LG KF600

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49295765,00.htm

Reviewed 3 March 2008

Reviewed by Andrew Lim

At this year's Mobile World Congress, LG was keen to promote its latest handset, the LG KF600, which features a split-screen design. We were just as keen to get our hands on this mobile, as interesting as it looked. Would we find its functionality to be as intriguing as its appearance?

The LG KF600 is currently available on Orange, free on a monthly contract.

Design
If phones were cars, then the KF600 would fall somewhere in between a VW Golf and a modded Fiat Punto -- it feels solid, but one look at it and you might find yourself asking 'why?' It's not that it's an ugly phone by any means, but certain features seem unnecessary.

Take, for instance, the split screen with touch-sensitive navigation pad that changes depending on what feature you're using, from the music player to text messaging. Every time you access a different part of the phone's interface, the navigation area at the bottom changes the displayed keys to suit your needs.

On paper, it sounds very exciting, but we don't really like it. After months spent with a Chocolate phone, we realised that touch-sensitive keys have their ups and downs and the KF600's navigation pad reinforces that issue.

We found the screen clunky to press compared to using a mechanical four-way navigation key. We also wanted to touch the top screen, which you frustratingly can't do. If you want a full touchscreen phone, you could always look to the new LG KF700. The system works overall but it felt slow and unresponsive at times. 

We were slightly disappointed with the plastic that covers the two displays, which felt less solid than we expected and isn't as high in quality as other LG phones' screens, such as the Viewty's screen. We also weren't impressed with the keys on the keypad -- they were too flat to easily distinguish between each one.

Fortunately, the sliding mechanism is smooth and spring loaded, so you won't struggle to pop the phone open. The back of the phone has a rubbery finish that feels nice to touch and while the keypad is flatter than we'd have liked, it does have a mechanical cancel key on it.

Chocolate users will know how frustrating it is to have to use a touch-sensitive cancel key, particularly since it makes it much easier to delete things accidentally. The KF600's mechanical cancel key is far more responsive and only deletes things when you press it, which is hard to do unintentionally.

Features
While we weren't convinced by the touchscreen navigation pad, we do think that the software interface looks good and is an innovative idea, offering you direct access to different functions depending on what you're doing. A nice touch is the selection of Keith Haring- inspired, animated themes. The phone is brought to life in a different way to your average phone theme. It's something we hope to see more of in the future. The question is, though, does it make using the phone easier?

Another interesting feature is the KF600's photo viewer. Using the touch-sensitive pad, you can zoom in on photos and view different areas using a mini-map-style interface. This interface would work brilliantly to see different areas of a Web page, too -- unfortunately, it isn't used in the Web browser, which we thought was an oversight. It's actually more difficult to navigate a Web page with the KF600's touchpad. Moving up and down on a page isn't as smooth as we'd like it to be.

It seems the KF600's forte is its music player. The player lets you create playlists, adjust the equaliser, set songs to shuffle and repeat all tracks. We were glad to see a 3.5mm headphone adapter that lets you listen to music using you own headphones but we'd really like to see a built-in 3.5mm jack on LG phones. The KF600 does support A2DP, so you can listen to music wirelessly should you choose to.

Camera-wise, the KF600 boasts a 3-megapixel camera with a variety of settings, including white balance and setting a timer. It's not the cream of the camera crop in terms of performance, but it is easy to use.

Performance
Audio quality during calls was clear and didn't sound distorted. We would have liked to be able to turn the volume up more, however. The loudspeaker worked normally. On the MP3 and radio front, the KF600's no iPod, but its quality was acceptable and it'll suffice if you're looking for something that'll pump out tunes during your daily commute.

For a 3-megapixel camera we expected it to be a little sharper but it didn't perform as well as we expected, particularly in low light due to the lack of a xenon flash. There is an LED photo light, but you shouldn't expect it to illuminate your photos. That said, if you just want to take photos for MMS messages and small prints, it does the job.

With moderate to high usage the LG KF600's battery lasted for about two days before needing to be recharged. Battery life is quoted at 200 hours standby time and up to 2.5 hours talk time.

Conclusion
We're in two minds about the split-screened LG KF600. On the one hand, contextual menus are a very good idea, offering users an easier way to interact with their phones, but how these contextual interfaces are accessed makes a big difference.

While the KF600's lower-half touchscreen isn't the worst we've ever used, the concept doesn't work as well as we expected. We were really frustrated when instinctively pressing the top half of the screen to access icons, realising seconds later that only the bottom half is touch-sensitive.

The screen doesn't have that instant response you get from the iPhone's touchscreen either, making it a very awkward touchscreen to use at times. Ideas like these though aren't always perfect first time round, so while we might not rush out to buy this phone, the next one might just work well enough to change our minds.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday