The Budget Phone Having Amazing Features. Review on LG C2500

My last handset was the good old Nokia 1100 which I used for last 2 years, during which it gave flawless performance. However, recently I thought of advancing to a color set and my prerequisites were camera, FM and mp3 player. I did a lot of features over the internet as to which product is good. I zeroed on 4 sets - Nokia 6600, Motorola L6 , Motorola E398 and LG C2500. I did product comparisons in gsmarena, indiagsm, mobile review and ofcourse mouthshut. Finally considering all sides like price, features, design etc., I finally zeroed on the LG Set and purchased it. Like anything, it has certain pros and cons, but overall, this is the best you can get in this price with a budget of 6.5K.Firstly, the phone is a camera mobile. It has a standard VGA CMOS camera with a maximum resolution of 640x480. Maximum zoom is 3x. However, you cant zoom in 640x480 resolution. The camera gives a wide range of features. The shots can be saved in high, medium and low qualities. There is white balance which offers Auto(automatically balances the whiteness), Daylight(the pics come in awesome clarity and colorfulness), fluoroscent(for standard tube light environment) and tungsten(for the rooms lit with electric bulbs). For the last two options, the picture tends to be slightly grainy in the darker portions. Also there is Night mode and Continuous shots. The camera clarity is generally excellent in high quality mode.Secondly, the phone has a awesome mp3 player. Mobile review describes its mp3 player as - ''t may sound paradoxical, but one of the cheapest products by LG possesses the most function packed media player''. The inbuilt speaker which is located at the hind side of the phone gives good sound clarity and can be played without headphone/speaker - however distorts sounds of high pitches a little at full volume. The phone also has FM Radio option which can be , however, heard with the headset or the speaker plugged in and not in handsfree mode. Both of these however comes free with this set. You can manually store 10 radio stations.The phone functions as a 60MB pen drive when connected to USB terminal of PC. It has no bluetooth or Infrared and USB is the only way for data transfer. The data cable comes free with this. The phone doesnot require any software for data transfer. Once you connect the phone with pc, and select Mass Storage the phone appears as a removable disc in My Computer of Windows XP and the data transfer speed is quite fast. You can create folders, delete files and do anything you do with your hdd, and can even format this disk !!! The phone comes with a file manager which also has various options. The set can also be charged through USB or through the free charger that comes with it. The phone can be used as a modem for GPRS (i dont have much idea regarding this).The phone comes with 64 chord polyphonic and you can also use your mp3s as ringtones here. The ringtones play in a default ascending manner and I couldnot find anyway to change this. Also, turn on, turn off and sms tones can be selected from only four provided tone. The keytones have an amazing human voice tone and can act as an accessibility helper. The sound reception is good and the speaker is set to slightly right side of the centre of the phone which in beginning is a litttle problem but you will get adjusted to it gradually. The service light is behind the four way navigation key and you can change its colour. The design of the phone is elegant with steel grey and black colour and looks much more beautiful than the promo pics. The keypad looks like a bird flapping its wings but due to this, you may mispress other buttons in the beginning but soon you will get used to it. The phone has a 65K CSTN 128x128 color display which I feel is quite good. It comes with an array of preinstalled applications and games (Java supported ones too) and you can install more laters. There is a voice recorder with which you can record voice/calls till the amount that internal memory permits. Unfortunately the phone doesnt have a cardslot for additional memory. However, few phones in this range has 60MB memory. The phone also has a handsfree mode and conferencing mode. The messages can be written in T9 format or simple text. You can also send mms, check your BMI (body mass index), world time, simple calculator etc etc numerous features.Freebies : The phone comes with a datacable (though the cable is hardly 1 ft in size), a headset (for listening FM /mp3) and speakers (yeah ones we have in our pcs) with whom I generally play the FM every evening. The phone is for budget segment, such freebies are really an exceptional gift. In my advice, if you want a phone with great functionalities (with certain minor limitations) and dont have much to spend, go for this phone. You will fall in love with it. LGezbuy site shows a current price of Rs. 5990/-(May 22, '06). In short, this phone rocks.