If you are in the market for one of those new "giant" HPCs, you now have another choice as the NEC MobilePro 750C and the Hitachi/LG Phenom Ultra have been joined by... another new Windows CE handheld by LG.

It’s called the Phenom Express and it incorporates a number of great design ideas. Not all of them are entirely new, but this is the first time that they have all been combined in a single Windows CE device.

There’s the placement of the power pack into a hefty "hinge," a design trick that Geofox pioneered to achieve a thin profile while still accommodating large sizebatteries. LG used the same design to make the Express thinner than the Ultra while still equipping it with one of the beefiest Li-Ion packs on the market. This means that the Express is elegant and easy to stow away while still providing all the juice needed to power that large color screen.

From the NEC MobilePro 750, the Express borrowed the foward-placed screen hinge that eliminates the Phenom Ultra’s precarious balancing act whenever you open the screen that’s hinged at the very edge of the unit. As a result, the Express is much more stable.

But now for a truly novel idea: Realizing that users are really turned off by the proliferation of all those eensy little non-standard connectors that decorate (bedevil?) late model handheld devices, LG equipped the Express with a full-size VGA port for printing and a full-size parallel port for connecting to whatever parallel device you desire. Hooray! Not that we promote the use of those age-old huge plugs forever, but as long as no one can agree on a standard replacement we much prefer this solution to yet another teeny little microport that’s useful for only as long as you have the unique, one-of-a-kind, teeny little micro cable connector. Imagine, an HPC that lets you print to a simple parallel port from almost any application!

Super keyboard
After receiving much praise for the keyboard on the Phenom Ultra, LG’s designers went back to the drawing board one more time and outdid themselves. The 72 key keyboard of the Phenom Express may well be the best one available on any HPC on the market today. Though slightly smaller than the one on the Phenom Ultra—86% vs. 90%—its layout and tactile feedback are superior. The Enter and the Shift key are shaped more like those on a full-size keyboard. As a result, the PgUp and PgDn keys are now along the top of the keyboard, an acceptable compromise. The keys are taller and therefore easier to hit (the flipside is that the extra-high keys precluded a row of function keys). They also provide excellent tactile feedback—an important quality on a compact keyboard. And unlike the otherwise excellent NEC MobilePro 750C, there is no unnecessary give or clicking. All in all, I can’t think of many ways LG Electronics could have improved this keyboard. It makes the Phenom Express a pleasure to use.

Performance
The Phenom Express uses the same 100MHz Hitachi SH-3 series RISC chip as the Phenom Ultra did. As a result, performance is similar, but the Express feels a tad quicker and livelier. It ran through the Pen Computing Magazine Scroll Test in 21 seconds, a tick faster than the Ultra, behind such speed demons as the NEC MobilePro 750 or the Velo 500 which do it in the 15 second range, but way ahead of some other notable Windows CE devices. Overall, the Express feels "fast enough." It doesn't dazzle with raw speed but it rarely makes you wait.

Perhaps the best 640 x 240 yet
Those who expected LG’s latest entry into the handheld market to have a full 640 x 480 screen may be disappointed. This is still a 640 x 240 device, but one of the best you’ll ever see. The screen measures a full 8-1/8 inches diagonally, a fraction more than the Ultra’s, and it is as bright and easy to read as anyone could wish. The screen’s basic quality is enhanced by keyboard-controllable brightness and contrast adjustments, and two separate control panels (the Express has a backlight control panel in addition to the standard screen panel) that allow fine tuning of screen brightness and contrast. It doesn’t get much better than this. Right below the screen is a row of nine silk-screened icons that provide one tap access to the major system application and utilities.

Sound: cool speaker that doesn’t
Like almost the entire class of second generation CE devices, the Phenom Express has sound recording capabilities. Recording is as easy as pushing a button on the side of the unit. Stopping is as easy as letting the button go. There is no need to even open the unit and start the sound application. Sadly, the attractively styled onboard speaker (it is beautifully integrated into the side of the unit) is no better than on any other Windows CE device. The Compaq C-Series thus remains the sole CE device with acceptable sound reproduction. LG missed an easy way to score big points here.

Equipment & expansion
The Express comes with a full 32MB of RAM that the user may--as in all CE devices--devide between system RAM and storage. We had rooted for 64MB which really would have differentiated this unit from anything else on the market, what with the price of RAM so low these days, but that apparently proved impractical. Still, 32MB goes a long way in a CE device, unless you load it up with all the free and shareware that can now be found on the Web. Potentially more serious is LG’s decision to forego the by now almost standard CompactFlash memory slot in addition to the standard PC Card slot. Yet, something had to give in order to make that sleek shape possible, and LG’s research showed that few consumers actually use the CompactFlash slot. You decide. And consider that the Express, of course, can accommodate CompactFlash cards in a PC Card adapter.

Communications
This is an area which LG considers of utmost importance. As a result, the Express, of course, comes with a modem. But not just any modem. Not a wimpy 19.2 or 28.8 job, or even a 33.6Kbps modem. No, the Express sports a state-of-the-art 56K modem, and, yes, it’s V-90, so that you don't have to worry about flex or 2x. Kudos to LG for this bold step. The RJ-11 (4-leaded!!) jack sits on the left side of the unit, nicely integrated into the battery power bulge. It’s been our experience that, wonderfully energy-efficient though they are, the speed of HPC softmodems bears little resemblance to the speed of a desktop or notebook modem. We’re not quite sure how much of that is due to the inherent limitations of a softmodem, and how much to other possible culprits, such as the Windows CE communications subsystem itself. So, realize that "actual modem mileage will vary."

LG also included an email/internet setup wizard that takes some of the pain out of getting connected. And on this unit you can actually view email attachments.

Semi-silverado
It seems as though almost every new device we see these days is silver. The Casio E-10 is, and so is the MobilePro 750C. Silver looks great, sort of reminiscent of a DeLorean sports car and the days before all stereo equipment turned black sometime in the mid 70s. LG went, well, half way. The Express is half silver and half matte black. The result looks quite attractive and very pleasing to the eye.

We’ve had many reports from readers who complained how easily the silver finish on their Casios and MobilePros gets scratched. LG’s solution, though not impervious, will cut those complaints by half.

The bigger question...
Anyone familiar with LG’s lineup of HPCs will probably wonder where the Express fits in. LG, after all, dazzled the handheld market with its most excellent Phenom Ultra just a few months ago, and the Express basically addresses the same market. Insiders probably noticed that, unlike prior LG handheld offerings, the Phenom Ultra was actually designed by Hitachi and rebadged by LG. Though LG spent much more effort marketing the Ultra than Hitachi, the Korean electronics giant may nonetheless have yearned for a product that was truly their own. In the Express they have it. But what about all the rumors of a new generation of CE-based handhelds that is larger yet, and has a full VGA screen? Well, the Phenom Express beat it to market. This is a great product you can buy now as opposed to sometime in the future. And if the state-of-the-art changes yet again, as it surely will, LG will likely be among the first to have a leading product.

In any case, it’s hard to argue with the value and functionality of the LG Phenom Express as it is right now. It’s hard to imagine a better keyboard on a handheld, unless you don’t mind reverting to a full size box. The screen, likewise, is about as good as it’ll get, and the 640x240 format is perfect for word-processing, light spreadsheet work, and occasional email and webbrowsing. And, oh, it also comes with bFax Professional, Pocket Finance 2.0, Mail On the Run! Limited, database backup and restore, and Citrix ICA Thin Client.

-Conrad H. Blickenstorfer

LG Electronics.
Tel: 800-243-0000
Web: www.lgphenom.com