Introduction:
The LG Lotus easily suits its name, it is gorgeous. Not just simply gorgeous but award winning gorgeous, this phone received the prestigious Red Dot Design Award. Certainly, LG Electronics did not grow this lovely cell phone out of mud and muck like its name sake, but it is a beautiful, creation nonetheless. And unlike many beautiful things, this mobile phone is also highly functional and practical.

This phone is accessible to Sprint customers and just entered the market in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Lotus offers all of the features that cell phone users have become accustomed to like a full QWERTY keyboard, a camera and Bluetooth compatibility and more.

The palm sized phone is easy on the eyes, however don’t let its good looks fool you; this phone has great insides too. It can store up to 12GB of music, images and video. It’s also a great multi-tasker and is one of the first mobile phones to include One Click, a way for users to personalize their home screen.

Design and Features:
One of the most unique elements of the LG Lotus is its design. It could be described as a clamshell type phone, since it opens up, however it is not oval-ish like most clamshell phones; it’s almost square with rounded corners. It comes in two colors, satin black and a Purple Rain type purple with embossed flowers, which ironically don’t look like lotus flowers. It has two screens, a 65K color capable 176 x 220 px on the outside that shows when the phone is closed and a 262K color capable 240 x 320 px on the inside, which serves as the main home screen. On the inside it has a convenient QWERTY keypad and a five-way keypad.

In terms of cell phone calling it has all of the standard features including speakerphone ability and a phone book that can hold up to 600 entries. The phone book can hold up to 7 phone numbers per entry plus email, IM and URL references. It can play music style ring tones including QCELP, MP3, AAC and AAC+ audio files or it can play voice ring tones. The Lotus is also compatible with Sprint’s wireless backup service, which saves your phone book information remotely, so if you lose your phone you don’t lose your phone numbers.

This mobile phone can also send emails and IMs. The LG Lotus is compatible with POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP email protocols and AOL, Windows Live and Yahoo! IM or chat services. So how ever you like to communicate, by cell phone call, email or chat, this phone can do it for you. In terms of text messaging, it can send Short Message Service (SMS), Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) type messages. Typing text messages in super easy on the backlit, full QWERTY with the assistance of T9.

The Lotus has the standard productivity tools including a calendar, a calculator, a tip calculator, an alarm clock, a stop watch and a to-do list. Another practical ability it has is the capacity to work with Sprint Navigation. With the Lotus’ GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions you will surely never get lost. Sprint Navigation can also provide up-to-date traffic information and has information on over 10 million points of interest (POI) across the United States.

It is compatible with Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP / HFP / HSP) and USB. It transfers data by CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and communicates calls by use of CDMA 800 / 1900 network technologies. As mentioned above, the Lotus has an easily accessible mircoSD slot that can support cards that can add up to 12GB of additional storage.

Now for the fun stuff, the LG Lotus can play MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+ and M4A audio file types and it is of course compatible with the Sprint Music Store. The Sprint Music Store offers hundreds of thousands of individual songs that you can download directly to the Lotus phone or to your PC for 99 cents. The Lotus is also compatible with Sprint Radio, which has over 100 live stations and 50 commercial-free streaming radio stations available. The Lotus has the ability to play music in the background while the phone is doing other things. Keep in mind, however, that you can only access Sprint Radio if you purchase the Sprint data plan.

This phone can also play video and is compatible with Sprint TV. Sprint TV can provide all kinds of mobile video including full length and on-demand episodes of your favorite shows. Through Sprint TV you can download content form popular TV channels such as FOX sports, The Weather Channel, the Disney Channel, CNN Mobile and Comedy Central Mobile. Like other Sprint exclusive services, Sprint TV requires that you subscribe to a data plan.

To capture images the LG Lotus has a 2.0 megapixel camera with night mode, self-timer, brightness, and white balance controls. Plus it can record up to an hour of video with a QVGA resolution of 320 x 240 pixels 15 frames per second.

What’s Missing:
The LG Lotus, sadly is not WiFi compatible, it uses WAP 2.0 technology but the phone is designed to be more of a messaging phone than a web device. It would also be nice if it could play regular FM radio, but that really is nitpicking.

There have been some mixed feelings expressed about the square-ish shape; however, shape preference is a matter of opinion. Some find the shape odd and others love it.

Summary:
The LG Lotus has a unique and exceptional design that is both beautiful and functional. It is a great messaging phone that can send all types of text messages and can communicate by IM and email. It’s also a great music phone that can play and store up to 12 GB of music.

This phone lacks very little, unless you are looking for a phone specifically for web browsing. If you would like a phone that is superb at web browsing and playing music you may want to check out the iPhone 3G http://cell-phones.toptenreviews.com/multimedia/apple/apple-iphone-3g-16-gb-reviews-23036.htm or if you would like a Sprint compatible phone check out the Samsung Instinct. http://cell-phones.toptenreviews.com/multimedia/samsung/samsung-sphm800zks-reviews-21926.htm