Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

The KF600 is the new midrange phone from LG that has already won the iF product design award for 2008.

My sample was kindly provided by LG Blog, the official blog from LG. It is available now for free on selected plans on Orange and T-Mobile. You can also get it sim free from various sites like Play.Com for around £220-£260.

It is a tri-band slider with a dual screen, the smaller of the screens is a 1.5inch 240x176 pixel touch screen and the larger one is normal a 2inch 320 x 240 pixel screen.

The smaller touch screen has been marketed as the InteractPad and essentially acts as a replacement to the more traditional navigation and function buttons found on mobiles.

The other features include:

• 3 Megapixel Camera with video and flash
• 256k colour displays
• Touch-sensitive lower display including 256K colours
• MP3/WMA/AAC/AAC+ player
• Ringtones - Polyphonic and MP3
• EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps
• GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
• Bluetooth: v2.0
• USB: v2.0
• Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
• Vibration Alert
• Built-in handsfree
• 64 MB internal memory
• Memory Card Slot: microSD (TransFlash)
• Weight: 107 grams
• Dimensions: 101 x 50 x 15.7 mm
• Battery Stand-by: Up to 480 hours
• Battery Talk Time: Up to 4 hours
• Office document viewer
• T9
• Organiser
• Voice memo

When the slider is not extended the only hard buttons are a camera button used for the camera and also to unlock the phone, another to launch the MP4 player, and a rocker for volume controls.

My initial impression of the InteractPad was a money saving exercise by LG as touch screens cost more and this phone is a mid range model. However after using it for a while I have been quite impressed. The important thing to realise is that this is not a cheap alternative for a full touch screen but a intelligent replacement for hardware buttons. If we look at the LG Shine the navigation is handled by a roller and 2 hard buttons, therefore to access most of the phones functions it requires a physical click on the menu button, then find the application/function you want and a click into it. As the KF600 uses a screen it can offer dynamic options and therefore I have 6 options rather than just 2 as soon as I open the phone. Ok I know it is being lazy when I like the fact it requires less clicks to achieve something but it is a usability improvement which is always good.

The only slight issue I had with the InteractPad is that it was not quite as intuitive at a full touch screen. When you get to the main menu you want to click on the actual icons rather than select them with the InteractPad. Once you realise this it becomes quite easy, you can slide your finger to scroll through menus rather than just tap the screen so navigation can be quite fast and simple.

As this is a mid range phone at first I had expected LG to leave the haptic feedback of the touch screen off, however reassuring vibrate is still there when you tap an icon.

When you slide out the keypad on the KF600 you are greeted with a rather good looking keypad. The advantage of this keypad is that it makes sending texts much easier. While the Viewty is not as you might expect when sending messages it still is not perfect, I quite frequently mis-hit the screen getting the wrong letter/word and therefore being able to use a real keypad is a pleasant addition. Another small feature of the keypad I liked was its reassuringly firm slide. On the LG Slide I used I found the sliding out keypad to be a bit springy, so much so it almost feels like it could dislodge the battery or something so the KF600 is much more improved on this.

The phone is 101.2mm long 50.7mm wide and 14.1 mm in depth weighing 107g. This makes it lighter than then Shine and Viewty and slightly larger than the Shine but smaller than the Viewty.

The itself is very attractive and uses the Black styling of the Viewty etc. It has a matt black rear, silver edges and a shiny black screen. The phone comes with various different themes, with 5 of them being based on Keith Haring designs. The themes are very nice and use both the main screen and the InteractPad.

The phone comes with the usual set of applications you would expect to find. This includes:

• 2 Games (both making the most of the InteractPad)
• Alarm Clock
• Calculator
• Calendar
• FM Radio
• Memo Maker
• Stop Watch
• Unit Converter
• Voice Recorder
• World Clock

The music player on the phone is a similar set up to the Viewty. The player itself good, it allows you to create playlists, set to shuffle and change the equaliser settings. As with my Viewty review I did not have a decent quality pair of earphones to see what the quality was really like. Unfortunately you are required to use the LG connector to attach a normal pair of earphones to the phone. This is a pet peeve of mine as I have a tenancy to lose little things like this but it is quite a common issue with most phones. The memory card is awkward to get to as you need to remove the battery to get access to it, this shouldn't really be to much of a problem unless the card pops out when walking which I sometimes found with my Viewty. I think this could be a problem with my buying cheap memory cards rather than an issue with the phone itself.

