Released for Cingular, the LG CE500 is a hip new phone for a hip hop world. Featuring stereo music, camera, video and e-mail - all in one striking and sophisticated phone, the CE500 can store up to 64 MB of tunes on its TransFlash card and pump them out on dual speakers. And through a POP3 e-mail client consumers are always in touch while rockin' out.
LG CE500 Features
Integrated MP3 Player with dual speakers for MP3 stereo sound
Built-in VGA camera with 4x zoom, flash, and video clip capture and playback
J2ME support for application, ringer, wallpaper, graphic and game downloads including 3D gaming
Enhanced T9 predictive text for messaging via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger and email (POP3, IMAP4, SMTP)
TransFlash memory expansion slot for up to an additional 512 MB of storage with optional card
Personal organizer with Calendar, Scheduler, Alarm Clock, and Notepad and Tools including World Clock, Calculator, and Ez Tip Calc
WAP 2.0 compliant browser with EDGE for high-speed data transmission
LG CE500 User Reviews
1. Posted by WookieOnRit
Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:21 pm
I bought my CE500 back in January of '06 and have been using it on and off since that time. Every one of my friends or people I meet who sees my phone automatically falls in love with it. One of my friends just recently asked me if I'd let him buy it from me. The phone is qutie striking. It's tactile interface is awesome. It handles like a champ. It's sleek, stylish with is black and silver accents. It's not a girly phone or any kind of motorola ZR (razr, krazr, rizr). It's sharp, packed with feature. It flips with ease and closes with a convincing thud. Just what you'd look for if you were buying a new car. The camera and camcorder are above average for the time of its release (05 if I'm not mistaken). Texting is a breeze if not through a extra delayed process which I never understood. If you go to your contact list, highlight a name, click send a new text message, instead of just sending the message without delay to the person you already selected, it pops up their number and asks you if you want to send it to that number. If by some brainfart you forgot that person changed their number. I realize that its the same screen to send multiple sends to, but chances are, if we want to send to multiple parties, we will not select a single individuals name, no? Slightly irritating.
But beyond all that, it has been the biggest technilogical nightmare of my brief existance. I have gone through two (yes, TWO) of these little bastards and both (yes, BOTH) suffered the same malfunctions over and over again. Some of the problems have already been pointed out. The slow reads of the SIM card or it won't read it at all. The random freezing. The dropped calls. The dying charge (I fixed that by getting a MUCH better Rayovac battery). It reboots unexpectedly. What has bugged me the most, THE MOST is that if someone calls and I flip up the phone, it will still show that person is still calling. So I press the answer button frantically in order to pick up the call, but no dice. I end up missing the call and have to call them back. But 75% of the time that happens, my phone freezes and I have to restart the whole damn thing.
Lets put it this way people. In a given day, I have to restart my phone 5 or 6 seperate instances.sometimes more. The CE500 was the biggest waste of money ever. I loved it in the short term, but the irritations over the past 2 years have been extremely irritating. I am not afraid to try other LG products, but this one is garbage. Don't buy this phone without some sort of back up.
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
2. Posted by jondavid2500
Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:15 pm
I base my reviews on facts.
Based on other reviews, they are rating on mp3 ringtones, alarm snooze and memory.
Why not buy an alarm clock, what other phone has an excellent mp3 player at all, since when was the quality of the phone based on how many ringtones it can hold?
I recently purchased the moto razor and had to have it replaced 6 times due to white screen rebooting issues. I switched over to this LG CE500 and have yet to have a problem out of it.
Pros
Excellent screen quality
Nice camera
Best reception phone period
Excellent backlight
Unlike motorola, has the best menu design (moto menu looks cheap)
Nice tools
Sleek phone- outside and keypad
Cons
(Mentioned by others)
mp3 ringtones, memory, alarm snooze.
(these cons do not bother me, I did not buy it for these reasons.)
In regards to someones review about the external backlight going dark, in settings you can change the default 10 seconds to 30 seconds and it will light the room up.
Excellent phone, would recommend to anyone.
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36 out of 39 people found this review helpful.
3. Posted by superguy
Tue Dec 13, 2005 1:16 am
I got this phone tonight. I was dying to get it as it looked cool and seemed to have everything I want: mp3 player, flash camera, clamshell, etc.
I was especially looking forward to this as I've had a lot of problems with my Motorola V551.
Paid $150 upgrade price at Best Buy as I'm already a Cingular customer. Price is the same whether you re-up to a 1 or 2 year contract.
Started playing with it and my reaction is mixed.
