Gadgetell Review: LG Sentio by T-Mobile USA

I have spent a few weeks trying out the LG Sentio on T-Mobile and it is a pretty solid featurephone even with its limited hardware. It doesn’t come with any earth-shattering features, but it does what you would expect from a normal phone – call, text, and limited web options.

What is it?

The LG Sentio features a 3 inch touch screen with a virtual QWERTY keyboard, web access through T-Mobile’s web2go browser, 3G connection, slim profile, weighs only 3.26 ounces, 3MP camera, video capture, and can play a variety of audio formats. The LG Sentio comes in a navy blue finish and features T-Mobile’s Social Buzz which aggregates social networking feeds. The LG Sentio is currently available with T-Mobile for $69.99 on a new two-year contract.

The Good

The LG Sentio fits comfortably in my hand pocket due to its slim form factor and compact 3 inch touch screen. The phone can be used easily with one hand and it displays weather, calendar, and other apps of your choosing on the home screen. On the bottom of the screen are four different buttons – Dialer, Contacts, web2go, and Menu. The home screen is completely customizable in terms of apps, but the icons on the bottom row are there permanently. There are only three physical buttons – call, back, and end. Unfortunately, T-Mobile doesn’t have the best service in my area so web browsing is pretty slow. If you are reading an article or checking on your favorite website, the web2go browser will be able to handle the task, but the web browser is pretty basic since it’s a featurephone.

The phone comes with a pair of earbuds specifically designed for the phone and it works well when listening to music. I popped in my microSD card from my other phone and was able to listen to music using the phone’s speaker and the earbuds.

In terms of messaging, the phone separates texts based on the contact and it organizes texts within a thread the way an iPhone does. It’s easy to switch from T9 to QWERTY just by holding the phone horizontally. For those who prefer virtual keyboards to phyiscal ones, the LG Sentio offers a nice, compact virtual QWERTY keyboard and T9 keypad.

It offers a Social Buzz app which allows you to sign into various social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. For a basic featurephone, it gets the job done of managing social networking, but I find a smartphone handles this task much more efficiently and effectively.

The camera (3MP) and camcorder both load up fast when touched and there is a switch that you move up or down to switch between camera and camcorder. Lastly, the battery life is impressive and easily gets through the day with the normal amount of calls, texts, and web browsing.

The Bad

It doesn’t come with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, so you have to use T-Mobile’s native earbuds. The lack of WiFi is disappointing, especially because I don’t have strong T-Mobile service in my area and web browsing would have been much better with WiFi. The HTML web browser doesn’t load websites as well as I would like, so I wouldn’t recommend getting a data plan on this phone – save it for a smartphone.Sometimes I type faster than the keyboard is able to respond so it delays in messaging from time to time. I think the phone is a bit pricey considering its hardware, I’d like to see it available for free on a new family plan or at least under $30 with a two year contract.

The Crux

It’s refreshing to see manufacturers still create featurephones for those who don’t want/need a smartphone. If the price was lowered a little bit, it would be a great phone for anyone who needs a simple, yet capable phone. However, if you don’t mind spending $70 for a quality, low spec’d phone, I would still recommend the LG Sentio on T-Mobile.

Check it out [T-Mobile]