LG Secret review

The LG Secret is a great little sliderphone that packs a powerful punch on the photo and video front.

See also:

LG KU990 Viewty review

As well as a 5Mp camera, the LG Secret's slender form houses a video recorder capable of capturing the action at 120fps.

We loved its design too. The LG Secret has a lovely scratchproof glass screen that covers the whole of its front from just below the trapezoid/parallelogram-shaped speaker at the top to the trio of buttons at the base to initiate or cancel a call or cancel a command.

The slider action to access the numeric keypad is smooth and accessing the many functions the LG Secret can offer is straightforward.

And while the touchscreen mechanism for jumping through options is noticeably less responsive than the superlative touch-sensitive controls of the Apple iPhone, this is one hell of a well-designed and well-crafted phone.

When you press each button or touch-sensitive virtual button, the LG Secret handset vibrates and gives a little ping – you can of course turn this off, but since the Secret can be a little slow to respond to your digit, it also helps you know your request has been noted.

In general, we found the LG Secret efficiently brought up the main menu for a feature type, but when we tried to select one of the sub-menus it was much slower to respond. Thankfully, next to each item is a number – press the corresponding digit to leap to your chosen setting or command.

The LG Secret has features in abundance. As well as the 5Mp camera seen on the adverts, there's both video and media editors that help you add simple effects and titles to the video clips you record and the photos you snap.

The LG Secret is able to capture video at 120fps (frames per second). Few phones are capable of such a feat and the footage we took, while distinctly amateur, was also markedly crisper and smoother than from other phones. It even supports DivX.

Playback is a delight too. While the snaps we took ourselves were nothing to write home about, the preloaded photos and video clips on the Secret demonstrate just how good the phone's screen resolution is. We also liked the fact that LG has included an auto-rotate feature so you can view both portrait and landscape photos as large as the screen dimensions allowed.

In many ways, we felt that the LG was a marked improvement on the popular Viewty model the company launched towards the end of last year. The metal fascia and slide-up design made it feel both more of a luxury designer item than the plastic-coated Viewty and, unlike that phone, we didn't feel dependent on the touchscreen interface for every stroke.

The LG Secret is also a far easier phone to navigate. You quickly get used to being able to head back to the main screen with a quick press of the righthand hardware key at the bottom. From here you can access your media, Web n Walk internet (on T-Mobile) and a full menu of applications from the centre button.

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Total reviews: 4,313

• www.o2.co.uk
• 0800 089 02 02
• O2
• From free with contract
• £399 inc VAT SIM free

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