Activating the LG Optimus S

When you first power your Optimus S on, you'll be guided through a few setup steps in order to activate.

With the Optimus S on the initial Welcome screen, we can tap Continue. Select a time and date format. Tap to check the box beside Use 24-hour format if you'd rather use military time than AM/PM. Tap Select date format to choose how you want dates displayed. When you're satisfied, tap Next.

Now we're invited to set up our email accounts. We'll be going with Gmail in this example. Check out the Ting tutorials on setting up non-Gmail email accounts if you want some insight into that.

Choose Create if you don't already have a Google account or Sign in if you do. With an existing Gmail address, just enter your username and password and tap Sign in.

To create a new Gmail address and Google Account, tap the Create button.

Enter your first and last names in the appropriate boxes. This is the name that will displayed on email you send. Choose a username and tap Done on the software keyboard. Your phone will communicate with Google to set up your new account. If the username you want to use is unavailable, you'll be prompted to select another.

Next, create a password for your Google account. Choose a strong password that is a mix of numbers, characters, upper- and lower-case letters. Tap Next when you're done.

Choose and answer a security question. Enter an alternate email address too. You'll use this to recover your account should you ever forget your password. Tap next.

Read over the admittedly lengthy Google Account terms of service. Tap I agree, next.

Your phone will communicate with Google's servers to set up your new account. This might take a few minutes.

The final step to activate is to decipher a captcha to confirm that we are, in fact, human. Enter the characters you see on screen. Once again, your phone will communicate with Google to verify and finally, we're presented with an account created screen. Tap Finish setup. Finally, tap Use phone.

Your phone communicates with the network to finish the setup process. This too might take a minute.

Now, we're dropped to our main Android lock screen.

Before we dig in though though, let's set up voicemail.

Unlock your phone by sliding the green lock bar to the right.

Tap the phone icon to open the phone dialler.

Press and hold 1 to call your voicemail box. Follow the voice prompts to set up voice mail. During this call, tap the Dialpad button to bring up the touch tone key pad.

After your voicemail is setup, you'll be alerted to any waiting voicemail messages in the Android notification bar. Just tap at the top of the screen and drag down to access the notifications. You can tap on a New voicemail notification to go straight to your voicemail inbox and listen to messages.

Be sure to watch the other parts in the five-part Ting start-up guide for your new Optimus S smartphone.