kathyburkeyx: LG Spectrum eyes-on

Friday, January 13, 2012

LG Spectrum eyes-on

Sports, sports, sports, sports. Hey, it's LG spectrum, a good phone at sports! LG showed off its 4.5-inch handset today, during its CES kickoff press event -- and when we say "showed off," we mean exactly that, the company had two models on-hand, and it wasn't letting us poor members of the press actually get our paws on the thing.

From our vantage point, however, it really does look to be a solid piece of hardware. It's fairly skinny, in spite of that large display. The body of the thing is pretty straight-forward -- it's a large slab, with rounded corners and a border around the edge that forms a bit of a lip at the point of contact. The top bit of the bezel rocks the Verizon logo and a small, front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera. Below the display are three buttons, the menu and back white touch buttons and a silver home button that adds a bit of flourish to an otherwise drab bezel.

That 4.5-inch IPS HD LCD is clearly the centerpiece of the thing, and given the company's ESPN partnership, it was keen on using it to show off sports. And we have to say, the tiny basketball players looks pretty crisp -- high-def may be the key to watching video on such a relatively small screen. Well, HD and squinting.

Flip it over and you'll see a subtle checkered pattern on the glossy rear. At top, a good deal of real estate is devoted to the 8MP camera, including a large, silver border. A white LG logo is smack dab in the center, and a not-so-subtle reminder of the phone's 4G LTE capabilities graces the bottom, along with two small speaker grills.

All in all, this is shaping up to be an extremely solid phone -- sports-lover or no. It'll hit on January 19th for $200.

Gallery: LG Spectrum eyes-on