LG Helix – a basic phone with awful call quality
For:
Simple design.
Against:
Bad call quality, low on features.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
LG Helix is a dual band CDMA phone (1900/800 MHz), it has a clamshell design. The external display of the phone is 1 inch big and has resolution of 96×64 pixels, the internal display is 2 inches big with 176×220 pixel resolutions or 262k colors. The lid of the phone contains a 1.3 megapixel camera with features like self-timer, effects, frames, multi shot, white balance, night mode, exposure control and digital zoom.
The phone has internal memory of 38 MB, and other features include Bluetooth 2.1, 1000 entry phone book and S-GPS. One the sides of the phone there is a 2.5 mm head phone jack, camera button and charger jack.
Razzle Dazzle:
There is nothing sexy about the LG Helix, it has a traditional clamshell phone design. The handset is 0.7 inch thick, 1.9 inches wide, 3.6 inches long and weighs about 3 oucnes. What we liked about the design is that the phone can sit comfortably in pockets due to its small size. The Helix is rectangular and a bit blocky with angled edges.
Inside Dope:
LG Helix is a basic phone from Cricket Communications, it is another basic phone for people who need a handset just to make call and send text messages. The LG Helix phone doesn’t have much features, it sports a simple design with a small screen on the lid (it is a clamshell design phone) and a VGA camera on the top. The design itself is traditional flip phone and the inside features too are traditional of an entry level phone. The display of the LG Helix phone is tiny and doesn’t have a big resolution but as long as you just calling people, it should not matter to you. The navigation array and the keypad is not the greatest we found it pretty hard to type on the buttons. Being an entry level phone, there is no 3G, music player and the 1.3 megapixel camera isn’t capable of recording videos. The speakerphone quality too was a bit disappointing. On the bright side, there are basic features such as Bluetooth, multimedia and text messaging. The LG Helix phone is yours for $120 without any contract obligations.
Display
The external display of the phone is just an inch big and has 65k color support. You get battery status, signal strength, time and date on the display of the lid. You can change the look of the calendar and clock and also the wallpaper. The display can be used as a self portrait viewfinder for the camera and incoming caller ID.
The display on the interior is 2 inch big and gives a resolution of 220×176 pixels or 265k colors. The screen is bright and colorful and the text is clear and legible. You can change the font type, menu style, greeting banner, appearance of the calendar and clock, wallpaper and backlight time. You can also adjust the size and the style of the dial font.
Navigation array and keyboard
The navigation array is located on the second half of the phone, beneath the display. It consists of End/power button, clear key, send key, voice command key, speakerphone button, a four way navigation toggle with OK button in the middle and two soft keys. Below these keys is the standard numeric keypad. We had a lot of problems with the keypad and the buttons on the navigation array because the keys are flat on the surface and hence hard to press. However, these buttons will only be used to dialing numbers and text messages, so the hard keys shouldn’t be a problem. We would have appreciated a better keypad though.
Phone book and PIM features
The phone has a thousand limit entry for contacts, each entry can take 5 phone numbers, a memo and an e-mail address. There are 5 polyphonic ring tones and 2 message tones to choose from. Standard features like photo caller ID and making of caller groups are supported. Additional features include unit converter, stopwatch, world clock, calculator, notepad, tip calculator, calendar, alarm clock, multimedia and text messaging, speakerphone and vibrate mode. Helix is an entry level phone but has some advanced features like voice command and Bluetooth. There is also a basic WAP wireless web browser.
Camera
There is a 1.3 mega pixel camera located on the lid which gives five to options for resolutions – 160×120, 176×144, 320×240, 640×480 and 1280×960 pixels. There are options like four sounds for shutter along with a silent option, self-timer, night mode, brightness, zoom and three settings for quality. Images from the camera looked slightly blurry and we don’t expect it to give a good performance looking at a 1.3 MP tag.
Personalization, games and applications
You can personalize the Helix with alert tones and wallpapers. Cricket’s online store lets you download more stuff. The handset comes preinstalled with 2 games – Where’s Waldo and Super Street Fighter. There are two applications which we thought were really usefull, MyPerks which gives you information about the best discounts and deals from the retailers across the country and MyBackup to backup your phone contacts.
Call quality
Being an entry level phone, we expected good call quality because that is the only feature that you look for in such handsets. However we were disappointed because the Helix didn’t have a good call quality, while on calls, there was choppiness and we couldn’t hear properly what our friends were saying. On the bright side, the volume was loud enough to be heard easily even in noisy backgrounds. Our friends too weren’t pleased with the call quality, they told us that the audio was cracking and our voice didn’t sound natural. But both of us could make out what was said while on the phone. Speaker phone quality was tinny.
Battery life
The Helix has a rated talk time for five hours and 18.3 days of standby time.
Verdict:
Helix from LG is an entry level phone just for calling but we would recommend you against buying this handset due to the poor call quality.
