Review: LG Pop

LG Pop Review

Phone rating:

In a nutshell: The LG Pop is a super-compact budget touchscreen phone. Despite its small size, it features a large touchscreen display with a fantastic fun user interface. The Pop delivers all the goods that you'd expect in this price range: a 3 megapixel camera, a media player, a stereo FM radio, a web browser, Bluetooth wireless connectivity and a memory card slot. Similar in many ways to the massive-selling Cookie, the Pop offers an updated user interface, a more compact design and an upmarket look.
Best buy: *Free* with free line rental or £200 auto cashback from Mobiles.co.uk or with free line rental from Dialaphone (Silver) or Dialaphone (Black); or £79.95 on PAYG from the Carphone Warehouse or £79.95 from Dialaphone (Black or Silver) or £99.90 from Mobiles.co.uk.

Review: November 2009.

LG have taken the massively popular Cookie and turned it into the LG Pop, just in time for the Christmas market! But although the Pop is an enhanced version of the Cookie, it's actually even smaller, although cleverly LG have managed to keep the screen the same size. That's because the screen extends over almost the entire front face of the phone, giving it a sleek almost frameless appearance. It's definitely a nice looking handset. LG are keen to tell us that the Pop is the world's smallest 3 inch touchscreen phone. But perhaps its more useful to say that the Pop has a larger touchscreen than its rival the Samsung Genio Touch, but is significantly more compact in all directions. And the benefits of a large touchscreen display are immediately obvious as soon as you start to use the Pop. As we're fond of saying, when it comes to touchscreens, size really does matter! The extra high resolution and the large physical size of the screen make pressing virtual buttons a lot more fun. Turn the screen on its side for a full QWERTY keyboard, making texting so easy.

The Pop comes with some cool widgets that sit at the bottom of the home screen and allow one touch access to applications such as messaging, web browsing, etc. There are three home pages giving quick access to contacts, multimedia, etc and making the Pop a really fun phone to use. The contacts screen is particularly cool, showing who last contacted you and how they did it. We'd say that the Pop is one of the easiest to use phones around, but with plenty of customisation and fun features to stop people getting bored with it.

The multimedia features of the Pop are similar to other entry-level touchscreen phones. The camera is pretty respectable, with 3 megapixels and video recording too. There's a movie studio app and a slideshow app for viewing photos and video. The music player handles virtually any digital music format and there's also a stereo FM radio built in. The web browser is excellent, although as the Pop lacks 3G, web pages don't load as fast as we might have liked. If you get bored there are plenty of apps supplied, including a surprisingly addictive snakes and ladders game.

Whilst the Pop doesn't have 3G, it is a quadband GSM phone, so you should be able to take it anywhere in the world with you. In terms of connectivity, it has Bluetooth and USB, which is everything that you'd expect from a phone priced at under £100.

The Pop may not have added a lot more functionality compared with the Cookie, but it matches the capabilities of other entry-level touchscreen phones, and it does it in style with a beautiful large display, a super compact body, and a fantastic user interface. We would have awarded the Pop 5 stars, but our recent experiences with LG phones lead us to suspect that the firmware in the Cookie may not be 100% robust. For this reason alone (call it a hunch) we've decided to rate the Pop at 4 stars. Read the user reviews below for real-world experiences of the Pop, and see how reliable the Pop turns out to be. The Pop is good value on PAYG (selling at under £100 at launch) and even better value on contract, with freebies such as free line rental, an Xbox Elite or a Nintendo Wii on offer.

Features of the LG Pop include:

• 3 megapixel camera with digital zoom
• Video recording
• Touch sensitive screen: TFT LCD, 262k colours, 240 x 400 pixels (3 inches)
• Handwriting recognition
• Music player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC++/WMA formats)
• FM radio
• Speakerphone
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email
• T9 predictive text
• Document viewer (TXT, PDF, DOC, PPT, XLS)
• Ringtones: 64 voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
• Wallpaper
• Java 2.0 games
• Phonebook (1000 names)
• Memory: 48 Mbytes plus microSD memory card slot (up to 8GB)
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, Bluetooth
• Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, web browser
• Vibration alert
• Quad band
• Size: 98 x 50 x 11 mm
• Weight: 87g
• Talktime: 3.6 hours
• Battery standby: 360 hours

LG Pop Consumer Reviews

Love your mobile? Hate it? Please share your experiences to help other people choose the phone that's best for them. Please do not review this phone if you have not used it. This is a review site, not a forum, so please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear words or offensive language, and please, no advertising!

Average rating from 24 reviews:

