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"Best phone Sprint PCS phone <$100 with 2-yr agreement..." on by jpang88
Pros: Light, sleek, superb sound, bright displays, lots of user options, easy interface, and much more!
Cons: No camera flash, few accessories, ear piece and speakerphone occasionally make high-pitched background tones.
Summary: After having the opportunity to test several Sprint PCS phones (including the Sanyo VI-2300 and SCP-200, Samsung RL-A760, and LG VI-125), I decided on the on the LG PM-225 because it had the best overall sound, user options and interface, and camera (just in case I need it).
When talking on the phone itself, the person you're talking to is loud and clear, like they're right next door! The other phones made the other person sound distant and muffled.
Perhaps even more impressive is LG's speakerphone quality! (FYI: the LG VI-125 was just as good). You can place the phone a few feet away and the party you're calling can still hear you as if you're a few inches away. In fact, most can't even tell they're on speakerphone!!! This is perfect for when you're in the car and don't want an earpiece in your ear. My only complaint is that I can occasionally hear high-pitched tones in the background when using the speaker phone and earpiece. I've gotten used to it now and I can tell you that this does not disrupt your conversations. The clarity and sound are unparalleled compared to all the other phones and the benefits far outweigh this subtle glitch.
The LCD displays (both Main LCD and Outer LCD) are bright and beautiful! The time and date are well displayed on the smaller outer LCD and you can choose the background screen saver. Great background screensavers from which to choose.
The ringer choices are fun, crystal clear and more plentiful than on the other phones listed above. The "Tools" included (like the tip calculator, alarm, etc.) are all appropriate and will be useful.
The camera is pretty standard. Frames-per-second when scanning prior to picture taking is on the low end. No flash and limited VGA resolution hinder this phone from a higher rating. If you want to take real pictures, buy a real digital camera. The cameras on most phones are good for "spur of the moment" pictures (i.e. for fun, or after a car accident, etc.)
The phone is light, sleek and sans the old protruding antenna - less moving parts and bulkiness. Instead, the cell phone antenna is built in to the phone, giving this phone a great ergonomic look and feel.
Bottom line: Best phone Sprint has to offer for <$100 with a 2-yr agreement. If you don't think you'll ever need the camera, I would recommend buying the LG VI-125. Cheers! -
"Good phone, a few complaints" on by roxanner
Pros: Color (blue lighting behind keys), size, button size and location, color front LCD display, speaker phone
Cons: Camera quality, turns off without warning
Summary: I have had my phone for one month now and am generally happy with it. I debated between this phone and the Samsung PM-A840. I liked the looks of the LG phone better... silver color with blue backlit keys, color front LCD display (the Samsung front LCD is black and white and the phone itself is black plastic). However, the camera on the LG phone is not good quality. It looks okay while you are taking the picture, but then once it saves it, the picture appears distorted or blurred. I did download some pics and on my laptop they look much better, so I think it's the quality of the LCD screen on the phone that makes the pics not look great. Another complaint is that when the battery dies, the phone shuts off suddenly, and you have no warning beeps or anything, so your conversation can be cut off suddenly. The sound quality and reception are good and the speaker phone function is a plus. I haven't done much web stuff yet so can't comment much on that.
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"Solid performer with useful features" on by AdamKirk
Pros: Bright easy to read color displays; very user customizable; excellent overall performance, useful onboard tools; independent backlight settings on inside display and keypad; no external antenna.
Cons: Some of the included wallpapers for screensaver are too busy; picture quality of camera not that great; no speakerphone button on outside.
Summary: The displays are nice and bright, and even have contrast controls for both – nice touch there. There are also enough color/graphic schemes that everyone will find at least a couple of them to be to their taste right out of the box without having to add their own wallpaper in. One caveat however - some of the included wallpapers are pretty harsh against the text on the smaller outside display. Some are just so graphically busy that it makes the text blend into with it a little too much (and difficult to read). Fortunately they did include a couple of plain single color backgrounds, a yellow and a red, both of which anyone could easily read the text against. Lastly the PM-225 offers several menu skin coloring schemes and one can change the font sizes for certain functions – also a nice touch.
The buttons are decent and very adequately illuminated with blue LED backlighting. I especially like the way one can navigate through the menus on this phone. It was a pivotal factor in my decision on going with the PM-225 – a lot of the other models I looked at were much more tedious in the way one had to use the buttons to scroll through stuff whereas on the 225 it made sense to me immediately. One also has programmable shortcuts for the items they access the most to make getting around even faster and easier.
The contacts (phonebook) section provides for up to 500 entries – with up to 5 phone numbers for each entry - theoretically allowing someone to store up to 2500 phone numbers in the PM-225. This should be more than adequate for the average user, and probably more contact storage than I’ll ever personally need.
The onboard tools included were actually useful and not so much a novelty. One gets a scheduler, alarm clock, note pad tip calculator, regular calculator and a world clock. This phone includes no games but some are downloadable into the phone (at a cost). I personally couldn’t care less – my previous phone had games in it and I never played them. There are also a variety of downloadable applications for the PM-225, also available at a cost.
This phone comes with 30 ring tones out of the box – 12 monotone and 18 polyphonic. I personally just stick with the boring monophonic ring tones and spare people of my personal tastes in music – however those of you into this type of expression should have no fear! This phone has the ability to download custom ringers, including one’s favorite artists, sound effects or whatever the heart desires.
The web browser is as good as could be expected on a 1.75” display – since it is 65,000 colors it makes for a lot more useful browsing as opposed to a simple monochrome or backlit LCD matrix display (like on my old Kyocera 2255). Browse time is of course very slow to those of us used to the speeds of broadband. Text messaging and instant messaging are also implemented and seem to work fine as well, but as with any phone that doesn’t have a built in keypad for typing messages it’s a tediously slow process to instant message with someone.
