Aww, LG Finally Hatches Its First SmartphoneAww, LG Finally Hatches Its First Smartphone

Today LG and AT&T offered up the Incite for sale. The Incite is LG's first device that qualifies as a smartphone. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional to take care of all the business a professional might need to get done in a day. It also offers some things for the not-so-professional in you to pass the time.I've been waiting and waiting for LG to hop onto the smartphone bandwagon. It sure took its time. Samsung, LG's toughest competitor in its home country, has been selling Windows Mobile smartphones for nigh two years. HTC, Motorola, HP, Sony Ericsson, Palm, Glofiish and others all sell WinMo smartphones. RIM sells its BlackBerries. Nokia sells is S60 smartphones. LG has remained on the sidelines for too long.

Report after report shows that smartphones are gaining in market share, at the expense of feature phones and mass market devices. LG can't afford to lose out on that market, especially in the face of competition from Apple, the BlackBerry Storm, the G1 Android phone and others.

LG makes good and jumps into the game with a fairly decent piece of hardware. The Incite has a 3-inch touchscreen with WQVGA resolution. Along with the Windows Mobile 6.1 comes the ability to roam all over the world since the Incite had quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA flavored 3G.

Other specs include a 3 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, gobs of productivity software and the ability to share live videos with your friends. It can store up to 32GB of content on microSD cards if you wish, and the ability to download them from eMusic. Windows Media Player 10 means you can playback lots of different content.

According to LG, the Incite has a "configurable, drag-and-drop favorites menu [that] provides quick access to the applications that matter most to the user." I haven't had a chance to play with the Incite yet, but I hope that this makes improvements in usability over what Windows Mobile otherwise offers.

Welcome to the smartphone game, LG. Good luck.