LG Enlighten Review

In the past few months, Verizon has come up with a number of smartphones operating on its 4G LTE network, but there is a large section of customers which are devoid of 4G LTE network. For them choosing smartphones with a sliding QWERTY keyboard is a challenge but Verizon has answered to their problems by launching an entry-level smartphone called LG Enlighten. The phone running on Android Gingerbread platform comes at a low 2 year contract price of $ 80 (approx). Go through our LG Enlighten review to know what the phone has to offer you.

LG Enlighten Build and Design

Enlighten has a quite simple design. It is all black in color and boasts of a smoke-gray chrome rim around its edges. But for its price, the phone feels quite well made and rests very comfortably in the hand. At dimensions standing at 114 x 58 x 15 mm, the phone is not tiny, but will slide into any pocket quite easily. It feels durable and the sliding mechanism of the phone is spring loaded just like the one found in LG Ally. The phone is made up of plastic with a soft touch back cover which makes it comfortable to hold. Overall Enlighten has a fairly simple and clean design.

LG Enlighten Screen

The screen is one of the biggest sacrifices made by LG to make Enlighten budget-friendly. At 3.2 inches, Enlighten has one of the smaller smartphone screens with a basic 320×480 (HVGA) resolution. The screen would have been terrible if one had to type on it using a virtual keyboard. The screen is very much the same as seen in LG Vortex. The performance is quite average. Texts look legible and the images look good but to our disappointment, the screen lacks an ambient light sensor which would have adjusted backlighting while moving between dark and bright environment. Because of the small size of the screen, it will not be that easy to surf internet, play games or read e-books.

LG Enlighten Features

Keyboard

One of the great features of Enlighten is its sliding QWERTY keypad. Fortunately, the keyboard does not suffer from the fact that LG Enlighten is a budget friendly phone. The keypad quality is same as those of expensive phones. The phone has a 4 row keyboard with dedicated keys on the top. It is quite roomy and the keys offered good tactile feedback.  The keypad has directional buttons for fine control and there are four Android navigational buttons located at the upper corners which make it easy to use it in landscape mode. LG has done a fine job with the keyboard considering that there is limited amount of space to fit in the keyboard.

Software and UI

Even though LG Enlighten carries a low price, we were impressed to find that it runs on Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread on board which has similar look and feel of other high end LG smartphone using Optimus UI 2.0 interface. You get four colorful icons at the bottom of the 7 home screens. With these icons one can easily access the phone, its contacts, messages and apps. Though Enlighten lacks the amount of widgets as found in LG Revolution, yet it has got the basic widgets such as Calendar, Clock, pictures and power control.

Apps

The phone is equipped with several in-built apps such as:-

• Google Search
• Maps
• Gmail
• Document Viewer
• Image Viewer/Editor

For more applications users can browse the Android market.

Email Setup

The phone is equipped with basic standard email applications which help one to easily set up emails.

Memory

The phone offers internal memory storage of 150 MB which can be expanded up to 32GB.

LG Enlighten Camera Quality

Though Enlighten is equipped with 3.15 MP camera it supports auto-focus. The camera is very much similar to that of LG Vortex and Ally. It is very easy to use the camera application and it allows some pretty nice adjustments. There is a devoted 2 stop camera shutter key. The pictures which we took on a sunny day were quite average for a 3.2 MP phone and the details were quite average, though color accuracy was lacking. Some of the images looked out of focus and some of the images which we took inside looked fuzzy and lacked the required amount of details. LG Enlighten lacks a front facing camera.

LG Enlighten Video Quality

The phone is capable of recording VGA videos at 24 fps. The videos lacked the amount of details required and are good for MMS only.

LG Enlighten Connectivity

Enlighten comes with standard support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi along with support for Verizon’s 3G network. The smartphone also features 3G Mobile Hotspot which allows users to provide Wi-Fi for devices like laptops which come in handy during travel. However, in order to use it, users will have shell out an extra $ 20 a month. Connectivity is also enhanced by the presence of 3.5 mm jack and micro USB 2.0 port.

Music Player

The music player of Enlighten is a very basic one which gets the job done. We observed that the sound quality via rear speaker lacks high volumes. With the help of the gallery application, one gets a thumbnail view of the pictures and videos.

LG Enlighten Call Quality

Call Quality with Enlighten is pretty good. Voices on either side sounded quite clear as there was no background noise. The voice reception was also quite good. However, at higher volumes, there was some amount of distortion.

LG Enlighten Android Phone Performance

With Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread along with an 800MHz processor, you will not get intense streaming of videos on Enlighten and the 150 MB of internal storage is going to be filled up very shortly. The 2GB of pre-installed microSD card is enough for basic use but that too will soon expire after a small collection of music.

LG Enlighten Retail Package

While unboxing LG Enlighten, we found the phone to be equipped with the following stuffs:-

• LG Enlighten
• 2GB MicroSD card
• Wall Charger
• MicroUSB Cable
• User Manual

LG Enlighten Verizon Battery Life

The phone is equipped with a 1500 mAh battery and without a large screen and processor; Enlighten does pretty well on battery life. On full charging, the battery gave us a talk time of around 6 hours.

LG Enlighten Price

On a two year contract, the price of the phone is approximately $ 80.

Despite its low specifications, LG Enlighten does give nice and cheap option for users looking for a sliding Android phone. If you are in search of a cheap smartphone on Verizon network, then Enlighten is the phone for you.