LG GS290 Cookie Fresh Review

LG GS290 Cookie Fresh is an inexpensive entry level version of the LG Cookie Plus. Original LG Cookie has registered sales over 12 million till now and it is one of the most popular phone of LG. LG Fresh being an budget phone, lacks  Wi-Fi & 3G connectivity, but it retains the social networking integration to keep up with the times, the cartoon User Interface and standard 3.5mm audio jack. The Camera has been downgraded to 2 megapixel resolution. The Cookie Fresh also features 3 inch resistive touchscreen, microSD card slot, Bluetooth, FM Radio and music player. The LG Cookie Fresh is available in ten different bold colors. You can listen FM radio without plugging the headphone to the phone.

Design

The Cookie Fresh is the typical inexpensive touchscreen, in terms of design. Its look is not so breathtaking, but it is not bad either. Its design is almost same as its brother LG Cookie Plus. It has same Candy bar design and manages to look youthful with curved corners. It is available in whopping ten colors. The Fresh is made from plastic that doesn’t give higher end feel. The sleek Cookie Fresh measures 4.25inches tall, 2.09inches wide and 0.51inches thick. This phone is solid and gives sturdy feeling in the hands. We find that the battery cover is bit loose

The Fresh sports a 3 inch resistive touchscreen display, which has the resolution of 240×400 pixels –standard for an economical touch phone. It is affected by a pixelisation, so it is not a better display we have seen. But still it is a good competitor in its class. As it uses resistive technology, hence the screen is less responsive. You need to press harder to get the things done. It is not equipped with built-in accelerator; you need to press key to switch between two modes.

All the keys felt nice. Below the screen Menu, Call button, and End/Power buttons are present. A volume rocker and a microSD card slot are located on the left spine. There is a camera key, a power button and a microUSB port on the right spine. MicroUSB port is used for charging and as well as for syncing with PC. A camera lens is at the back of the phone. A 3.5mm audio jack is present at the top of the device.

Interface

The interface in the Fresh is simple, intuitive and user friendly. LG has retained the attractive cartoon type interface. The icons, homescreen, widgets are eye catchy. You have the option of customizing widget position on the screen. You will find three home pages. It has Live Square feature logs the frequently used contacts, messages and other important events at one place, so that you can have quick access to them.

Usually, LG’s budget touch phones are hardly snappy and there are occasional lagging aspects with them. However, those issues are minimized with LG fresh, but still don’t match up Samsung Corby S3650. It also has task manager.

The Fresh comes with sophisticated 1000 entry phone book with a room for few details. You can search the contacts with both given and family phone. It offers full qwerty keyboard in landscape mode and alphanumeric keyboard in portrait mode. We don’t have any grain with the onscreen keyboard.

The Fresh as a budget phone, it doesn’t feature 3G and Wi-fi. You will get full HTML web browser and you can browse the internet and even you can open complex websites. Loading of pages at the beginning takes some time; once the pages get loaded the scrolling becomes easier. You can zoom the web pages by double tapping on the screen. You also get Facebook app, but it is sluggish. It also nicely integrated with Twitter, MySpace and Youtube.

Camera

The camera resolution has been downgraded from 3megapixel to 2 megapixel, which is acceptable taking price into consideration. You will get white balance presets, effects, exposure, timer and night mode. You can record videos at QVGA resolution. The image and video quality is acceptable for its price. If you are more concerned about them, you better go for Samsung S5560 or LG GT505. its essential features include Alarm, To-Do / Tasks, Calendar, Calculator, World Clock, Photo editor, Notes, and Speakerphone.

The music interface is simple and effective that lets you to perform different basic things like repeat & shuffle, forward & backward, creating & editing playlists and rating a song. It has a built-in equalizer. The loud speaker is louder and clearer comparing with many of the phones in its category. The music player supports the audio formats like MP3, WAV, AAC, eAAC+, and also video formats like H.263, MPEG4, H.264. It comes with FM radio with RDS feature. You can listen FM without plugging the headphone. The sound quality is excellent and it catches FM stations in seconds. The external memory can be extended up to 8 GB via microSD card slot.

Performance:

The LG Cookie Fresh is powered by Lithium-Ion (900mAh) battery. It has battery life of 6 hours on talktime and keeps the mobile operational for 16 days on standby time. The Call quality of the LG Fresh is pretty good without much distortion.

Battery is worse when comparing to Samsung Corby S3650 and it is better when compared to LG Pop GD510.