Thumbs Up:

LG Lotus Elite has fashionable design, numerous multimedia and excellent features, full QWERTY keyboard and external touch screen on the lid. The Elite also offers impressive call quality.

Thumbs Down:

LG Lotus Elite has similar features as its predecessor. The photo and speakerphone call quality needs to be improved.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: CDMA2000 1X
Band: CDMA2000 1X 1900/800
Phone Design: Folder type
Caller ID: Yes
Other Features: EV-DO Rev. 0. support, Bluetooth, 2-megapixel camera, Touch-screen, micro-SD card slot and GPS.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

LG Lotus Elite has Google Android as operating system. It has 2.4-inch touch screen external display of 240×320 pixels that supports 18-bit (262,000) colors. Another 2.4 inch internal display has same resolution. The Elite is using the Sprint Nextel as service provider.

There is a 2-megapixel camera that works as both still camera and camcorder. The still image storage resolution options are 320×240, 640×480, 1280×960 and 1600×1200. In addition the video recording resolution options are 128×96, 176×144 and 320×240. The music player supports AAC+, MP3 and AAC format sounds.

The features of Lotus Elite include speakerphone, voice dialing, microSD card slot, GPS/A-GPS, touch-screen display, EV-DO Rev. 0. support, Web browser and instant messengers. The Elite also supports Web mails including Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AIM Mail and AOL Mail. It has inbuilt Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and AIM. The Elite also has support for Outlook Web Access (OWA) to access any OWA-enabled company’s account.

LG Lotus Elite has 1000mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 354 minutes of talk time and 389 hours of idle standby time.

Razzle Dazzle:

LG Lotus Elite has the same fashionable design of its predecessor. It is 2.44 inches tall, 3.43 inches wide and 0.75 inch deep and it weighs around 4.76 ounces. The Lotus Elite has curvier and sleeker body than original Lotus. It has rounded corners and chromed shining details on its borders. The Elite has solid construction and flexible joints. Elite phone comes in red color with capricious floral tattoo, which looks sexy.

Inside Dope:

LG Lotus Elite is the successor to the previous Lotus which we saw in 2008. The Elite has the same square design, but it is sleeker than its predecessor. The Lotus Elite has touch-screen external display on the lid, so that you can access most of the functions without opening the phone. A lot of the features are same in the original Lotus and new Elite. LG Lotus Elite costs around $99.99 with two-year agreement from Sprint after mail-in rebate of $50. At CES 2010, the Elite phone had been nominated for “Best of CES” awards in “cell phones” category.

The biggest improvement in LG Lotus Elite is its 2.4-inch touch-screen external display, which is big and takes a lot of space on small phone. It has a resolution of 320×240 pixels that supports 262,000 colors. The touch screen is resistive, not capacitive and also it isn’t doesn’t respond quickly like Apple iPhone or Nexus One.

The external display shows animated wallpaper instead of showing standard wallpaper like most cell phones. It shows the indicators of signal strength, date/time and battery life and also gives messages or missed call alerts. You can customize the external display to access contacts list, recent call history, speed dial contacts, photo gallery, slide show of pictures, and messages. You can swipe the finger horizontally on the screen to go through above options. In addition, external display also works as camera viewfinder. You can also select its screen saver and adjust the touch-screen accuracy. Overall, the external touch screen is very intuitive and easy to use.

Charger jack, volume rocker and 2.5mm headset jack sits on the left side. Whereas, the micro-SD card slot, screen lock key and camera button are located on the right side. You will find a metal loop on the back to tie the cell phone with included reddish leather strap. You can flip open the phone and see the camera located on the right hinge. When the LG Lotus Elite is closed, the same camera lens will appear on upper left rear of the phone. As a result, you can use the internal display for self-portrait.

2.4-inch internal display of the LG Lotus Elite has the same resolution and colors of the external one, but internal display is not a touch-screen. It has Sprint OneClick interface of center carousel of tile shaped shortcuts on the bottom row of home screen. This allows use to access phone functions including account details, Yahoo Mail, Google Menu for Gmail, YouTube and Google Search, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Sprint Navigation and messages. You can add and remove the shortcuts from this carousel.

In the LG Lotus Elite you can adjust the applications, dial digits, notepad, browser, message font size, backlight time and brightness. You can also take photo IDs for unknown contacts, private phone numbers, unsaved phone numbers and usual contacts. Main menu can be adjusted in list view or grid view.

