Typical CDMA phone. Review on LG R2030

LG RD2030 is the first CDMA phone to be introduced in India along with Samsung N191 by Reliance Infocomm limited. I took this phone through the Rs.501 offer and has been using it for almost 1 year now.

The phone has a monochrome display. The display has a blue backlight which is one of the brightest I have ever seen in a phone. This is due to the 3 LED's on each side of the display. From heavy use, the brightness of the LED has reduced a little. LG service centres can replace the backlight, but you can get any choice of backlight color through unofficial channels. Make sure you replace the backlight from a trusted person. You can even replace the default one with the ''moonlight'' backlight seen in the RD2130 phone. I plan to do that when my backlight conks out. The phone has the option to keep the backlight on for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, always on, or always off.

I recommend that you never keep the backlight in ''always on'' mode. It reduces the life of the backlight to a small extent.Wallpapers for this phone can be downloaded from R-World. You can also have a typed banner or an analog clock as your phone background. In my opinion, the analog clock is the best thing to put as the background.

The menu system is well organized and it is not a pain to configure the phone to our requirements. Most of the submenu's can be easily accessed by using the 4-way centre keys. Adding address book entries is quite easy. One only needs to type the required number and instead of pressing the call button, press the save option and then specify name of the contact.

There is option to have multiple numbers for each contact and specify the default number. You can specify Home, Office, Fax, etc for each number and also add an email address for each contact. Finding names in the address book is quite easy and also there is an option to find email addresses.

The phone has a Planner section in the menu which contains a scheduler, an alarm, a calculator and a world clock. Of these I find the alarm to be most useful. The alarm is quite loud and could scare the hell out of a half asleep person. The phone also has a security feature. In the lock mode, you have to type a 4 digit lock code to gain access to the phone.

Unlike GSM phones where the SIM gets locked when the wrong code is given many times, this phone keeps on asking for the lock code!! This means any one with the patience to try out 9999 numbers can gain access to your phone! In case you forget your lock code, you can go to an LG service centre and ask the service personnel to unlock your phone. They use proprietary software and some backdoor mechanism to unlock the phone. You can also lock certain address book entries using the lock code. All the address book entries can be erased just by pressing one option in the security menu.

The inbox capacity of this phone is 30 messages. The Unsent box and Sent Items box can also store 30 messages each. You can store received messages in the Unsent box using the save option after pressing forward, but the details of the sender is not stored. You can also store messages in the Sent Items box. To do that first enable ''Save sent messages'' in message settings. Then to store a message without actually sending it, just press quit when the phone starts to send the message. By this way, you get more message space, but again details of the message sender is not preserved. The message alert tones are quite nice to hear, but it is not loud at all. This phone does not support group messaging. The abscence of that feature is felt often. T9 input is supported by this phone and all names in the address book are present in the T9 dictionary. MMS is supported through R-world as a Java applet.

This phone has very loud polyphonic ringtones. It is possible to download 3 tones from R-World. The quality of the ringtones are not very good compared to samsung, but the loudness is definitely an advantage. The vibrate alert feature of this phone is extremely effective. If the phone has been roughly used and dropped a few times, the intensity of the vibrations increases and you can HEAR the vibrations, especially of the phone is in the shirt pocket.When making a call, the loudness of the phone speaker is very high at its highest setting. People around you in silent areas can easily hear what the other person is saying. So when hearing stuff other people are not supposed to hear, its better to reduce the speaker volume. In this mobile, you can change speaker volume on the fly using the up and down keys in the 4 way keypad.

The network reception of this phone is directly dependent on your location. Range quickly reduces inside houses and basements and then speech starts to break up. Also when traveling at high speed, it takes longer to receive and connect calls and the reception starts breaking up easily. This phone has some features not currently supported by Reliance. These are Clear Voice and Voice Privacy. It is recommended that you set Clear Voice to OFF and Voice Privacy to Standard.

I must say the phone looks quite average. The silver looks good initially but appears dull after a while. LG should have made this phone available in various colors instead of the white and silver shades. The curvature this phone has is pleasing to me and kinda ergonomic. This phone has dropped from my hands 2 or 3 times and still there is no problem with it. The phone gets scratched quite easily though which spoils the exterior. A lot of this scratching occurs when the phone is placed in the desktop charger. LG should have thought more about that. Buy a good plastic cover or laminate the phone if you want it to retain its looks.

The keypad is comfortable spaced out for my large fingers and the phone is also easy to grip in my large hands. But the keypad blackens when used heavily for a long time, which makes the phone look very ugly and dirty. This is another reason for using a plastic cover. Replacement of the panels of this phone is an expensive affair through LG service centers.

Like a typical CDMA phone, the battery life is very poor. Under heavy usage, the battery barely lasts 24 hours. The phone really gets hot when using the R-World service for more than half an hour. Watching video clips through R-World significantly reduces the battery charge. Also the 3 LED's on each side of the display contributes to the poor battery life. The Li-ion battery is quite light and can be charged fully in 3 hours using the LG Desktop charger. Handle the charger with care since replacements are costly. The LED of the charger appears red during charging and becomes green when the phone is fully charged.

If the red light LED of the charger is blinking, then clean the metal contacts of the charger and the phone and the problem is solved.This saves an unnecessary visit to the LG service center. Please note that the battery has a special area where there is a red cross. If water or excessive moisture reaches this red cross, the guarantee of the battery is voided. If you can't send messages, make calls, or if R-World does not load (even if you don't have any issues with Reliance), switch off the phone, remove the battery, clean the contacts, put in the battery and switch on the phone again. The problem most probably will be solved. The phone's firmware can be upgraded for FREE at LG service centers. I have heard people say that the firmware upgrade increases browsing speed in R-World.

I heard Reliance no longer supplies this handset. If you are trying to get this handset second hand, make sure to check the battery and backlight. Also test the vibrator intensity. If the sound of the vibration is very high