LG Pop

Following on from the Cookie, LG have launched another budget touch screen phone, the LG Pop. One of the few touch screens available for under £100, the LG Pop has range of features to suit any budget.

The Pop is one of the smallest mobile phones on the market. The 3 inch screen takes up the vast majority of the front facia - so much so that there's only room for a multi-purpose button squeezed onto the bottom right hand corner. The phone's dimensions are 97.8 x 49.5 x 11.2 mm and at 87 g in weight, the phone is unlikely to make much of an impression in your pocket.

The touch screen on the LG Pop handles the majority of its functions. With a swipe across the screen you can change the background and you can "click" on the menu items just by touching it. Unlike the earlier LG Cookie, this model does not come with a stylus for pointing so it all must be done with your fingers. The multipurpose "home" button at the bottom handles calls, bringing up the menu.

The menu itself can be displayed automatically in landscape and portrait modes depending on how you hold the handset. When messaging the standard 1-9 keypad is displayed when you hold the mobile phone up, but when you turn it sideways it becomes a full QWERTY keyboard, for more exact typing. As the phone has a wizard to integrate with your webmail account, this makes sending and receiving emails relatively intuitive and straight forward.

Those looking for entertainment on the move could do worse than the LG Pop. The phone has a wide range of Java games installed as well as an MP4 player. The MP4 player let's you listen to your favourite music (MP3, WAV and AAC are all supported) but also watch videos, which can be downloaded straight to your phone.

As with other features, you can watch in either portrait or landscape mode and should you want to, the LG Pop lets your freeze-frame a scene and store it as a JPEG. The phone also comes with an FM radio built in, should you grow tire of your own collection and want to hear some new songs.

Orange is one of the UK's leading mobile phone providers, delivering high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population, and 3G coverage to more than 93%. For more information on mobile phones and Broadband solutions, visit the Orange shop.