The new LG Expo projector-phone from AT&T is pretty amazing. While AT&T is billing it as a business device to show dull PowerPoints to rooms full of half-awake middle managers, we know what it's really good for: impromptu viewings of "Transformers II" in the conference room. So that's what we did.
Without its bulky projector pack, the Expo is a relatively slim sliding Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. It has a 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and LG's new S-Class user interface, which touches up Windows Mobile in a manner similar to the HTC TouchFLO and Samsung's TouchWiz.
Much like the HTC and Samsung phones, LG does a decent job hiding Windows Mobile. LG's obsession seems to be with sliding grids or wheels of icons, which the Snapdragon processor handles admirably; the home screen has a sliding icon bar, the main menu has four sliding icon bars, and so forth.
Windows Mobile has made me nervous recently, because I've been testing a bunch of very unstable Windows Mobile phones. The Expo feels fast - one Windows Mobile bullet dodged - but I can't vouch for its stability, and it's the stability issue that really worries me.
The Expo's QWERTY keyboard is excellent, well-spaced and clicky. There's a 5-megapixel camera on the back, but annoyingly no standard headphone jack. But you don't care about that much, do you? You care about the $179 projector attachment.
To snap on the projector, take off the back panel of the phone and replace it with the projector unit. The projector has a sliding lens cover; slide it open and the phone kicks into projector mode. It will project anything - menu screens, videos, whatever you've got stored on the phone or streaming into it. There's a manual focus slider on the side of the projector unit.
We managed to get an image about 120 inches wide that was still readable. The projector, made by TI, didn't seem to be as high-resolution as an Optoma pico-projector we held it up against, but it was plenty bright.
"Transformers II" played smoothly and looked fine. So did still images and documents. Check out our video, below, if you want to see - it looked better in real life.
The Expo is going on sale on Dec. 7, but only through AT&T's business sales department. Consumer sales are coming later, but AT&T won't say when. The phone will cost $299, minus a $100 rebate, with a two-year contract; the projector costs an extra $179.
We'll have a full review of the Expo as soon as possible.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356553,00.asp
