LG Vortex Cell Phone Review

Using the Vortex

The Vortex uses the standard Android WebKit browser. Although not as speedy as some, webpages draw fairly quickly. The typical pinch and spread can be used to zoom in and out. As mentioned earlier, while you can view YouTube videos, this phone does not support Flash.

The music and video players are standard Android applications, which are fairly bare bones, but they do support a large variety of media formats including MP3, WMA, unprotected AAC, DivX, WMV, MP4, and 3GP. You can sync music between the PC and the Vortex and you can also create and manage playlists. The speaker is loud enough to use to listen to music as long as you are in close proximity.

The 3.2 megapixel camera on the Vortex has many features, but lacks a flash, so it is only useful in lighted environments. There are three picture quality settings and five resolutions. Using the best resolution and highest picture quality, the phone takes decent pictures. Color representation is good, even though very slightly faded. Like many camera phones, you will need a steady hand.

We were especially impressed by close-up photos which under well-lit conditions were crisp and clear. You can adjust the ISO, white balance, and color effects and there are six scene modes (Automatic, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night, and Sunset).  There are also minimal editing tools, like crop and rotate. With Android 2.2 comes a new image gallery that groups images in stacks by date or in your own custom albums. You can also easily send photos to others or upload them to the Internet

The video recorder can capture video in 640×480, 320×240, and 176×144 resolutions, but were of pretty poor quality.