LG GD900 Crystal review

The GD900 Crystal actually has a neat range of connectivity on board, and it's all very well executed. In fact, we'd struggle to find a problem with it.

Wi-Fi (something we love to see on non-smartphones) is quick to set up, and will auto connect to the same network when you switch it on. It would be nice to have a shortcut to operating the Wi-Fi, but being slightly locked away in the menu or on the icon homescreen is hardly a bad thing.

We also like being asked which method we'd like to use when browsing. Normally you have to set a default in these situations, so we were glad to be able to choose between 3G and Wi-Fi when both were present.

Bluetooth 2.1 (with A2DP support) worked well, as we previously mentioned. Pairing with our headphones and the PC was quick and swift to set up, and the phone happily remembered old connections. So often we find handsets that can't scan for the device we want to sync, and happily the GD900 Crystal isn't one of them.

GPS is annoyingly not included, as we mentioned before, so Google Maps is never going to be able to hit the heady heights of location-based services it's capable of. It's a real let down that such a thing isn't included on this phone, especially when assumed that all phones could install it cheaply.

PC Connectivity

Connection to the PC is a fairly simple experience. Load up the PC Suite on the CD, connect the phone and let it install with the inbuilt drivers and you're good to go.

From there, you can interact with all the usual options such as importing music and backing up contacts, but LG allows you to do it with a nice interface (for instance you can simply click an arrow to decide whether it goes from the phone to the computer or vice versa) and all the actions are performed quickly.

The interface is a little basic (and at times, almost Windows 95-like visually) but hey, it does the job and lets you send texts from the PC too, so there's not a lot to dislike.