The camera on the phone is 3-megapixels and the flash is decent enough to take pictures in the dark though this is not a xenon flash. You can also mess about with the various settings including white balance, timer, shake reduction, multi shot, auto focus, colour effect, quality and resolution. It is definitely not as good at the Viewty camera but again this is a mid range phone so it is to be expected. I think the biggest let down is the lack of a xenon flash.

Call quality and battery life were good. I got a couple of days out of the phone, though I probably did not charge it up fully before I started to play with it.

I think overall the phone is very good, especially for a mid range phone. I think Sim free it is in the same price range as the Nokia 6500 Classic but offers more functionality and a bit of a quirky side to it. Obviously the deciding factor when buying this phone is the InteractPad and I would suggest trying it at a store before buying it. I can imagine for a lot of people it is a love or hate thing. For me personally I would not say I love it but I do like it and it provides a pleasant break from the norm.

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This Thursday(24th April) will see the launch of the new LG phone that is yet to be named. Part of the Black Label series pf phone that we have been seeing recently this phone will be the successor of the LG Chocolate and LG Shine, so maybe it will be called the LG Black. The phone will be one of the slimmest 5mp camera phones available and has been made from Carbon Fibre and tempered glass.

LG have been busy releasing a lot of phones recently including the very popular KU990 (Viewty), the new multimedia based phone KF700, and the Mid range phone the KF600 which we have a review of to post later on today.

A couple more pictures of the new LG phone follow. Sorry for the black background on the pictures I did not have time to edit them in Photoshop.

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Recently I was asked to review the LG Viewty KU990 which I happily accepted. Over the past few days I have been using it as my main phone in order to find all the good and bad features about it as possible. I had previously used the phone for a few minutes and was quite impressed with it so I was looking forward to trying it out.

 

 

Initial thoughts

First of all I have heard a lot of people moan about the phones name. I don’t really see what is wrong with it, ok it probably isn’t the greatest name in the world but lets compare it to the other phone I use, the MDA Vario II (TyTn, SPV M3100 etc etc), that is defiantly no better plus it have about 4 other pseudonyms. Nokia has N95, E65, N73, 7373, Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition, etc while they may be useful names for people in the know, if I told my girlfriend I just got a new N810 she would look at me blankly and tell me to shut up. I’m no marketing expert but I assume LG want people to easily remember and identify the phone, and Viewty is a lot easier to remember than KU990.

When the phone arrived I was surprised how small the packaging was, it is supplied in a nice matt black box with all the accessories compartmentalised into smaller black boxes. The phone itself is very good looking with an all black body and silver edges. It is clear that LG are marketing this phone towards the style conscious, and I would go go so far to say it is one of the better looking phones in the market today.

The Viewty is rather large at 103.5mm tall, 54mm wide and 14.8mm thick but it is actually lighter than the smaller proportioned LG Shine at 112g and 119g respectively. However it is large for a reason, the phone comes with a 3.0 inch touch screen which occupies the majority of the front of the phone. It manages to display 262 thousand colours at 240 x 400 pixels. The large screen is obviously one of the main selling points of the phone with the majority the functions accessible via the touch screen interface.

On using the touch screen you will notice the phone provides vibration feedback, or haptic feedback as it is more formally known. Haptic technology refers to technology that provides feedback using the sense of touch. While it seems insignificant I really like haptic feedback, it basically replicates the push button feedback you receive from physical buttons and in doing so it improves the usability of the device.

The other feature that is noticeable when using the Viewty is that sweeping the finger across the screen is heavily used for navigation around the phone. Basically you use your finger to sweep through lists like text messages or emails. It took a little getting used to but it is quite intuitive so you should be sweeping through your emails in no time.

