Building on last year's Chocolate phone, the Shine is a slider phone that lives up to its name with a full metal body, stainless steel all round and the piece de resistance: a 2.2-inch LCD screen which is actually reflective – so it doubles as a mirror. This is a feature which ladies wishing to touch up their lipstick when out and about will love.
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But unlike last year's Chocolate phone, the Shine was designed to appeal to men as well as women, according to LG, which cites the stainless steel looks and ability to fit in a business shirt pocket as men-appealing factors.
But is this true – will men really like having a phone with a mirror on it? Surprisingly, while I was testing it out, my male friends admired the phone's looks more than my female friends – though that could just be saying something about my friends!
Features are adequate enough considering the handset's emphasis on style, with a Schneider-Kreuznach certified 2 megapixel camera and video, a MP3/AAC/WMA music player and 512MB memory (which isn't expandable though). The Shine has 3G and, excitingly, high speed data download (HSDPA – High Speed Downlink Packet Access) capabilities with a dedicated video calling function. It is also Bluetooth enabled.
The camera takes decent enough piccies, it has a flash as well so you can take shots in the dark, trendy bars and restaurants you are likely to hang out in if you own this phone. If you want to listen to music, however, keep in mind that the LG has no connections except one proprietary one hidden on the side. The upside of this it keeps the phone looking neat and sleek. But the downside is that if you want to plug in headphones, you must first plug in a headphone adapter (supplied) and then your headphones. Since this is the same connection you would use to charge the phone, you obviously can't listen to music via headphone and charge it at the same time (if you wanted to) though a way around this is to use wireless Bluetooth headphones.
