“Bling bling” is the way a lot of things are going and mobile phones are no exception.
LG became something of a fashion phone maker with the “Chocolate” range of handsets and it has continued this trend with the Shine. The KE970 is a slider and it is very slim at a 13.8mm, although it measures 99.8mm tall and 50.6mm wide. It weighs 118g and most of this weigh is because of its metal exterior. If feels very solid, although the grey plastic release button for the rear cover looks out of place and should at least have been chromed. The 2.2-inch, 240x320 screen is behind a glass cover and it can display 262,000 colours.
The Shine is a slider and the keypad is as such situated behind the screen when it is not in use and it simply slides out below the screen to reveal the keypad. If you have used a recent Motorola in the RAZR family, then you will be familiar with the kind of keypad that LG outfitted the Shine with. It is not as tactile as a normal keypad, but it is not as bad as a touch screen. When it comes to phone keypads, the same rules applies as it does to PC input peripherals, there is a lot of personal preference that goes into your choice.
You generally do not have to use the keypad, as apart from the call buttons, the clear button and the number pad, all other controls are located below the screen and you can use these to make calls from your contact list. There are two soft keys that correspond to the menu options on the screen. The main control consists of a scroll wheel – or scroll key as LG wants to call it – with a button on each side of it. The scroll wheel works very much like that one a mouse, but due to its size, it is not as responsive as it should be and there did not seem to be a setting to change the sensitivity. The buttons on each side of the scroll wheel are used to go left or right in the menus, while the scroll wheel is for up and down navigation as well as making selections.
The menu can be set up in two different ways, either as a three by three icon system or as a scroll list. It is actually easier to navigate the larger icons that it is to go through the scroll list, the only problem being sideways navigation as the two little buttons on each side of the scroll wheel are quite difficult to press at times.