The Good:
Lightweight
Sleak feel
Very nice screen
MP3 player
Very easy to use
Great reception
Clear calls
All the accessories (mini SD adapter, USB cable) to get started
The Bad:
Exterior screen is dark most of the time (will explain)
CAN'T use MP3 ringtones
CAN'T transfer photos with memory card
Stock ringtones suck
Shell shows fingerprint smudges
I can't believe a phone that's as mutlimedia as this CAN'T play MP3 ringtones. My V551 did this just fine. In fact, it doesn't seem to see ANY file on the memory card other than MP3. I tried to convert the ringtone to MMF as LG phones supposedly recognize them ... no dice. VERY bad form Cingular and LG.
I'm also miffed that it won't see any jpeg photos. I had several photos of family and friends (some of which I only see once or twice a year) for photo caller ID and also pictures of my pets and kids. Can't use ANY of those in the phone book or even look at them in My Media.
Apparently the above are to try to get you to use Cingular's MMS service and buy ringtones. Sorry. Homey don't play that.
To me, the biggest perceived advantage was easy access to multimedia due to the memory card. I have a memory card reader, so I was excited that I could easily move my stuff from my old phone. What a big disappointment.
Another mild annoyance is the fact that the external screen doesn't show anything after the backlight goes out. My V551 would still show the time, voicemail, signal strength, etc while closed. The exterior backlight would just be off, but it was easily readable in the daylight.
Am I going to keep the phone? I don't know. It depends whether I can get over the annoyances, and what Cingular can do for me when I talk to them about it.
LG and Cingular could have had a clear winner, but they blew it by crippling a couple key features. It seems to be great if you can deal with the limitations I mentioned.
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178 out of 197 people found this review helpful.
4. Posted by JunScooby
Wed May 24, 2006 9:00 am
First I was amazed to get this as my free phone with the renewal of my contract. It has alot more than I ever thought I would want/get/need in a phone, but now that I have alot of these fetures I dont want to do without them again.
Anyway, first off is reception. I dont live in the most developed of areas and had problems with my last 2 phones as far as dropped calls and weak signals. With the LG I have no issues at all unless I go to the basement.
The camera...I dont know or care anythign about it so I cant be a help there. I wanted a camera, so I bought a camera not a phone.
Features, other than the things that were mentioned in previous posts, I am dissapointed at there is no vibrate only option. The only thing close is a vibrate then ring, well that is ok if you are somewhere where you can pull out the phone to answer it, I have to turn it off all day at work because I am not able to answer it half of the time.
MP3 player, Obvously the 64m card is not enough to hold any substantial ammount of music, so a larger one must be purchaced. That being said, I have heard alot of the speakers on MP3 phones and usually the sound is terrible, this one however is pretty decent, considering it is a phone. There is no distortion at least, the music is clear and audiable at any volume.
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7 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
5. Posted by mzwhitney06
Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:35 pm
Okay I got this phone is August for college. When I first got it, I really liked it. The only real issues I had with the phone was that the MP3 player took up a lot of battery life, but I figured that. I also didnt like how I couldnt text message somebody if I was on the phone. I aslo couldnt assign an individual a ringtone, I had to put them in a callergroup. Also if you take a picture of somebody in your phone and put it as their call photo, it will duplicate the photo in a smaller view and save it in your gallery..I thought that was wack, but overall good phone. Good reception, the volume was excellent! Some phones you cant really tell the difference between the volume levels.
However if you are looking for a long term phone like I was, dont purchase! I am so disappointed. It takes a long time to load the sim card when you turn it on. That was the start of my problems. Then the battery life began to go nuts, the phone was charging completely. So I removed all the extra stuff on the phone. Still no change. The phone starts to freeze randomly, even if you are talking to somebody. It mysteriously drops calls. I have taken this phone to the store and they keep saying its fine, but its not. Personally I think its the brand of the phone. Everybody that I know with an LG has had similar problems. I will never purchase an LG phone again because of this hassle.
I really enjoyed the features on this phone, but I need a phone to last me. I'm a college student and replacing phones is not something on my agenda!
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3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
6. Posted by melonie3276
Fri Mar 09, 2007 5:47 pm
I got this phone last yr for the first time in May 2006in Aug I went to use the phone and I had one of the buttons fall off, by the time I got to the store where I had bought the phone 3 more had fallen of. I was so angry. The store R.S. was very nice and replaced my phone with another at NC to me. I got the new one Sep 2006. everything was going good until March 2007 it happend again. I was very very mad this time
So I called LG my self and they told me I could send the phone in and pay to have the buttons replaced. I could not believe this after I explained everything I had been through with this phone. Well they were no big Help. I called cingular and explained it to them and come to find out the phone was discontinued and they offered to replace it with another one.
This phone was the biggest piece of crap I have every had. very very sad.
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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