Pop goes the Cookie

LG’S FOLLOW-UP TO LAST YEAR’S GD500 COOKIE, THE GD 510 Cookie Pop is definitely no competition to the rather ubiquitous iPhone, but if you are one of those people who love touting your ‘green’ credentials around then this might become your favourite gadget.

Why? Well, to begin with there is the solar-battery cover that uses the sun to charge the phone. Ten minutes under the sun provides up to 2 minutes 15 seconds of talk time or up to 180 minutes of standby time. Features like Eco-tree and Eco-calculator under the phone’s CO2 menu allow people to track how much they have reduced CO2 emissions by using the solar cell battery.

The phone does not contain any polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and is made free of BFR (brominated flame retardants) and CFR (chlorinated flame retardants) almost up to 99.9%. In fact, LG says that the Pop strictly adheres to the European Union’s RoHS requirements.

LG has taken the green message even to the packaging, which is made with recycled paper, and soy ink has been used for printing.

In the looks department, the Pop has been given a minimalist, metallic-looking chassis. A sliding homescreen allows you to keep tabs on message conversations and contacts can be represented with animated avatars. It also provides a homescreen widget to speedily access Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

However, the Pop does fail in many other ways. For one, the 3-inch touchscreen does not really respond to ‘touches’, unless you are aggressively inclined, and for another the onscreen QWERTY keyboard is cramped. The camera is a simple point-and-shoot mechanism, with no auto-focus or flash attached to it.

The worst part though is the sluggish EDGE download speeds that hampers Internet browsing, and that could be a lack that the Cookie Pop’s other features might not be able to make up for.

VERDICT:
Nay (unless you are a real ‘green’ technology fiend).