LG GD900 Crystal preview: First look

Gsmarena have posted a preview of the LG GD900 Crystal. Here are the phone's features and their final impression.

LG Crystal at a glance:
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 (alternative version: 850/2100) MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 12, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
Form factor: Touchscreen slider
Dimensions: 105 x 52.5 x 13.5 mm, 127 g
Display: 3-inch 16M color TFT touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
Memory: 1.5GB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
UI: LG S-Class Touch UI
Camera: 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and D1 video recording at 30 fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port
Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off, FM radio with RDS, DivX/XviD video support, TV-out, touch-sensitive keypad, gesture shortcuts, multi-touch input, office document viewer
Battery: 1000 mAh battery

There you have it folks - the LG GD900 Crystal surely is a handset that cannot go unnoticed. The see-through keypad is a true innovative solution and as such it receives it due credit. The fact that its practicality is barely up to scratch is hardly worth mentioning as the looks are what has been gone after here.

Kudos to LG R&D for thinking out of the box and successfully denying our claim that there isn't much room for creativity when thinking full-touch operation. We are also pretty glad that they chose such a well equipped phone for a base, hence putting together a really attractive product with some excellent value.

There's no GPS on board, but the scarce GPS navio software options and the variable success rate we had with those on the LG Arena and Viewty Smart makes us think that it's not a great loss. After all, Wi-Fi is still on board and for mission-critical applications, you can always get an external Bluetooth GPS receiver.

So from where we stand, the GD900 Crystal is a great step forward and now all it needs to succeed is to keep up the initial pace. Coming up with a nice camera, and making a good job of those nice gesture shortcuts are topping our wish list, as the S-Class UI is already looking pretty good the way it is.