The LG Town is a social networking phone for those who like a physical keyboard to work with. The handset is fairly affordable, and as we write O2 is offering it with £10 off its £80 original price. O2 has it in an exclusive silver and black colour scheme, but it is also available in various other colours including blue and purple.

At the price you can't expect sophistications like Wi-Fi, GPS or 3G, but there is a touch screen, albeit a resistive one that is less responsive to finger presses than capacitive screens are.

The keyboard is fairly impressive considering the relatively low cost of this phone. It offers four rows of keys and they are well separated from each other which makes them easy to hit even if your hands are quite large or your fingers on the stubby side.

There are some shortcuts on the keyboard to messaging, IM, mobile email, Facebook and web browsing. And there are some arrow keys, too, that you can use for moving about within messages.

With a Facebook client embedded into the phone it is a bit sad that there is no Twitter application. If you are a very keen social networker you are probably going to want both, and the only way to get Twitter is to go via the web browser, which is Opera Mini. With no 3G on board, web browsing is always a fairly slow and painful process, though.

Beneath the three-inch, 240 x 400 pixel touchscreen there are Call and End buttons and a thin narrow button that when pressed opens a tabbed window on screen that gives you access to any running applications and a set of favourites that you designate.

There are three home screens, each with its own role. One can contain up to four widgets, one has room to house your favourite contacts for quick access and the third offers access to LG's LiveSquare services. This screen you can fill with animated avatars representing your favourite contacts, and it then presents messaging alerts and provides you with a quick way of messaging people.

The camera is a bit of a disappointment. It shoots stills to 2 megapixels and video at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240. There is no flash, though there is a burst mode, self timer and a couple of colour effects. Stills are generally disappointing if you take them off the phone, though they do look OK when viewed on the handset.

Music playback is a more satisfactory experience, with a 3.5mm headset connector on the top edge of the handset, a music player that benefits from an equaliser and widget based controls, and an FM radio with RDS and no fewer than 50 preset memories available for autoscan.

With relatively low level specifications the battery does well, and should last for a few days if you don't go heavy on the music playback side of things.

Verdict
The LG Town GT530 is a nice little handset for those who like to keep in touch via the written word at a low cost. If you want web access, including access to Twitter, though, the lack of 3G will be a real irritation.

Company: LG

Contact: 08442 020202

Tags: twitter facebook opera mini lg touchscreen wi-fi global positioning system web browser