As the name suggests, the LG Shine KE970 actually does shine in its stainless steel casing. It's amazing that a million mobile phone users grabbed one within 4 months afterits release.

The LG Shine KE970 Look

Any mobile user who is fashion conscious will be enticed to get an LG Shine KE970. Aside from its sleek and shiny casing, the slide design of the LG Shine KE970 gives it a clean and simple but fashionable look. The display simply turns reflective like a mirror when no active. And below it, you only have the right and left buttons, and the wheel while are keys and connectors are well-placed on the side.

Upon sliding the LG Shine KE970 open you will observe well-spaced laser-etched keypads due to high end phones. But what you will appreciate about it really is its great responsiveness. Of course, you will love the great sky blue backlight on keypads and the matching dark blue on the other keys. Everything just looks well together.

The Multimedia LG Shine KE970

LG Shine KE970 comes with a 2 MP Schneider-Kreuznach camera lens and a LEDflash. Well, the start is quite fast and the shutter is quite responsive. With a good lighting, auto-focus is not a problem and you can take great photos. However, it does not perform as well in low light situations. Macro shots, up to as close as 4 cm, are possible though.

It also helps that you have white balance options and picture quality settings. The only problems lies on the shutter lag and lag in saving files. Images can be viewed in both landscape and portrait. Your gallery can be displayed in thumbnails and image list. However, thumbnail loading takes longer so most users end up using the list instead. This snapper can catch still images at 1,600x1,200 pixelOn the other hand, video is not that excellent as it only records up to 3GP videos.

LG Shine KE970 users have one complaint about ring tone performance. With a low volume, users can hardly hear when calls are being made to it. This is, of course, because rings come out only from the earpiece instead of a separate speaker.

Nevertheless, the LG Shine KE970 supports commonfiles formats such as AAC, AAC+, MP3 and 3GP. Listening to the music is quite easy with the intuitive controls. You can even select equalizer settings and view visual effects. Aside from that the LG Shine KE970 also let’s you choose between shuffle and repeat play modes. The LG Shine KE970 has a 50 MB memory. But if you need more, you can also add up to 2GB in micro SD memory card.

The LG Shine KE970 Interface and Connectivity

Since the LG Shine KE970 comes with a wheel the menu comes in a list. But it’s still possible to set them into a grid. Using the menu is quite easy and there can be shortcuts using the keypad if you know the code of the feature you want to use.

In general the LG Shine KE970 call reception is quite good with occasional rough voice quality. Speakerphone support is not that very good though. The LG Shine KE970 also supports USB and Bluetooth technologies. As for messaging, you can send and receive the usual SMS, MMS and of course, email through POP3 and SMTP.

The phonebook is fast but searching for a contact using the menu takes too many clicks and steps. You can set speed dialing in your LG Shine KE970 but voice dialing though.

When it comes to Internet connection, you are limited to EDGE speed due to the lack of 3G technology, which is not so slow but also not so fast at all.

All in all, the LG Shine KE970 is a flashy phone but excels mostly in basic functions. It’s good enough for such functions and good enough for those who will be content with that.