LG recently gave us some hands on time with a few of their new and upcoming handsets including the as-yet-unreleased GW-620 Android so I thought I’d post a few first impressions. (click on the photos for larger versions)

First up we have the GD510 POP. The unique selling point of this slim touchscreen phone will doubtless be the optional solar panel back cover that promises to keep the phone charge topped up without needing a mains adapter. Sadly production problems meant we couldn’t see that version so we were left with the standard model.

It’s simple to use – there is only a single button for making/ending a call with the rest of the functions being handled by the touchscreen. Specifications include a 3 inch “frameless” touchscreen (it doesn’t quite come to the edge of the phone, but it’s close) and dedicated applications for facebook and twitter. It should cost around £100 from carphone warehouse on PAYG.

Next we have the BL-520 chocolate 2. A smaller sibling of the BL-40 chocolate we recently looked at, the 520 is also endowed with the “Black Label” branding and bucks the current trend for touchscreens by using a slider design with physical buttons.

The BL-520 includes a 5MP camera with LED flash, is 3G capable and has a nice set of glowing touch sensitive navigation buttons to control the various functions.

We have a review handset in testing at the moment so we’ll post a more detailed assessment when we’ve had a chance to run it through its paces.

Moving into smartphone territory, we also have a sample of LG’s first foray into Windows Mobile in the shape of the GM750. Again we’ll be posting a few more thoughts when we’ve had a chance to run it in but the highlights are:

• Touchscreen only (no physical keyboard)
• Windows Mobile 6.5.
• Currently exclusive to Vodafone in the UK
• Includes a GPS and optical mouse.
• 5MP Camera with LED flash
• MicroSD expansion

You’re looking at about £15/month on contract at the moment with the phone free – a good deal for the full WinMo experience.

Last but not least we have the star of the show, LGs first Android handset. It currently goes by the model number GW620 but may end up with a different name in the UK once it’s released over here next year.

LG have skinned the usual Android UI with a version of their own “S-Class” user interface concept, although this can be removed if you prefer the vanilla Android look and feel (I do, so it’s good to have the choice).

Unlike the current crop of Android handsets, the phone looks “normal” – which is a good thing. It has a 3” touchscreen with 320×480 resolution and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is a full 5 row affair so no need to go hunting for the function key when you want to type numbers.

Being Android it will run any application available from the marketplace and is compatible with push email. It’s also DivX and MP3 compatible and has a standard 3.5” headphone jack so you can can use it as a media player. A 5MP camera with LED flash rounds out the multimedia functions.

Pushing the social networking theme, LG have included an integrated contact manager that links facebook and myspace accounts to a contact, the idea being that you can always see what your friends are up to from one location. A nice idea if it works but not something we got the chance to see in action.

In use the device seemed responsive – more so than most Windows Mobile devices – and we look forward to using it more once it’s released in January.