LG Incite with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

    I really like what LG has done with the Incite's Today screen. It's very simple, but shows you a lot in one glance and gives you a lot of shortcuts. First, we have time and date on the top. Then, we have a weather icon with current temperature. Below that is the standard Windows Mobile Today screen, which you can customize as usual - right now I have wireless status, messaging status, next appointment, and missed call status turned on.

And what's great is that you can quickly hide all of the Today screen entries if it's a weekend and you don't care about email or missed call status. Along the bottom we have a row of icons that we will cover.

    Because the Incite has an accelerometer, you can flip over the device and have the screen rotate anywhere in the operating system. Screen rotations were pretty fast, but sometimes not accurate (too sensitive, or not sensitive enough).

If we tap on the weather icon, this is the screen we get.

And we can quickly get a forecast.

Clicking on the Star icon along the icon bar on the bottom of the Today screen, we can customize a favorite program menu.

If we tap on the last icon on the Today screen, we get a secondary launcher.

The launcher is categorized by Phone...

...then Media (note the FM radio application which is only accessible from this screen and not Programs)...

...and here is what it looks like. The FM Radio application is super simple.

...Productivity...

...and Settings.

Ok, so this is what the Start menu looks like. Unfortunately, the items aren't big enough to be finger-friendly, and that is the case in most sub menus on the Incite.

Here we are in the first pane of the Start menu...which shows a lot of icons thanks to the tall screen.

And here is the second pane.

If we go into Apps, we see some Java-based trialware.

And if we go into Games, we see some more Java-based trialware.

    If we go into AT&T Music, we see yet some more Java-based trialware, although two of these are interesting. First, we have MusicID which will listen to a song that you play for it, and tell you the artist and name of song. For more on that, check out this video.

    And then we have the Pandora application, which is a first for Windows Mobile. If you don't know what Pandora is, or if you want to see more about it, check out our recent post that demonstrates Pandora on the Incite.

Just like the desktop version of Pandora, you can vote up or down songs, bookmark them, and create new stations. Sadly, Pandora costs $8/month to use after the measly 1-day trial.

The Incite has a full suite of IM clients.

If we go into Tools, we get some interesting apps. A simple GPS utility, a Remote Desktop program, full version of Sprite Backup, a Camera app (which we'll talk about on the next page), and a ZIP program.

The Incite has a basic stopwatch included.

And the browser. The Incite uses NetFront which is made by Access. I much rather they use a browser like Opera Mobile 9.5, because in using NetFront on the Incite, my web experience was horrible.

You can't double-tap to zoom in and it's difficult to see an overview of the page. You do get a nice guide on the right side that shows your progress in the overall page.

NetFront didn't always render pages properly.

It's easy to get lost in the plethora of menus in NetFront.

Included on the Incite is the full suite of Office Mobile 2007 apps.

Ok, let's talk about input. On the Incite, you get two keyboards. The first is this SureType-style keyboard.

If we press the up arrow next to the keyboard selector, we see the other keyboard types. Strangely, usual Windows Mobile input options like Symbol Recognizer have been stripped out.

What you see here is called LGJavaKey which gives you an on-screen D-Pad. I much rather use the side scroll wheel then call this up, which takes too many screen taps.

    And if you flip over the device to landscape, you will get this HUGE onscreen keyboard, which is a real joy to type on. One of the big problems is that it takes up so much screen space. But, if you press the gray arrow on the bottom right...

    ...the bottom bar will disappear. This is a bit better. But, if you're in a text message or email, you have to re-press the gray arrow to reshow the bottom bar and have access to the Send button. Using this keyboard adds extra steps to entering in data.

PHONE

    You can enter the phone application in many ways: by pressing the phone icon on the Today screen, by going into the Start menu, or by hitting the Call Start button. When you enter the phone app, you are presented with a very large dialing pad.

When you are on a call, this is what it looks like.

And when a call comes through, you get the standard Windows Mobile call notifier, which will show a little picture if you have an image assigned to the person that is calling.

This is what call history looks like.

Click on to the next page as we cover Settings and talk about photo quality on LG Incite.