On the back side of the phone you have an impressive 5-megapixel camera, though this is not protected by a lens cover. The camera uses a xenon flash which should help provide decent photos in the darkest situations. There is also a weird little rocker on the side of the lens. At first I thought it was just for zoom, but after reading another review I found that it is used for in-call volume, and scrolling through menus as well.

On the right hand side of the phone there is a dedicated unlock key, which also acts as one of the camera keys. There is also the main camera key and a switch to switch between the various camera modes.

Performance

Call Quality.

While I found the call quality fine on my end there did seem to be some distortion and muffling on the other end, I tested the phone with an LG shine and a MDA Vario II. I personally didn’t think it was bad enough to hold against the phone but my girlfriend did complain a little. The loudspeaker is excellent, you can clearly hear people and I would say the loudspeaker quality was better than average. I did not try the video calling, I still find video calling rather gimmicky and to be honest I am not that interested in seeing the callers face as I speak to them.

Messaging / Interface

I have a tendency to text more than I phone, so I was expecting this area to be the biggest let down of the phone. There are 3 main interface options when texting. There is the usual T9 keypad, handwriting recognition and an onscreen keyboard.

As with most phones I have tried with handwriting recognition it is pretty poor. Most likely due to the fact my writing is appalling but it was basically unusable for myself, it would recognise the odd word but the majority would be completely wrong.

While I expected the onscreen keyboard to be too small to use I was quite impressed, it recognised the majority of keys I pressed and I was able to text reasonably fast on it. Unfortunately after a while I did find that I was hitting the wrong key a little too often for my liking and I resorted to the T9.

The T9 text input was perfectly fine, with the haptic feedback it was just as easy as typing on a real phone pad.

Camera

The camera on the phone was good, the pictures were clear and a xenon flash is infinitely better than an LED flash. The only minor problem I had was the response time between pressing the button to take the picture and the phone actually taking the picture was not as fast as I would like. The camera should provide a more than adequate substitute to a dedicated camera if needed.

The phone also has the ability to record video up to 120fps. 120fps is defiantly a bit of a gimmick but it is quite fun to record things in slow motion.

Email – Web

I normally use exchange for my email but was forced into setting up Pop3 for email on the phone. If you have a ISP provided email address than you need to make sure you have a proper SMTP server to be able to send emails. I was impressed with the email though; it was quite fast thanks to the HSDPA (3.5G) and was easy to read through thanks to the scrolling system.

Web browsing was also good thanks to the HSDPA and the nice large screen. The browser was superb; you view full size WebPages and sweep around using your finger.

There is no Wi-Fi on the phone, though this is not a huge issue for me as I rarely use it. I am on Web and Walk so I always connect via HSDPA.

I also found the modem function to be excellent. Once you install the LG software you need to select which service provider you use and click connect. That’s about all you have to do. In comparison I found connecting with my MDA Vario much more of a chore.

Music

The phone only comes with 90Mb of internal memory but it is upgradable via MicroSD. To listen to the music you must use the earphone adapter provided with the phone, this adapter also acts as the hands free microphone and radio aerial.

The music player was easy to use and the sound quality of the provided earphones was adequate. I did not have any higher quality earphones to hand as my V-Modas broke so I am unable to give a more accurate opinion on the sound quality provided from the phone.

I did not test the radio extensively but I managed to pick up radio 1 with little effort and it was quite clear.

I did find on 2 occasions the music randomly stopped playing, and the phone informed me that the files were corrupt. To amend this I had to remove the MicroSD card and insert it again which is quite frustrating as it required me to remove the back plate and battery first.

I would also have liked the phone to come with a proper 3.5mm headset socket built into it to negate the need of the hand free adaptor. Unfortunately this is a common problem with many phones.

Battery

LG quotes talk time battery life at 355 minutes using GSM only and 233 minutes using 3G only, and standby time at 434 hours using GSM and 454 hours using 3G. I didn’t really pay that much attention to it but I have charged it twice in about 4 days and I have used it quite a bit. Heavy browsing or music use will obviously require more battery charged.

