There are those out there that call the LG Arena “a smartphone without the smartphone price”.  I find them accurate if somewhat incomplete–it’s also missing a lot of the smartphone capability.

The LG Arena is a candy bar style cell phone with calendar, alarm clock, calculator, voice recorder, mobile email, mobile web, GPS with AT&T Navigator, Bluetooth connectivity, a five megapixel digital camera with video and digital still capability, MP3 player, access to a host of AT&T specific applications and a battery capable of generating three hours of talk time on a single charge.

It really isn’t reaching to call this a smartphone, or even a smartphone lite, but it doesn’t exactly have the same processing power as a smartphone.  Simply put, this phone has an irritating tendency to be SLOW, or at least the one I tried out was.  Selecting a menu item would start a load screen, and load times could be thirty seconds (in some cases, and yes, I was keeping time with my watch’s second hand).  It’s weird, frankly, and I’ve never seen a phone so beleaguered by its own load times.

The controls, however, were pretty simple to work with and it definitely has the features, so the LG Arena is a decent phone but not without its problems.

The Good

Nice array of features

Simple to use controls

The Bad

Hellacious load times

Score 6 / 10

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