Reviewed by damien from england on 9th Feb 2010
hi there ive recently just bought the lg pop and ive got to say what a nice phone i really like it and at only 100 pound what more could you ask for but only thing i want know if anyone can help me is can you put films on it ive a 8gig memory card in it but dont know how to do it any ideas would be greatful thanks damien
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Reviewed by Ally from Scotland on 8th Feb 2010
I bought the LG POP on Saturday, it's the first touch screen that I have bought and I really can't fault it. It's stylish, easy to use, has a good camera and all the functions are easy to find and easy to use. Yes, sometimes you touch something by accident or it enters something that you don't want to be in but that's because I'm heavy fingered. Texting is very easy (something I was worried about) and battery life is good. The screen is very clear, easy to see and the touch screen is easy to use once you get used to it. This is not the IPhone, hence the reason I think so many people don't like it as it is not as smooth to use as the IPhone. I would strongly recommend this phone to anyone, just give yourself time to get used to it and I'm sure you will come to love it.
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Reviewed by jim from england on 6th Feb 2010
The people who say this phone is bad are utterly crazy. This is a must-have for anyone with a liking of touch screens! It is very different to the lg cookie i have to say (which by the way, I like). Video quality on this phone is stunning!! Hope this was helpful!
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Reviewed by krazy from England on 29th Jan 2010
Ewww this phone is nasty
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Reviewed by June from UK on 24th Jan 2010
I had mine for a few days and having never dared to try touchscreen before I am pleasantly surprised! This may be because I have smaller fingers than most though! I also like the fact that it is possible to calibrate the screen so that the user can ensure that the screen is accurate to touch. The internet capabilities are good for a 2G phone but I downloaded Opera Mini (which you can do by searching for it in Google on the phone) and internet pages load pretty quickly. It is also possible to link it to a we-based email account so you can send and check emails on the phone. The screen is sharp and colours are vivid. Personally I feel that if LG upgraded the camera to a 5mp with flash and decent lens, and added HSDPA in the next model then they would have created the perfect touch-screen phone! For the money however, this is pretty good! Let's hope LG read this and add those upgrades!!! It is the small size of the device which sells it!
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Reviewed by Dave from UK on 20th Jan 2010
Poor. Tried to like it but touch screen response unpredictable often resulting in wrong inputs like making unwanted calls or constantly having to re write text letters. Battery life short and inadequate warning prior to exhaustion. Very disappointed.
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Reviewed by beeboo from japan on 16th Jan 2010
great phone great bargin
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Reviewed by jack from mainland on 15th Jan 2010
have a look at my review recommended buys i have put help ful tips on there i am going of course a bit but just have a look at it it might have some help ful tips 4 you it is under lg pop jack westyorks
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Reviewed by Snow :) from England on 10th Jan 2010
i got this phone yesterday and it is amazing :) the first time i charged it fully and the battery only lasted about 4 hours. but i have charged it back up again and it has been on full battery for the past day. it has a realy good camera but no flash so you cant take pics in the dark. but overall i think that this phone is amazing :)
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Reviewed by lg manager from uk on 2nd Jan 2010
this phone is not good because it is easily broken and far too small to see the screen. it feels like a cheap plastic kids toy and is really quite
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Reviewed by stubags from manchester uk on 31st Dec 2009
8 out of ten nice small slim phone sound is loud enough touch screen easy to use camera could be better well made no plastic feel to it just the right size not to big fits in to hand easy to set up 8/10 4 stars
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Reviewed by Phone Loverrr from UK on 28th Dec 2009
Somebody I know has this phone! They got it 4 xmas and says its very good!b It looks nice and all the phone reviews I have seen say its really good and better than the LG Cookie which a few of my friends have and they say its not great.. xxxxxx
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Reviewed by suzanne from England on 28th Dec 2009
I wrote something on the 4th December about this phone, And I've got another message, great phone, only problem is i don't know how to change the message alert! Never buy the Sony Ericsson W580i from 2007. Actually i would reccomend not to coz it's soooooo old but its a pretty reliable phone, everybody says it isn't but it is! Both good phones!
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Reviewed by Kirsten from UK on 23rd Dec 2009
Got this phone great easy to use, Camera and video quality very good and option to take simultaneous images good for action shots. The pictures can be easily added to the computer and look still look good on it and when uploaded onto sites like facebook. Very easy to use and having never had a touchscreen phone before i found it quite easy to get used to. Bought a stylus with the phone although don't really ever use it. This phone is great although it died on me the other day however after taking out the battery and putting it back in the phone functioned normally.
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Reviewed by Ashley from London on 19th Dec 2009
I think this phone is exellent and i would recommened it to anyone
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Reviewed by Woody from England on 6th Dec 2009
This phone is very good if you want to call people or text.If you need a bigger camara get DSLR.If you need more functions get a lap top.£109 from carphone you just cant beat this phone
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Reviewed by suzanne from England on 4th Dec 2009
I think this is a well good phone! It is small and effeciant! who knew you could get a brilliant touchscreen phone for just £100 quid or so!
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Reviewed by Olivia from N.I. on 1st Dec 2009
I loved this phone. It's great on features but the size of it put me off it. I t is quite small. Make sure you see the phone before you buy it. I got used to it though. Great features, all around great phone but just small on size.
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Reviewed by hussain from england on 22nd Nov 2009
great phone give it 5 stars
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Reviewed by Arron from UK on 12th Nov 2009
@MobilephonesUK: You've downgraded your rating of this phone based on the unreliable firmware in another model (with a different OS)? This is ridiculous! You can subsequently revise your rating if user reports prove that the firmware is unreliable, but to do so 'pre-emptively' is unjustified. [Editor's reply: Yes, it's a hard call. It's hard to know how a handset will perform in the real world once the networks have installed their horrible customised firmware on the phones, so we won't know how reliable the Pop turns out to be for a month or two. We could have given it 5 stars but we'd be letting people down if it later turned out to be a lemon. We'd rather give it 4 stars then upgrade it to 5 if everything works fine. We're going to face criticism either way, but we'd rather people felt that they could trust us. There are so many "review" sites out there that just write glowing reviews of every phone.]
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Reviewed by john from ireland on 10th Nov 2009
it is not good
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Reviewed by Caleb Kingston from Monaco on 7th Nov 2009
I so loooove the phone because of its simplicity and beauty. A veryy efficient phone indeed! It is so small really. I owned an LG Cookie and I so love this best!~
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Reviewed by Ash from UK on 4th Nov 2009
Great phone has great capabilities especially for the money, buy it ! you will not be dissapointed. it has fast internet, great screen, direct emails, fully customisable homescreens x3! great all rounder, great value for money.
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Reviewed by Josh from Spain on 10th Oct 2009
I got it today and love it !!!
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You can read more LG Pop reviews at RecommendedBuys UK.

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