Enduring the LG800G

Posted on Oct 10, 2013 in General
Enduring the LG800G

Finding information on the LG800G is a joke. The manual doesn’t detail specifics, and the number of limitations is staggering. I’ll warn you right now, I’m very frugal. The saying “You get what you paid for” absolutely applies to this phone, as well as the Tracfone service. I’ve owned the LG800G phone with a Tracfone plan for over a year now, there are many quirks I think any potential users should be aware of. Here are a few notes I’ve come up with that will help maximize your low-budget phone:

Limitations

  • The camera is practically unusable unless you buy yourself an 4GB micro SD card in order to store the data.
  • You cannot play audio while editing a SMS/MMS message. You are prompted to stop the audio before being allowed to edit a message.

Customization

  • Screen size is 240×320 pixels.
  • Photos taken horizontally with the phone’s camera must be rotated and cropped in order to fill the screen vertically as a wallpaper.
  • Maximum ringtone size is 500KB, and 30 seconds of playtime.
    • This means to have a 30 second ringtone, the file must have a bitrate of about 128kbps or lower.
    • At 160kbps, the maximum length can be only 25 seconds.
    • 192kbps = 20s; 224kbps = 17s; 256kbps = 15s; 320kbps = 12.5s.
  • Alarms will play any valid music file, there seems to be no limitations.

Service Warnings (Tracfone)

  • Text messages (SMS) are 0.30 units a pop, both receiving and attempting to send. If you lose service while sending, you will be charged again upon attempting to send again.
  • Multimedia messages (MMS) are 0.50 units to open a connection, and 1.00 units to open. This includes the more and more common group-chat text messages your friends with nicer smart phones send. I’ve had to notify my friends to remove me from the group chat and send me a direct text with plans because being charged say (1.50 * 8 = 12.00 units) just to find out “O’Rielly’s bar at 10:30” is a little ridiculous.
  • Browsing the web and using any application that connects to the internet costs about 1.00 unit per minute. Be warned that regardless of connection speed, the phone cannot process data quickly at all, which means you might spend a few minutes loading a small page, and you are still charged for it. I never browse the web with my phone.