Yucky Goldstar

This post is intended at creating awareness about LG phones among all cell phone users and potential cell phone buyers. If you do not have the time to go through the entire text, I have three words of advice for you – LG PHONES SUCK!!! This post can also be treated as a tutorial on what NOT to do when designing a product from scratch. The reason I mention 'from scratch' is because once you've screwed up on your first version like LG did, theres no turning back.

It all started 4 years back when I bought my first LG phone, a simple RD 2030. The very first day that I brought it home, the backlight just wouldn't go off. That meant going all the way to the service station. The people there were most unconcerned. They did not think that a cell phone was important to people and that it might be the only means they have to talk to others. Moreover, there was just one service station in the whole of Pune. (Now I think there might be one more). The only reason I got a replacement of the instrument was because I could pull a few strings. Once I got down to using the phone, it just sucked! The menu was very badly designed and clearly not tested enough. For example, someone has given you a number on a piece of paper to call. You quickly enter it into your phone. You end up on a screen showing you the number with the correct name. You try calling the number from the screen, you cant! You have to come back to the main screen, go through the phone book to reach the number again and only then can you call. I guess some person must have been told to design the saving functionality. He did just that, nothing more, nothing less! There were several other clumsy features like the one above of which I shall not give a description. The only plus point of the phone was that it was very robust.

Two years later, my dad gifted me another LG phone, this time an RD 6130 camera phone. I was thrilled but then it turned out that this supposedly better phone was WORSE than the much simpler 2030 I owned earlier. Contrary to what happened on the first day of owning the previous phone, this time the backlight wouldn't come on! (And you thought that contrary to the first time, I didn't have problems. Ha! Gotcha!) Once again, I had to spend hours and hours at that LG service station with the rude staff and again, I had to use my contacts to get a new handset.

This phone has horrible software too, in some places even worse than the simpler 2030. Here are some of the things that I find screwed up with the phone:
1. Have you ever seen a snippet of code that runs on your phone?? I have! Snippets of Java have appeared out of nowhere on the screen!
2. Once you are inside a menu you cannot do more than one item. After doing what you have to inside a menu, you are transported back to the main screen, each time leaving you to navigate to where you left off.
3. When I connect the phone using the data cable to the computer, my phone does not show as a drive. So the only way I can get photos off it is by mailing them from the phone to myself.
4. This just has to be the dumbest feature of the phone: When I need to browse the last dialed numbers, I am shown names of contacts. When I need to browse contacts I last messaged, I am shown plain numbers. It is left to every user's memory to map numbers to names. Else note down all the numbers on a piece of paper and use their most efficient menu system to do the needful.
5. The alarm doesn't ring when the phone is off.
6. You can't save phone numbers that appear in text messages. This was something that even the simpler version had. Have you ever seen a phone that doesn't have a feature that a simpler version of the phone had?!
7. Suppose you set the alarm to some time and forget about it. Now you realize that you want to change the time you had set the alarm to. You have to go all the way down to where you set the time, click a few buttons which turn off the alarm, come out of the menu, go back into the alarm place again and set the different time.
8. You have crazy messages that pop up on the screen that you can make out were written by people with varying degrees of English proficiency. One message says “Alarm Over”!!

I can go on and on about how immature the software on this phone is.

One thing LG just doesn't realize is how to maintain uniformity across their phones. This can affect a project in two crucial ways:
1. Their customers have to go through a whole new learning curve if they buy another LG phone because all their phones behave completely different from each other. In this aspect they can take a lesson from Nokia!
2. It is obvious that their programmers are sitting wasting their time writing and rewriting code. If only they had standard interfaces, they could have reused libraries in all their phones which would have gone a long way in reducing the effects of the previous point. In this they need a lesson from Google!
These are the effects of non-uniformity across LG phones:
1. All LG phones have radically different chargers. I'm sure all Nokia users have borrowed someone else's charger at least once in their life time. You can never do that with an LG!
2. All LG phones have different data cables. Not only does the socket for the data cable differ, but also its functionality.
3. Every LG locks and unlocks with different keystrokes. On some it's Nokia style, on some it's keeping the 0 button pressed and I wouldn't be surprised if on some others it means visiting their website.
4. The 'space' and 'next word' are also on different keys for different models.
5. I'm sure it must be clear up till now that the menu structure varies drastically from phone to phone.

There are plenty of other features that vary across models, but that I'll leave as homework for you when you buy your next LG phone!