The camera functions are pretty straight forward – although the editor review claims there is a built in flash – that is NOT the case with the PM-225. The picture quality is pretty unimpressive but does the job in a pinch. The amount of pictures one can take depends on the resolution used – which is up to 640x480 in fine resolution (and the only USEABLE mode in my opinion – so I’m stuck with only 16 photographs at a time). If one can put up with the lower resolutions they will be able to take considerably more photos, but generally speaking one doesn’t have a lot of memory to work with in any situation where the desire is to take lots of pictures.
In Action:
I am very happy with the performance of this phone in actual use. Compared to my old cell phone, the PM-225 has very superior reception/transmission performance and much better sound quality – both in what I hear and what the person I’m talking to hears. I have never lost a signal in the middle of a call with this phone (which wasn’t the case with my old set) and have yet to find a spot in my local area where I lose the digital signal at all. For a phone that has an internal antenna it simply is a really good performer.
The audio reports I have received have been very good, and the speakerphone performs just as well. The most notable comment I got about the speaker phone was that it sounded like a regular speakerphone without all the dropouts – I was holding the phone about 2 feet away from my mouth and the party I was talking to had no trouble understanding me whatsoever. I have to confirm the high pitch squealing reported in other reviews – it’s not a big deal or particularly irritating but this does happen when the speakerphone is in use.
The displays do wash out a bit in sunlight, but asking any computerized TFT color display to perform in direct sunlight is a pretty tall order. At night I have absolutely no problems getting my way around the PM-225 as the display is bright and clear, and the backlighting makes the buttons very visible.
Battery performance has been good and it seems to somewhat exceed the manufacturer's claims both in use and in standy mode. It certainly holds a charge considerably longer than my old phone did.
Wish List:
A button or mechanism on the outside that would release the flip would have been handy, especially in the sense of being on the road and not having a hands-free set. This phone is simply a pain to open up with just one hand because of its small size.
More memory for the user interface would be nice – although the PM-225 is generally responsive to commands, there are times where it is sluggish – evident of a device running on just enough memory to make it functional. When it comes to performance of devices that use CPU’s - more is more. Having said this, when I updated the software to this phone the newer version proved to be a bit more responsive to commands overall.
And lastly, I’d like to see the outside display at least show the time continuously. My old cell phone’s display did that and it was nice to just be able to glance at it without having to push any buttons. The PM-225’s outside display certainly wouldn’t need to be continuously on but just a simple basic text indication of what time it is would be handy and certainly wouldn’t kill the battery.
Overall, LG did a nice job in the design of this particular phone, and the overall performance is really good, especially considering it has no external antenna. The ability for user customization is outstanding, even without adding in one’s own wallpapers or ringers. -
"not a great phone" November 5, 2005 by shinbet
Pros: speaker phone
Cons: weak reception, lousy ringtones, poor picture quality, low ear piece volume
Summary: I have this phone for about 10 days now. I used to have Nokia 6010 from cingular. I thought the phone although was very cheap, it had a great reception, and earpiece volume, and great battery life. I switched to sprint, and after research I bought LG PM-225. Here are my thoughts: Forget about the camera. It has poor images quality. Speaker phone does not have clarity, although people on the other end can hear you well. Ringtons: I like traditional rings. I don’t like musical and other teenage style midi ringtones. My old Nokia 6010 had only one usable ringtones. This phone has none. Why cant they put a set of regular professional ringtones??
When the battery is low, and you’re on the phone, you get no warning ! the phone just shuts off. The phone reception is not very good, although this may be a Spring PCS service issue, I’m not sure. The phone has a low radiation number, and I think that’s good.
When you’re talking on the phone, the screens shut off completely (maybe to save battery??). You have no control over this. This can be annoying since maybe while your talking, you wanna find out the number or the time, etc. you have to press any buttons to get the screen back on.
And the last thing, the highest volume on the earpiece is not loud enough, so if you are walking on street, street noise will deter your conversation. My old Nokia had great volume. I don’t think I would purchase this phone again for $80. I would had imagined in year of 2005, they can make flawless phones.I hope my opinions help. -
"battery life is bad, not a reliable phone" on by Jake232
Pros: it's nice being able to use your own pics for the caller ID, and the speaker phone button is in a nice place
Cons: battery life is not very long, and it freezes up sometimes
Summary: The camera takes bad blurry pictures, and when you use it, it takes up a lot of your battery. I don't know if it was just my phone but when I bougt real music ringtones they sounded really bad and muffled. I had to charge my phone every other day, and I don't even use it a lot. When I would scroll through my phone book, or through anything it would freeze up for a couple seconds. After it was charged it wouldn't work so I would have to restart it, sometimes it did that w/o even charging it. Mine didn't get very good service either.
I now have the Fusic, which is working out great, but I have only had it a week. I have only charged it once when I got it and it still has 3 of the 4 cells left on it, and I have used the MP3 player and phone, so the battery life is great. The speakerphone is loud and clear to, as well as the ringtones.Updated
When I got my new phone that I have now, I had 3 new voicemessages that I never got on the PM-225. They were from 2 weeks before.
The way the camera is set up, there is a button on the outside of the phone that is real sensetive, so you end up taking pics in your pocket w/o knowing it, which wastes EVEN more of your battery.
Don't beleive what the phone displays about it's battery life, it can have a full bar when you open it, but once you make a call and are on the phone for ONE MINUTE, it will beep once, then 2 seconds later will shut-off and die. That happened to me countless times, so I wasn't able to tell who I was talking to that my phone was dying.
I think that covers it, there may be more..Bottom line though...DO NOT GET THIS PHONE!
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