The LG GW520 is mobile phone which has "embraced the new trend of social networking and has made it more mobile than ever before," according to company officials, who say it's targeting "the millions and millions of users of sites like Twitter or Facebook (News - Alert) by giving them a similar experience."

It has a “push” updating feature letting users connect to other people, "much like what Twitter or other social networking sites currently offer." And presumably what outmoded cell phones offer with their nifty feature of letting you push a button to talk to someone?

This new phone also lets users assign custom animated characters to specific contacts in the phonebook, characters which are "then placed all around the homescreen for quick access, much like a speed dial function, but much more fun."

But, in fact, much like a speed dial.

Naturally it comes in a trendy, stylish case, defined as "trying to look as much like an iPhone (News - Alert) as possible without unduly riling Apple's lawyers," and a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 240 pixel x 400 pixel resolution and 256K colors.

It does have a slide out QWERTY keyboard, enabling quicker typing and qualifying one genuine improvement over the iPhone. Plus it's got the requisite downloadable games, themes, camera, 40 MB memory, FM radio, Bluetooth Connectivity and Internet browsers.

It doesn't have an infrared port, WLAN, GPS or secondary camera. And it is pretty clearly designed for the youth market, you wouldn't want to pull one of these out of your pocket during a client presentation or board meeting.

A little while ago industry observer Brian Kirk, a guy who was never once called "Captain" as a kid or at tech geek conventions, noted that the phone's LG's LiveSquare, that part which allows users to add custom animated characters to their homescreen to represent the friends and family they call the most, "pushes social networking updates to users so they're able to instantly see what their favorite people are up to, as well."