LG Cookie Pep GD510

It's peppy and the lowest priced touchscreen phone around

 

 

 

Smart looks, compact, lightweight, smooth UI, multitasking, accelerometer, good audio, battery life

Touch registration, interface response delayed from time to time, cramped QWERTY keymatt 

Creating new budget touchscreen handsets seem to be on the minds of manufacturers these days. Samsung has been riding the wave with its Star Series handsets first, and now with its Corby Series of handsets. In response LG brought out the Cookie sometime ago, and now it was time for a much needed upgrade if LG had to stay in the game.

So, after a very bland Mobile World Congress session in Barcelona, LG has finally got its act together and launched the Cookie Pep GD510. The Cookie Pep in every way seems to be the handset to replace the older and outdated Cookie. This seems all the more true considering the pricing of the Cookie Pep, which is quite similar to the older Cookie. The Cookie Pep looks all set to take on the competition and has even signed up three Bollywood stars to promote it.

The Cookie Pep is called the Cookie Pop in other countries where it comes with an optional solar panel doing its green thing for nature. Sadly though green doesn't seem to be the theme for LG in India and so we have the Pep, which is a rather standard version. Let's see how the Cookie Pep warms up to the competition.

Bundle

• LG Cookie Pep GD510
• Stereo Headset
• 2GB microSD Card
• USB Cable
• Charger
• Manual & Software CD

 Build & Design

The Cookie Pep is a smart looking handset and has the looks of a business device. The Pep is compact, is slimmer than the older Cookie and lighter as well. For its size it's surprising to see the 3-inch display.

LG have managed to keep build quality up to the mark. Even though the phone has a plastic build it doesn't feel or so much as look like it. Other than the large screen there is the earpiece that also doubles as the speaker for the device. Below the screen there is a button towards the right side. It's always tricky to have a single button and especially if it does double duty of the calling buttons. To make things easy the button has a backlight, which lights green and red; green to call and red to cancel a call. It also switches to Home Screen or displays the Recent Call history. LG has managed to pull it off but it does take time to figure it out.

The left side of the Cookie Pep has the volume control and a USB port neatly tucked behind a dust cover. The top left corner of the handset has a lanyard loop hole. Coming to the top there is a tiny round button for a Power ON/OFF, which also doubles as screen lock/unlock button. The right side of the handset has the camera shutter button, which also doubles as a multi-tasking manager.

The back of the phone has a metallic look-alike plastic finish completing the phones sophisticated looks. There is a 3.15MP optics tucked in a corner.

The entire back of the phone slides out to reveal the battery compartment. The microSD card slot is situated here and it's a hot-swappable one.

Overall the design of the Cookie Pep is really appealing. It looks more than what one could expect of it. The build on the other hand - though plastic - still has a very elegant finish. It doesn't feel like there has been too much of a cost-cutting.

Interface

The LG Cookie had a pretty bland interface. The interface has been bumped up for the current times. The Pep sees quite an offering of the S-Class interface, which until recently LG only showcased in its premium handsets. Come to think of it the Pep actually looks like a baby LG Arena. The Cookie Pep does share the same Menus like that of the Arena. You have the portrait as well as landscape menus. You can also rearrange the icons by holding the icon down for a couple of seconds before it's free to move about in its row.

The interface is smooth to operate though the transitions are slower than the ideal speed you would want them to function at. The menus have a feedback to swipes and the menus bounce when it reaches the start or end of any of the menus. There are three home screens and the lock screen has been taken from the BL40 Chocolate handset of LG. While two of the three Home Screens are familiar; Widget and Contacts, the third Home Screen is called Livesquare. This is a communication log depicted in an animated way. Calls, SMS, Conversations all over a period of a week are stored. You can choose to have a refreshed list everyday or let it populate with records lasting up to a week. When in the Home Screen the status screen can be brought up by tapping on any of the top screen icons. From this status screen you can Play/Pause audio playback, switch between Sound Profiles, and even turn ON/OFF Bluetooth.

The LG Cookie Pep has multi-tasking capabilities. This was not present in the earlier Cookie and now it has turned into a smartphone. The interface is provided with over 40MB of internal memory and with a 2GB card there is plenty of space. The Cookie has the same multi-tasking manager that has a tab of the running apps and a tab of shortcut apps that can be customized. You can run several apps and switch between them without much trouble. But expect the handset to get slower with many applications open in the background. The browser of the handset though is capable of multi-tab browsing only allows up to two tabs. The browser of the Cookie Pep is simple and offers to even save pages. There is provision for landscape view with the built-in accelerometer. All you need to do is move the phone to its side. 

Performance

Let's look at the sheer performance of the Cookie Pep.

Call Quality & Network

The Cookie Pep is strong with the network. I didn't suffer any call drops while testing this phone. Even when the phone was running out of juice it continued its strong hold on the network. The call reception was good but the person at the other end of the line always complained about my voice being soft. I had to speak pretty loudly and at times had to keep repeating what I said. However, this could be a piece fault.

Music & Video

The Cookie Pep has a Music player much like what we have seen on previous LG handsets. There is music organization offered in terms of Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists, All Tracks, and Recently Played. The player has support for album art, which is a nice touch. The player has equalizer options as well, though there isn't one that is customizable. The video player of the Cookie Pep is bland; there is no support for DivX/XviD out of the box. Overall I think it's a bit too demanding to ask for it but the phone otherwise does 3GP and MP4 pretty fine. The Cookie Pep also has FM Radio and the quality is pretty decent.

Camera

The 3.15MP camera of the Cookie Pep is a fixed focus optic. It doesn't have flash support and this makes it challenging to get quality pics in low lighting. The camera in brightness captures quality images. The interface of the camera has been picked from S-Class LG handsets though it is quite a stripped down version. Overall the camera is quite good and any day better than having a 2MP camera like in the competition.

Battery Life

The Cookie Pep has a 900mAh battery. The phone on a full charge worked comfortably for two days with about an hour and a half of talktime. Add to that about 30min of GPRS usage and a couple of hours worth of music playback. This translates into good battery life, as the phone has a large screen that consumes most of the battery. Even after all that usage, though the phone did keep giving the Low Battery notification, it continued to run for a couple of hours more with calls. 

Price & Verdict

The LG Cookie Pep GD510 sells for around Rs. 7,000 with a one-year warranty. The pricing of the handset is very much close to its older sibling and at the same time lower than the competition, giving it the price point advantage. The handset is sure to replace the Cookie, which will eventually phase out. This could lead to further price cuts and give LG a further boost. Now looking at the competition, we have the Nokia 5233 and the Samsung Corby. Since it's a matter of just 100 bucks here and there, you can take your pick. All of the phones offer more or less a similar feature set. As for looks, I find the LG Cookie the best of the lot, as it is pretty good for the price it comes at and has a lot offer.