Sprint's LG MM-535 takes the best one-megapixel photos we've seen from a camera phone and is loaded with multimedia power, but the voice quality could be better. If clear calls are your priority, you may want to look elsewhere.

The 3.9-ounce MM-535 is a large but comfortable slider phone with a big screen and flat, well-spaced keys. The 2-inch 176–by-220 color screen is bright enough to see outdoors, and its ringing is loud and clear. Battery life, however, was shorter than other top-of-the-line Sprint phones, at 3 hours and 31 minutes.

This phone's greatest strength is its 1.3MP camera, which takes sharp, clear, well-balanced shots. Images are a touch bluish, perhaps, but refreshingly free of the color noise and halo effects that plague so many camera phones. Low-light performance was also very good, with fewer details lost in shadow than on other phones, such as the Sanyo MM-5600. The LED flash, like most LED flashes, was pretty useless. You can save images to the 32MB of internal memory or onto a miniSD card conveniently accessible through a slot in the top of the handset.

A rudimentary MP3 player is also on board and plays songs off the miniSD card. It is a basic phone music player, with no shuffle mode or playlist support. It doesn't support AACs, WMAs, or any protected music files. Gaming performance was excellent, with high scores on the JBenchmark Java benchmark tests. Like most Sprint phones, the MM-535 has a standard WAP browser, but does not include an e-mail client or Bluetooth.

Ultimately, however, a phone is first and foremost a phone, and that is where the MM-535 falls behind the Sanyo MM-5600. We found voice quality on the 535 to be more muddled than on the Sanyo, though definitely within the acceptable range. The speakerphone had some distortion at high volumes, and the microphone seemed to transmit at a lower volume than we like. We were also disappointed that although you can buy MP3 ringtones for the MM-535, you can't use your MP3s to make your own.

If the 2MP Samsung MM-A800 didn't exist, we'd be singing the MM-535's praises as the supreme Sprint shooter. As is, the MM-535 fits smack between the MM-A800, which is the ultimate shutterbug's phone, and the Sanyo MM-5600, with its superior voice quality. All three are good choices, depending on the balance of features you want.

To view this phone's features in a convenient table next to those of its most similar competitors, including the Sprint Samsung MM-A800, Sprint Sanyo MM-5600, Verizon LG VX-8000, and Sprint Sanyo MM-7400 click here.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 3 hours 31 minutes
Jbenchmark: 5512
Jbenchmark 2.1.1: 212
Jbenchmark 3.1.0 HQ: 111