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LG DoublePlay (T-Mobile)

18.05.12

The slide-out, four-row QWERTY keyboard is an interesting one. It features large, well-separated plastic keys that are easy to press. But the keyboard is split into two distinct halves; QWERT on one side and YUIOP on the other. This is to make room for the second touch screen in the middle; more on that in a moment. While I like the size and feel of the keys, I just couldn't get used to the big gap separating the two sides of the keyboard. Frequent messagers will be better off with the Sidekick 4G or the myTouch 4G Slide.

The keyboard is separated by a 2-inch QVGA touch sub-display. Unlike the dual-screen Kyocera Echo (3 stars), the second screen here doesn't function as an extension of the primary display. Instead, it offers a number of shortcuts you can access, which include Messaging, Group Text, Music, Photo, Browser, Email, Richnote, Social+, and Calendar. The idea is neat, but it isn't particularly useful.

Messaging, for instance, opens a new window on the sub-display on which you can type and send text messages without having to abandon whatever you're doing on your primary screen. The Browser function, meanwhile, allows you to store bookmarks on the sub-display; when you tap on one it'll open the page in the browser on the primary screen. But the small size of the secondary display makes tapping around difficult, and you are limited to only using the few shortcuts LG has made available. There's no way to use apps like Netflix through the secondary display.

Source: PC Magazine