Hands On With The LG GT540 Swift Android Smartphone

Say hello to the LG GT540 Swift Android smartphone. We've seen Android devices from LG before but none have reached the US, maybe that'll change with the GT540. The GT540 is a cute little device that seems to hit the midrange end of the market, especially catering to those who've yet to own a smartphone.

The build quality is mostly good, there's wavy ridges accenting the back of the phone, chrome rim outlining the sides and attractive color options. The GT540 uses 3 physical hardware buttons and 2 touch-sensitive buttons for navigation. The only potential hardware issue we saw was with the battery cover, it kept slipping off--but we're going to chalk this up as a CES show floor thing. The rest of the hardware is standard fare: 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3-megapixel camera and a 3.5mm headphone jack

We have no idea what version of Android the LG GT540 runs. Whenever we tried to jump into Settings > About Phone, it just gave us an error message. Either way, the lock screen looks like it comes from 2.0.1 but the icons look like their from 1.6.  On top of that, LG has added some of their special sauce, skinning a little bit of the phone, bumping the home screen to 7 pages wide, and a Motion UI player (?). Performance was just average, nothing super speedy so the processor must be your run-of-the-mill chip.

It's expected to hit stores in April 2010 but price and carrier are still unknown. We know it'd look like a good mid-range device for AT&T. What do you guys think about the LG GT540?

Hit the jump to see more pictures of the LG GT540!