LG Viewty Snap GM360 review

There are good things to say about the LG Viewty Snap GM360. It has a decent camera, some pleasing apps and a fairly simple, easy to understand user interface.

Sadly, there are a number of black marks to mention too. It has a strange three-screened home page system, which doesn't appeal to us. It lacks 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS. Web browsing is a trial. To cap it all, you can get Android-based handsets, such as the Alcatel OT-98, that offer 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and access to an army of third-party apps for a similar amount of money.

That makes it hard to recommend this handset as a good buy.

We liked

The app switcher system via a single button beneath the screen.

There are some neat features here, such as a sleep timer on the music player.

Some nicely designed visuals – the rolling tuner on the FM radio, for instance.

Battery life is pretty good.

We disliked

The LG Viewty Snap GM360 is a self-contained handset with no opportunity for downloading apps. What you get is what you're going to have to live with. An Android handset may be a better bet if this functionality matters to you.

There's no Wi-Fi here, so all your data sharing activity has to be done over the network.

3G is absent from this handset and any communications involving data really suffer. We can't help wondering if non-3G handsets are so far off message these days as to make them unsellable.

No GPS means no navigation or location-aware capabilities.

Verdict

The LG Viewty Snap GM360 might have come out quite well in a review even six months ago, because budget Android handsets were rare as hens' teeth at that time.

Now we have the likes of the Alcatel OT-980 and ZTE Racer, though, so it's difficult to see why anybody would want to spend close to £100 on a handset that lacks Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G and an app store when they could get so much more for their money.