 mega pixel camera but this low resolution camera was surprisingly good in photos.  We had very little to complain about the phone, it had pretty good features. Our only complaint was the feel of the device which feels cheap plasticky in the hand. The handset is yours for $99 along with a 2 year contract and mail-in rebate.

Display

The LG Bliss has a 3 inch display which gives a 240×400 pixel resolution with support for 262k colors.  The screen is really good, the text and images look sharp. When the handset is locked or idle, it can display time, date, missed calls, messages, and today’s schedule. You can adjust the menu style, size of the dial font and font style. Just like in Tritan, you get four home screens, Multimedia screen, Contacts screen, Shortcuts screen and Main home screen. You get four shortcut icons on the bottom of each home screen which relate to contacts list, main menu, phone dialer, and messaging menu. You can assign different wallpapers for different home screens.

Navigation array and keyboard

You don’t get a physical keyboard instead it is a virtual one. In the portrait mode, you get a numeric keypad which is big and you can easily punch the buttons for calling. For messaging, you get a full size QWERTY keyboard, numeric keypad with ABC/XT9 input method or handwriting recognition. The accelerometer gives you the QWERTY keyboard when you tilt the phone. we had no issues with the keys, they were large and we could type easily on it. There is a dedicated @ button on the keyboard for e-mail purposes.

Below the screen there are three buttons – Talk key, End/Power key and the Speakerphone/Clear button. The keys are located on the edge which we think looks good and lets the screen to be a bit bigger.

Phone book and PIM features

The Bliss has a 1000 entry limit for phone book and a single entry can take multiple phone numbers, URL, memo, and two e-mail addresses. Grouping and photo caller ID both are supported. You get a choice of 25 ringtones and 8 alert tones for messages. Other features on the phone include stopwatch, unit converter, tip calculator, standard calculator, notepad, world clock, organizer, calendar, alarm clock, voice command, multimedia and text messaging, speaker phone and vibrate mode. There is an application called drawing panel which lets you sketch doodles and send them to your friends. For advanced users, there are features like stereo Bluetooth, USB mass storage mode, voice command support, voice recorder and GPS navigation.

Music player

Music player of the Bliss has an intuitive, simple and clean interface. Tracks are organized by genres, artists and albums. You can edit and create playlists on the move and set your songs on shuffle or repeat. Supported audio formats are AAC+, AAC, WMA and MP3. For adding songs, you can use the bundled USB cord. The music player can be minimized if you want to work on other applications on the phone. Music through headset was good but while on speakers, the music didn’t have bass and music sounded flat.

Camera

The Bliss has a 2 mega pixel camera which comes with five color effects, five presets for white balance, three quality settings and four resolutions. Other settings include three shutter sound along with a silent option, night mode, self timer, fun frames and multishot mode. Photo quality was really good considering this is a 2 mega pixel device. Images were sharp but colors looked overcast and muted. The camera also has a video mode, it lets you capture in two resolutions – 176×144 and 320×240. It has quality settings, color effects and white balance. The handset supports up to 16 GB of external memory cards.

Browser

The Bliss has a full HTML browser which exploits the big touch screen to the fullest, especially in the landscape mode. It has RSS reader, send URL feature, search function (for finding text on a Web page), JavaScript toggle, fit-to-width option, and full screen view. We were disappointed that the phone doesn’t have Flash Lite support, unlike the Tritan. You can use the volume rocker for zooming in and out of pages.

Games and personalization

The Bliss comes with three games, Pac-Man, Homerun Derby and Dart. You can download more from U.S. Cellular’s EasyEdge store. You can personalize your phone with variety of alert tones, wallpapers, etc.

Call quality

LG Bliss was quite impressive in our call quality tests. There was a bit of background noise at our end but it didn’t get too irritating. We could hear our friends quite clearly and the volume was loud enough. Our friends gave similar results, they said our voice was natural and clear. Speakerphone call quality was not that good, the voices sounded a bit harsh but still we could make out clearly what our friends were saying.

Battery life

The LG Bliss’s battery has a rated talk time of four and half hours and the standby time is 13 days. When tested in our labs, the battery lasted for about six hours which is really impressive.

Verdict:

This is an excellent touch screen phone from LG. The good call quality, crisp sound for music, great browser makes this phone a good buy.