Continued

Around the back is a 2MP camera with auto focus that is certified by Schneider-Kreuznach - do not confuse this, as the Shine does not use a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, it is just certified to meet a certain quality standard. It is still a rather decent camera by mobile phone standards and it is accompanied by a small LED light that is meant to replace the flash, although it is only good up to about a couple of meters. You can snap pictures up to 1,600 x 1,200 resolutions, but the general quality of indoor snaps are quite grainy, so it is not great for low light situations.

As you can see, our dear managing director, does not really get lit up that well by the tiny LED light and the background in one of his more frequently visited watering holes is taking over, as it is much brighter.

Popping the back of the phone reveals the battery, which is rated at 800mAh - LG claims a standby time of up to 280h and a talk time of up to 3h - the sim card slot and a micro SD card slot. We tested the Shine with a 1GB SanDisk Ultra II micro SD card and the only problem was that the files already on the card got deleted by the Shine, something that was not expected, so be careful about that if you intend on buying this phone.

There is a wide range of buttons on the right hand side, although the other sides of the Shine are bare. Going from top to bottom we have a covered connector that is combined for the charger, headset and USB cable. We are uncertain if it is only standard USB or USB 2.0 as our review sample did not come with a USB cable. Next is a pair of volume control keys, a quick access button to the MP3 player application and finally a camera button that launches the camera application and also doubles up as shutter button.

The Shine is a tri-band GSM handset and it works on the 900/1800/1900 bands and it also supports GPRS and EDGE. Bluetooth is also part of specification, but only version 1.2, although it has support for A2DP profiles. There is 50MB of built in memory and about 5MB of this is taken up by the pre-installed applications. You get a couple of games, one is a fishing game and the other is a puzzle game - it might keep you occupied on the train until you get bored with them. The built in MP3 player application is quite good and the Shine is supplied with a remote control that has a 3.5mm jack, so you can use your own headphones with it.

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