You will find the spacious navigation controls underneath display and hinge. It consists of Talk button, End/Power key, Back button, speakerphone key, four-way rectangular toggle with center OK/Menu key and two soft keys. All these keys are flat except toggle, Back and speakerphone buttons.

You will find three dedicated shortcut keys for Text, Email and Shortcut. You can map the Social key to launch any social network application between MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. The Text key will take to new text message and Email key loads the email inbox.

The QWERTY keyboard is located underneath the shortcut keys. All the keyboard buttons are spacious and raised over the surface for easy and quick typing. The numeric keys have orange color highlights and the space bar has larger size than other keys.

LG Lotus Elite can store 1000 contacts in its phonebook. Each contact can save six phone numbers, three email address, memo, URL, Instant Messenger username, street address, birthday, job title and company name. You can divide the contacts into groups and pair them with one ring-tone and photo for the caller ID.

The features of LG Lotus Elite include stop watch, 33 polyphonic ring-tones, world clock, notepad, calculator, calendar, alarm clock, speakerphone and vibrate mode. The additional features are mobile Web browser, stereo Bluetooth, document viewer, voice memo recorder, voice dialing, A-GPS, voice command, wireless backup service and USB mass storage device. The Elite also supports Sprint Family Navigator and Sprint Navigation for GPS.

The messaging features are main forefront for LG Lotus Elite. It includes POP3/IMAP4/SMTP emails, text and multimedia messaging, and instant messengers. The Elite also supports Web mails including Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AIM Mail and AOL Mail. The Lotus Elite has inbuilt Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and AIM. It also has support for Outlook Web Access (OWA) to access any OWA-enabled company’s account. You can also signup with Sprint Mobile Email Personal Account to configure the Microsoft Exchange account.

LG Lotus Elite has EV-DO Rev 0. support to access Sprint mobile broadband services. It has Sprint Music to download/purchase songs, Sprint Radio to access streamed audio, Sprint Movie for pay per view access to movies and Sprint TV for on-demand live shows. The inbuilt music player resembles the interface of Sprint Music Store. The features of music player are transfer of songs via USB, create/edit play-lists, repeat and shuffle modes, and capability to run music player in background. You can store additional tracks on micro-SD card.

LG Lotus Elite has 2-megapixel camera that can take pictures in three quality settings and four resolutions. The camera has settings for four-shutter sounds plus silent option, night mode, self timer, 4x zoom, nine fun frames, six white balance presets, two brightness levels and four color tones. It also has a camcorder to record videos of short length or as per memory card space. You can record videos in three quality settings and three resolutions. The other options of camcorder are same as still camera. The photo quality is not good as the images look blurry and colors seems muted.

You can personalize LG Lotus Elite with screensavers and wallpapers. More options, alert sounds and ring-tones are available at Sprint mobile store for download. The Elite has few applications and games including Social Zone, NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, Frogger Evolution, and demo versions of Minigolf Las Vegas 4 Prizes and Family Feud.

We made some calls through LG Lotus Elite via Sprint network for testing. The overall call quality was good and impressive. We received loud, clear and natural sound at our end without distortion. The callers also received same quality of sound at their end without static or background noise. However, some callers told that we sounded robotic or machine like just for few seconds. The speakerphone call quality was poor. We sounded muffled at their end even we spoke closely to microphone. Also, we received tinny sound at our end.

We also played some music and tested EV-Do speeds. The music quality over the speakers was not good. The audio quality was overall thin and tinny. We would recommend you for using headset to get better audio sounds. The video from Sprint TV was good and has little buffering time. Moreover, 1.5MB song downloaded in 30 seconds from Sprint Music.

LG Lotus Elite has a battery life of 16.25 days of idle standby time and 5.9 hours of talk time. The digital SAR is 1.2 watts as per FCC radiation tests.

Nitty Gritty:

LG Lotus Elite has stylish and striking design. It delivers great performance and excellent messaging features. If you need a fashionable messaging phone and do not mind the speakerphone or photo quality, then you can purchase the new – LG Lotus Ellite.

Random Posts

• May 4, 2009 -- Review Of The Nokia 6700 Classic (1)
• June 1, 2010 -- Pantech Breeze II – Affordable basic phone (1)
• December 11, 2009 -- Sony PSP Go – Smaller Sleeker Better (7)