LG Xenon GR500 Review

The LG Xenon GR500 is a lightweight slider phone aimed at the texting generation. Unlike many sliders with a QWERTY keyboard, the Xenon is a full-blown touch-screen phone. It is designed to look like a bulky RAZR impersonator, complete with a little chin at the bottom. The Xenon also offers plenty of music, video and web browsing power.

The Xenon is particularly small for a horizontal scroll bar. It weighs 3.8 ounces and measures 4.2 by 2.1 by 0.6 (HWD) inches. My test unit was finished in red (really more of a magenta) plastic with a chrome accent band around the sides. Blue and black versions are also available. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard felt cramped for what should be a broad horizontal layout. Part of that was due to the small keys and part was due to the symbol and function keys bracketing the letters on both sides.

The touch-enabled 2.8-inch LCD offers 240-by-400-pixel resolution and 65K color displays. Maybe it’s because of the limited color palette of the Xenon, but with 16 million colors on the palette Samsung Highlight on T-Mobile more attractive menu graphics had the same number of pixels. That said, the Xenon tabbed menu system is straightforward and easy to navigate.