LG Cookie Fresh GS290

Full Review

LG’s Cookie phones have done well for themselves around the world on account of their reasonable performance coupled with a light price-tag. The LG Cookie Fresh GS290 is the newest phone to take on the Cookie tag and is looking to win over people looking for an inexpensive touchscreen device.

Features

The Cookie Fresh’s feature-set can be effectively termed as smartphone^lite, as it has plenty of features that smartphones have such as a camera, organizer and scheduler, social networking apps, e-mail etc. but also forsakes plenty of other features.

The LG Cookie Fresh is designed for the college crowd and its design (and TV spots featuring actors) underscores that point.

For instance, the Fresh makes do without 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, leaving only GPRS and EDGE connectivity. The camera is a miniscule 2MP with no flash. The GS290 has a reasonably large 3.0 inch screen with a resolution of 240x400 and 256K color output. Its microSD slot supports cards up to 16GB and the phone’s bundle includes a 2GB card, which is great.

The Cookie Fresh sports the same proprietary UI that was on the LG Cookie Pep. The phone offers three homescreens- one where you can arrange widgets, one for your favorite contacts and one that features animated avatars of your most recent contacts, known as LiveSquare. The main menu consists of four sections that can be scrolled horizontally: Communication (that includes Contacts, Recent History, Messaging etc.), Entertainment (comprising of Camera, Gallery, Music, My Stuff etc.), Utilities (that consists of Browser, Google Search and Dictionary among others) and finally, Settings.

The GS290 comes with a bunch of pre-installed applications including built-in Facebook and Twitter apps. These work fine but take an inordinate amount of time to log in thanks to sub-par EDGE speeds. There are also shortcuts for Picassa, Orkut, MySpace and Flickr but all they do is take you to the site on the browser. Some other neat applications include an English-Hindi, English-English dictionary, a well-defined organizer, a memo pad and a video editor to edit videos on the phone.

Design & Usability

The LG Cookie Fresh is designed for the college crowd and its design (and TV spots featuring actors) underscores that point. The test model we received was a mix of white, orange and black and quite honestly, I can’t see this particular make being used much outside college (and high school) campuses. Fortunately, the Fresh does come in more understated color combinations.

The GS290’s build quality is very middle-of-the-road. While it feels solid, the build is plasticky and the phone does look a little cheap. The battery cover is especially very thin and, I would guess, easy to crack.

While simple and easy to operate, the LG Cookie Fresh’s UI is sluggish and the touch isn’t as accurate as I would have wanted it to be. The resistive touchscreen also means that you have to press the screen a little for the phone to recognize touch input. However, the GS290 uses haptic feedback very well as every touch elicits a detectable vibration that helps in the overall touch experience.

Browsing, Multimedia etc.

The LG Cookie Fresh GS290 has a pretty basic browser for your Web surfing needs. The browser is alright while surfing the mobile Web but falters when trying to surf proper pages. This is mainly because the Fresh is restricted to browsing at limited EDGE speeds.

The Cookie Fresh is a very good device for listening to audio. Music on the LG sounded loud and punchy and was great for listening to all genres of music. The loudspeaker was also suitably loud and clear. For its price, the Fresh manages to play videos decently. You can use the bundled LG suite to convert movies for the phone but in my tests, the software had problems converting WMV videos. The FM app has a simple interface and auto-scanning for stations was quick. However, the FM reception wasn’t great and there was plenty of static when the phone was in motion.

An image shot outdoors and a close-up image shot indoors with the Cookie Fresh (click on images to enlarge)

I didn’t have great expectations from the GS290’s 2MP camera and it managed to under-achieve in every aspect. The Cookie’s camera is hands-down one of the worst I have come across. Images I shot outdoors were dull and indoors it got worse. Indoor images were universally hazy, noisy and washed out. Videos recorded also looked pretty bad with low frame-rates and dull colors.

The Fresh’s battery is average at best and lasted just about a day on a single charge with regular usage. Call quality is loud and sharp, although the mic is a little too sensitive and manages to catch some background noise.

Bottom Line

The LG Cookie Fresh GS290 carries a price tag of Rs. 6,100 in India. The price-tag looks especially good when you look at the phone’s feature-set. However, its performance is strictly middle-of-the-road and that takes away a whole lot from the phone. At about the same price, I would pick the Nokia 5233 and the LG Cookie Pep over the Cookie Fresh. If you are willing to pay about Rs. 2,000 more then you can also consider the Samsung Monte S5620 which gives you Wi-Fi and 3G.