Other points.

The phone managed to synch with my outlook very easily which is handy as I use exchange to manage most of my life.

The stylus is stupid, it looks like mascara. If LG want to include a stylus why didn’t they let it slide inside the phone?

The touch screen does get a bit mucky, but at the end of the day it is a touch screen what else do you expect.

Good Points	Bad Points
Great looking phone	Touch Screen get mucky
Best touch screen I have used	No Camera Lens
Good camera / Flash	No Wi Fi
HSDPA / Good Browser and Email	Stupid looking stylus

 

Conclusion

I am a geek so I typically chose function over form and go for Symbian/WM based phones. However this phone has impressed me, it does all the functions I require out of a phone and it does them well. It is also a very good looking phone so will keep even the most style conscious person happy.

The camera is not as great as a standalone camera but it is very good for a phone camera and should satisfy most people.

While the phone is probably not the best phone in the world for my requirements it is good enough for me to retire my MDA Vario II and use the Viewty as my full time phone until I find an adequate replacement.

Phone Specification from LG after the jump.

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Boy Genius Report have recently reported that the new Motorola Q9 has the latest upgrade to Windows Mobile 6. It is a .1 release so not exactly ground braking but it does have some neat new features.

Unfortunately it will not make much difference for myself as I am fed up with the WM5 and WM6 being glitchy. It is so frustrating having to do hardware resets on a phone then reinstalling absolutely everything. It is a shame because I do would love my TyTn if it did not play up so much. Hopefully Microsoft will resolve the issues in the future.

Anyway the new things found are all based on the standard version (Professional is the touch screen version).

• Copy / Paste.
• Domain Enroll in Settings (Enrolling in a domain will connect your device with company resources.)
• New home screen (pan left and right to check out missed calls, notifications like email, sms, etc.)
• Change Master Security Code
• Added text input settings
• Recent Programs when pressing Start menu
• Threaded SMS.
• When you compose an email, or SMS, and start typing the name of the contact in the "To:" field, the contact names finally pop up like Windows Mobile Professional!
• Internet Explorer now lets you define a homepage, and also zoom in and out using a nice and clean interface

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The 3rd Addition to the Touch lineup from HTC is the Touch Cruise. Shockingly the Touch means the device will incorporate the TouchFLO interface, and the Cruise indicates it is GPS enabled. This phone will include HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 3 megapixel camera, microSD expansion, and a 2.8-inch touch-screen lying on top of a Windows Mobile 6 foundation. The phone will apparently have TomTom navigator 6 preloaded onto it.

It should be available in Europe later this month however no word on pricing just yet. It is also quad-band GSM so it will work stateside.

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So the first images and videos of the Software Development Kit(SDK) for Googles new Android OS have been released.

From the looks of it is appears quite impressive so far. Especially if you consider it was only announced a few days ago.

After the jump we have some Images and Videos, though you should note these are all on a hardware reference model so you wont be buying an Android based phone anytime soon.

Some of the our of box support includes:

• Touchscreen
• 3G
• Webkit-based browser
• Threaded text messaging
• MPEG-4, h.264, MP3, and AAC file formats
• Accelerated 3D graphics

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Ok so it does not look like Google are going to directly compete with Apple's iPhone but they are collaborating with 34 Phone related companies to produce an open source operating system for mobiles. The collaboration is called the Open Handset Alliance and they will be developing Android™ a complete mobile phone software stack.

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Following on from o2's recently announced "unlimited" plans (which confused us so much we didn't run the story), T-Mobile have reduced the price of their already excellent Web'n'Walk plans. The Web’n’walk Plus package (3GB monthly allowance) has been reduced from £29 to £20 a month, whilst the Web’n’walk Max (10Gb allowance and VoIP ability) from £44 to only £35 a month. Sure, it's only available to those on 24 month contracts but, let's be honest, T-Mobile are royally whooping almost every other network on data allowance and value-for-money right now.

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