Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocketnow.com and this is the hardware review of the LG fathom on Verizon Wireless let's take a look that is mentioned in the unboxing this is going to be one of the last windows mobile devices to ever be released because Windows Phone 7 is coming out in the fall so if you're on the Verizon Wireless you really have two choices if you want to slide-out keyboard and I'm going to show you the keyboard in a minute and Windows Mobile you have this and you also have the HTC Touch pro2 we're going to compare them a little bit in a moment but first let's talk a little bit about specifications the LG fathom is running Windows Mobile 6 point 5 point 3 there haven't been that many phones are released that have that point 3 Edition which means that it's more tuned for finger friendliness and other things as well it's running the qualcomm snapdragon 1 gigahertz processor compared to the HTC Touch pro2 as which is running a 528 megahertz processor so this device feels a little bit more snappy than the touch pro2 I have to say but it has less RAM only has 256 megabytes of RAM which really isn't that much these days compared to the touch pro2 which is 288 megabytes of RAM which also isn't that much but the touch pro2 on Verizon came out a while ago and the LG fathom is a brand new device it's got a 3.2 inch resistive touch screen the resolution is 800 down by 480 across and the screen on the touch pro2 and I'll bring the AT&T version over here is is significantly large with 3.6 inches diagonal same resolution 800 down and 480 across it's got everything else you would expect it's got bluetooth and Wi-Fi it has no front facing camera but it does have a camera on the back 3.2 megapixels no flash it has autofocus and it takes video up to VGA resolution not 720p or anything like that it's got a proximity sensor or light sensor and accelerometer things you would expect and it is a world phone it has a SIM card slot so if you're traveling to Europe and you have the right plan in place you can use this phone overseas so let's get to the hardware let's move around the device so here we have a status indicator which will blink if you have a new email we have this sort of brush memo look which is a nice touch but it really doesn't detract much from the kind of brick mists of this device it looks like a brick compared to the HTC Touch pro2 she has nice rounded edges it has a lot of Chrome on it and it looks I think a lot better than this LG fathom the screen is flush obviously and it is resistive so there is a stylus talk about that in a minute so you can't do multi-touch on here here are the buttons down here we've call start and call and it's always handy to have these buttons a lot of phones these days are emitting the coughs starting cloth end buttons then we have a quick shortcut to the Start menu in Windows Mobile here so let's go over to the side with 3.5 millimeter headphone jack we have a volume up and down rocker and here is the charging port for the microUSB for syncing and charging and they put a little soft reset hole typical Windows Mobile right here so you can access that quickly without having to take off the back battery cover going over to the bottom we have nothing the lanyard loop over here on this side we have a dual action camera button which is quite handy so you can press it down one time to focus the camera and all the way to take the picture over here we have a programmable button it's nice to see that over here we have the micro SD card slot no memory expansion is included on here just want to buy a card if you want to have some storage then we have the button up here to take it out of standby on the back as I mentioned 3.2 megapixel camera plus the speaker here if we take off the back battery cover it's the 1500 milliamp hour battery but I mentioned it has a stylus and the cool thing about the stylus that it's in a really really good location most most devices that have a stylus like the HTC Touch pro2 but the stylus on the bottom right or up here down here this device the LG fathom puts the stylus right here on the side so it's just super convenient to take it out from here unfortunately it's collapsible and you can operate the screen like so yes the Ilir a little bit out of style but it still provides good handwriting recognition and a lot of precision when you're using it now one of the problems with the stylus over here is that when you have the keyboard out we'll talk about the keyboard in a sec this style is this kind of out of sight it's behind the screen it takes a lot of finagling to get to but fortunately there are a lot of buttons on the keyboard that make it so that you can use the screen without touching the screen let me tell you why so we even a d-pad over here in an ok button so you can navigate quickly around on the screen with that and then we have some shortcuts over here so we can jump into email we can turn on vibrate and some other things as well over here is a back button and we also get a way to quickly adjust volume so again the side of us on the back not that big of a deal you still have a lot of ways to access the screen functions without actually touching the screen so this keyboard is a little bit annoying and I'll tell you why it is a four row keyboard so you get the letters at the top you don't have to pull down a button to type a letter like you would expect on some devices with a QWERTY keyboard but the letters are not staggered like you'll find on the touch pro2 which makes it very ergonomic they're very much arranged in a grid which is kind of annoying also hugely annoying is that the period and the comma are stuck behind the function key so the most two commonly used characters you have to press function every time to access it it's incredibly annoying I'm sure if you're getting this phone you'll get used to it the keyboard feel is generally nice save for the lack of ergonomics they are slightly raised so you get a little bit of a tactile feedback its clicky cookie enough but not too quickly so a generally good keyboard once you get used to the kind of awkwardness of it and the keys having to and the punctuation being behind the keys in terms of the in hand feel I'd say that the in hand feel is much lower quality than you'll find on the HTC Touch pro2 in fact I'm really curious as to why this device exists of you're on Verizon you're looking for a good windows mobile device with a slide-out keyboard you can't beat the HTC Touch pro2 it has an incredible keyboard it has a tilting screen it's fast and there's a good battery life it has amazing hack ability if you go over to XT developers not sure why they came out with the fathom it's kind of a refresh device you get six point five point three on it but there are a lot of compromise it's a really ugly looking device in my opinion the keyboards not as good you don't yet enough RAM and as we're gonna see in the software the software offering is kind of weak there's really not much work that LG did to the interface so in terms of the hardware I'm not terribly impressed you know I like the location of the stylus I I like the thought that went into making the keyboard very easy to use without having to touch the screen but I'm not that impressed I'll be back soon with the software review of the LG fathom on Verizon and if you liked the video give it a thumbs up that's it for now