LG GD910 review: Tick-tock, tick-tock...

Introduction

If you see someone having a chat on their wristwatch you may decide they've lost contact with the mothership. Well, it beats us what you'd think when the mothership calls back. But maybe this little personality test will help us figure it out.

You find the idea of a video-call enabled wristwatch phone:
a) Cool
b) Fool-around cool
c) Downright mental
d) Man, not another Trekkie test!
e) Who cares as long as we make some buck out of it.

All right then, if you answered B, C or D it's pretty obvious you're not from LG. And hey, if you answered A, those who answered E will love to meet you.

Tick-tock, digital wristwatch phones are nothing new actually, but somehow we need to pull ourselves together and start taking them seriously. LG and Samsung do, so there must be something, right.

LG GD910 official photos

The LG GD910 for one is dead serious judging by that price tag they have there. Or shall we call it LG double O seven - not so much for the cloak-and-dagger form factor as for the license to kill your savings. Well, it does make some sense really: almost acceptable dimensions and all the basic phone features duly covered. Touchscreen, fast data and video calling on a wristwatch - go ahead and call it crazy but you'd still be interested.

So, let's check out that specs sheet then, shall we?

Key features:

• Wristwatch form factor with a leather strap
• Water splash resistant (we're still raising the 900 euro needed to test it)
• 1.43" capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels
• Comes with a Bluetooth headset
• Excellent sunlight legibility
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and video-calling
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• 2GB onboard storage
• Video call camera capable of making photos in VGA (640 x 480 pixels) resolution
• Flash UI, optimized for finger usage
• Text-to-speech enabled (no Klingon support as of yet)
• Voice commands
• Flight mode

Main disadvantages:

• See water resistance above
• Bulkier than even a large watch
• No way to expand the built-in memory
• Display colors and contrast are pretty washed out even in the dark
• UI is somewhat slow at times
• No FM radio
• Trekkies would rather go for a lapel phone

We bet some of those disadvantages you already knew, while the rest of them will receive their due explanation as the review unfolds. For now we'll just say we don't have a clue about the LG GD910 target audience so we're trying to cover up our embarrassment with lame jokes.

LG GD910 at ours

Anyway, while hardly any self-respecting geek will wear one, the LG wristwatch can still count on the geek's benefit of the doubt. We sure hope we don't live to review ear implants as the next in mobile phones but we guess we can handle a wristwatch. Let's see what it's got (and what it doesn't).