LG seem to be ignoring any crisis in the economy and planning on releasing 125 new individual handsets globally in 2009.
LG are planning on releasing 25 phones in the UK alone.
This means they will be releasing more than 2 phones per week globally and nearly 1 phone every 2 weeks just in the UK! Crazy!
Still, I am sure it will mean they will be releasing a phone that has to appeal to every possible market and hopefully improving their market share.
With more and more phones concentrating on the camera aspect of the phone it may come as no surprise that Casio has decided to get involved in all this cam-phone malarkey.
Casio will be releasing in Japan a new EXILIM powered mobile phone featuring an 8.1 camera with a 9 Point auto-focus and a wide angle, the W63CA. The phone will also feature a 3.1-inch WVGA screen.
Casio have decided to go with a dual LED flash over a Xenon flash, which is a bit of a shame as LED flash tends to be a bit rubbish.
Ok so this may not be as easy to remember as the name Omnia but Samsung have announced the new I7110. This is a S60 and Symbian OS-based, and will be showcased for the first time at London’s Symbian Smartphone Show. This bar type Smartphone features 2.6’’ QVGA AMOLED screen, FM radio, DNSe 2.0, GPS Navigation (Geo-Tagging, Pedestrian & Driving), optical mouse, accelerometer, 3D games (FIFA 2008, Asphalt), with DLNA compatibility.
It also comes with Bluetooth v2.0, USB 2.0, WiFi, 50MB memory, an external memory slot (up to 16GB), 5Mpix camera (CMOS with AF and LED flash). It’s equipped with a video player (DivX / H.263 / H.264 / WMV /MP4, RV), and music player (MP3 / AAC / AAC+ /eACC+ / WMA / RealAudio).
Press release after jump
I am due for an upgrade in January, and as always I find myself in a quandary about what to get. There does not seem to be a phone out there that meets my requirements, a lot of phones tick the right boxes but then will miss one or 2 important things off, leaving me with an option I am not entirely happy about.
I suppose the problem is that I want all the bells and whistles and not have to pay a fortune for it, and if a company released the “perfect phone” it would mean people wouldn’t bother changing it so would harm the profits.
Anyway what I want from my phone is:
Large internal memory - The iPhone, N96, and Omnia all offer this. I would want 8GB minimum or 16GB would be nice
MicroSD - If I had 16GB internal and a 16GB card I would have plenty of room to play with! I believe the N96 and Omnia do this while also having the internal memory.
Smart OS - I’m a geek, I like functionality, and a smart OS is the best way to get it. Though one issue is that I don’t want Windows Mobile. I will try it again if I HAVE to but my experience with my HTC Tytn was not pleasant. Symbian is the most likely option, though I strongly suspect Android will become a strong contender if not the main contender eventually.
3.5G (HSDA) - Thanks to reduced mobile broadband prices and decent mobile browser I find myself using my phone for browsing a lot more. I am sorry Apple but 3G is just not acceptable.
A decent camera with a xenon flash. I don’t need a stupid million megapixel camera but 4 or 5 megapixel would be nice, and an LED flash is just CRAP. I believe it is the image sensor that is more important for a digital camera so I would prefer a decent one of them rather than lots of megapixels.
Large touch screen + decent screen resolution - The iPhone may fall down in quite a few areas but you can’t fault its screen or the touch screen user interface! If I am going to use my phone online, it makes life a lot easier if you the screen can display a good % of a normal web page, obviously I am not going to get 1280×800 but as much width as possible would be good.
Pull out keyboard - Ok this maybe a little more disputed by people than other features, and I have to admit the iPhone does the best of a bad situation but I still think real keys are important.
Exchange Functionality - Again probably not the most important feature for the average consumer but it is important and quite a lot of phones (iPhone, S60 phones) do it so there is no excuse not too. Blackberry functionality would be helpful (not so much for me though) and decent push email.
Proper media keys / media integration - At the end of the day I am looking for convergence, I don’t want 16GB of storage for nothing, I want to play my music on the phone, so I want to access the music easily! I also want it to be able to play the files I put on it, rather than having to convert them via some software.
A 3.5mm headphone jack - Again I want to listen to music, using adaptors is just annoying and proprietary adapters are the most ridiculous thing in the world! i.e the G1 apparently needs a custom ExtUSB adaptor that isn’t even available immediately! What are they playing at!
Mini USB charging and PC connection - Again I hate all things proprietary. My E90 even has a mini USB but then wont charge up via it!!
Built in GPS - Not that I use it much, but it is very useful for a lot of people.
Wi-Fi + Bluetooth - Self explanatory really
A decent batter life would also be nice, oh and actually the ability to make calls!
I don’t think form factor is that much of an issue, the iPhone is hardly small, nor is the G1, and the N96 is quite fat. Though the iPhone goes to show that people will happily have a large phone as long as it looks good!
I suppose that is quite a lot of phone, and looking at it, it sort of kills off the Music player AND the sat nav market but phones are moving this way anyway but I just wished they hurried up a little!
At the moment I think the Nokia N96 or Samsung Innov8 are the closest to my requirements, though the Samsung Innov8 doesn’t appear to be freely available on contract.
What other features do you want to see on a phone? And I mean realistic features, I am sure I have missed a few off
T-Mobile has been ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to pull an advert which misleadingly implies that mobile broadband is of similar speed and quality to home broadband.
A leaflet for T-Mobile stated: “Emails to send, blogs to write, games to play, stuff-to buy- and everything else you love doing online…Broadband on the go for £15 a month…All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries.”
ASA ruled: “Because T-Mobile had not made clear in the ad that there were differences between home broadband services and mobile broadband services, particularly in terms of the potentially higher speeds of the former, and because we considered that that was likely to influence consumers’ decision to subscribe to the service, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”
I am quite glad this has happened, I have had several friends wanting mobile broadband for whatever reason, and most of them seem to think it will provide similar speeds to normal home broadband.
In one case I did a speed test for the mobile broadband provided by 3. I managed to receive 0.1 meg Up and Down. This is most likely due to poor reception, and would improve significantly depending where you are located, but it is clearly no where near home broadband speeds and I feel a lot of people seem to think it will be similar.
Via: Precision Marketing
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 240×176 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:
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:
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.
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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