LG Lyric MT375 – Down to earth basic phone
For:
User friendly design, performance is satisfying, has good feature set.
Against:
2.5 mm headphone jack, camera doesn’t have flash, speakerphone calls distort.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
LG Lyric MT375 is CDMA2000 1X phone and is based on CDMA2000 1X 1900/800 / AWS 1700/2100 band. The display is 2 inches big and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. Supported audio formats are MP3 and AAC. The 900 mAh battery has rated talk time of 200 minutes and standby time is 400 hours.
The phone has two megapixel camera. Messaging / Data Features includes E-Mail, Instant messages, Picture messages, Multimedia messages (MMS), Text messages
Razzle Dazzle:
LG Lyric MT375 looks similar to Sprint’s LG LX370. The dimensions are the same, it is 4.06 inches long, 0.63 inch thick, 1.89 inches wide and weighs about 3.7 ounces. The only different about the two phone is that the MT375 looks more attractive with red color. The handset is not the slickest we have ever seen but we still liked its trim profile and the clean lines. The phone feels comfortable in hand.
Inside Dope:
These days looks and high end features are more important for manufacturers and they are relentlessly making sexy looking phones with all the oomph in order to put potential customers in to the loop. MetroPCS doesn’t seem to care much though, they are pretty much content with plane jane looks and basic features. But in the recent months, the carrier has tried to diversify itself, it has brought out a couple of touch screen handsets and has announced introduction of 4G service by next year. All this isn’t reflected in LG Lyric MT375 though. It is still a basic handset with a user friendly down to earth design. The call quality of this phone is pretty decent which is what matters the most in such low end phones. The cost of this phone is $139 and there are no contract obligations from the service provider. You get a discount of $25 if you purchase it online. We really liked the phone and its performance. There are a few drawbacks though, the camera doesn’t have flash, for the headset, you get a 2.5 mm jack instead of 3.5 mm one and finally, the speakerphone calls are distorted when you push it to the highest volume limit.
Display
LG Lyric MT375 has a tiny two inch display with resolution of 240×320 pixels and supports 262k colors. The menus can be displayed in icon and list styles and are easy to use. We also liked the options for shortcuts on home screen. There aren’t a lot of options for customization but for a low end mobile, it is enough. Adjustment options are available for clock style, wallpaper, background color, backlight time, and style, type and size of the dialing font.
Navigation array and keyboard
Navigation array consists of two soft keys, Talk and End/Power button, back control, and a circular navigation button with OK button in the center. The keypad is user friendly and roomy. The keys are quite flat but typing on them was still easy due to the ridges in between the rows. The buttons have big labels for numbers and this is ubiquitous across all LG phones.
Phone book and PIM features
LG Lyric MT375 has a 1000 entry limit phone book and a single entry can take two street addresses, memo, two e-mail addresses, and only four phone numbers (we have seen six in previous iterations) You can make groups of your contacts, and photo caller ID is also supported. There are 35 polyphonic ringtones to choose from. Basic features on the include unit converter, notepad, calculator, world clock, calendar, alarm clock, speakerphone, tip calculator, and multimedia and text messaging. There are a few high end features like voice memo recorder, voice dialing, USB mass storage, PC syncing, stereo Bluetooth, instant messaging (Windows Live and AIM) and a wireless Web browser.
Camera
LG Lyric MT375 has a two megapixel camera which gives you three options for resolutions and three settings for quality. Other settings include four shutter tones along with a silent option, multishot mode, self timer, four settings for white balance, brightness adjustments, 10x digital zoom and a night mode. The camera can record videos too and there are two options for resolution. The editing options are the same as camera. MMS clips are limited to 15 seconds but in the standard mode, you can shoot your heart out.
Picture quality is pretty much the same as compared to LX 370, maybe a tad better. Images are a bit dark but colors look natural and there is not too much of image noise. Video quality is mediocre. The handset has 42 MB of internal memory and is expandable to 16 GB through memory cards.
Call quality
When tested for call quality, LG Lyric MT375 was decent. We didn’t have any issues of interference or static and there was no distortion at the highest volume level. The volume was loud enough and we couldn’t talk smoothly in places with high noise levels.
Verdict:
This phone is targeted towards basic users who need a handset just for making calls.
