First Impression:

+ Cool looking phone, with a chrome-plated rim on the side,

+ Impressive specs, Quad-band, HSPDA/UMTS, Wi-Fi

+ has QWERTY keyboard, the keys are easy to press

+ Has dedicated button for access to task manager, by default set to the LG Task Manager, you can change it to the WinMo Task Manager or something else

- Takes a while to boot up, feels like 10 secs

- The touch screen takes a while to get used to, it’s not bad, but not as responsive as iPhone

+ Fingerprint sensor doubles as scrolling control

+ dedicated volume buttons

o By default the “today” screen is set to the WinMo default screen, but LG also implemented it’s own, so I switched to that one, which is an improvement over the WinMo apps in terms of finger-friendliness (the WinMo ones were mostly designed for stylus use).

– The contacts manager is unintuitive and hard to use. Functionality as simple as “jump to contacts that start with C” is lacking.

– The task manager: has screen shots for the opened applications, but the close buttons are too small

After playing with the phone a bit more:

- Fingerprint sensor is cool, but don’t be surprised if it takes more than a few swipes to recognize your fingerprint, you have to swipe slowly. Also, it traps dust.

o Camera is 5MP, but quality is so-so

o No dropped calls yet, but I haven’t seen the reception bar reach full yet.

- Loaded with tons of trial software that I can’t get rid of (they’re in the ROM, so unless you flash the ROM they’ll be there forever)

- Internet Explorer is slow, so I replaced with Opera Mobile 10 beta, but some AT&T specific links now won’t work (all those Media Net links)

- The LG (called LGIdle) shell is better than the WinMo default Today screen, but would be great if I could customize some of the buttons (e.g. replace IE with Opera and remove links to the trial software)

- Replaced the LG contact manager with iContact, which looks like the iPhone contact manager

- Looking into replacing the shell with PointUI (good) or SPB Home (best!)

- Some apps try to connect to the 3G network even when I have the WiFi connection

- Some apps (esp, WinMo Marketplace) tend to lock up when they’re accessing the Internet and the phone become unresponsive.

Conclusion:

It’s a cool phone but the software that comes with it out of the box is lacking and be prepared to spend time researching (and $$) to get some better apps.

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Update #1:

- Specs: I neglected to mention that this phone has a 1Ghz processor, and 480×800 screen. So spec-by-spec the eXpo blows many of it’s competitors out of the water (iPhone, Droid, HTC tilt 2). The actual experience is another question though.

- Touch screen sensitivity issues: it’s usable, but since it has a resistive screen, you need to apply a little pressure. Compared to the iPhone which has a capacitive touch screen, the eXpo’s touch screen definitely feels inferior. There are few if any phones running windows mobile with capacitive touch screens, the only one I know of is HTC HD2 which is yet to come to the US.

- Battery life is poor, I have to recharge every 2-3 days depending on usage.

- Apps. Again, out of the box it won’t have many great apps.

* Some noteworthy mention: The LG calculator can do a little more than simple arithmetic (sin, cos, tan, exp, etc), the tip calculator is handy, the schedules/tasks app is more finger friendly than the default WinMo one.

* there’s a lot of apps out there you can find on the internet, that problem is that they’re scattered across different sites, many good ones aren’t free and not all are finger-friendly. You need to spend time to try/research good ones.

* WinMo Marketplace still has room for improvement, many apps aren’t up-to-date (e.g. Bing is 4.7 but latest is 5.0, Skyfire is 1.0 but latest is 1.5); also, it has to check for updates when it starts up, and often it hangs and causes the phone is become unresponsive for a while as well.

- I tried out the voice command functionality a couple of times. Usable, but not great, and it requires you to assign a button as the “voice command” button, the problem is there aren’t many buttons that you can program (one for task manager and one for camera, the other 4 are on the slide-out keyboard)

- If you select to unlock the phone using your fingerprint sensor it means you won’t be able to use the default WinMo locking screen (which has info like your upcoming appointments and missed calls, see image I uploaded), instead, you’ll see the screen that instructs you to swipe your finger on the sensor

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Update #2:

- (re. voice command in update #1) I realized that I don’t need to assign a dedicated voice command button. The “back” button is used for that purpose. Press and hold the “back” button and voice command will be activated. The manual (which you need to download yourself) mentions that.

- Also, press and hold the “end call” button to lock the phone.

- it seems that the LG in-call menus is not integrated well into WinMo or the lock screen. If you use the fingerprint lock screen and receive a call when the phone is locked, you can receive the call but you won’t see the in-call menu (buttons like hold,speaker, end call, etc). Also, if you use the WinMo lock screen and receive a call when the phone is locked, the WinMo UI for receiving calls show up instead of the LG one.
Rating: 4 / 5