LG KF510

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49296521,00.htm

Reviewed 21 April 2008

Reviewed by Andrew Lim

Sticking to its design guns, LG has whipped out the KF510, an attractive phone that feels like a quality product. It's similar to the Chocolate phone but is it as fiddly to use? We gave it a good gripping to find out.

It's available from Carphone Warehouse and most of the major networks on a pay monthly contract.

Design
Made up of a glass front and metal body, the KF510 not only feels sturdy but is also satisfyingly heavy. The only downside you get from such a glossy casing is that it's very prone to fingerprint marks. Sure, your allergies may be acting up, but you'll need your hanky to wipe the phone more than your nose.

The touch-sensitive area of the KF510 uses white LEDs that flash differently depending on what action you take

Pop the KF510 open and you'll notice the standard keypad on the front. At the back, a 3-megapixel camera is cleverly hidden behind the back cover when the phone is shut, as is the microSD slot, keeping them both well protected.

When open, the KF510 is top heavy. It's awkward to type on with just one hand, especially when you're trying to use the bottom three keys. We'd recommend a two-handed Monica Seles grip rather than the one-handed Justine Henin approach.

The star of the show is the KF510's navigation pad: it's touch sensitive and flashes different patterns depending on what you're doing. Flashing arrows and crosses, the pad allows you to flick up and down and left and right, reacting in a similar way to a trackpad on a laptop.

It sounds cool on paper but after a few weeks of use, we found it started to get frustrating. Although the touch-sensitive keys vibrate when you tap them, we didn't always find them very responsive or fast enough. Despite how fun it can be to flick, we realised we would have preferred a mechanical navigation pad.

We liked the keypad but found the overall weight balance of the phone made it slightly awkward to type with one hand

We most definitely missed mechanical keys when it came to cancelling or deleting words in text messages. One of the issues we had with the LG Chocolate phone was that you completed these operations using a touch-sensitive key. It didn't always respond properly, often deleting an entire text when we only wanted to delete a letter. This excruciatingly annoying issue is sadly echoed in the KF510.

Features
While the LG KF510 looks great on the outside, the features didn't dazzle us as much. There's a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus, which performed well in daylight but seemed to struggle in very low light conditions, despite the inclusion of the oft-missed LED photo light.

The LG KF510's 3-megapixel camera takes good shots in daylight but don't expect great things if you're taking pictures in a badly lit area

We blame the touch-sensitive keys for our displeasure using the MP3 player. Although it's functional and offers the option to create playlists and shuffle music, we just didn't like controlling it with touch. Plus, there's no built-in 3.5mm headphone jack, which is something we'd like to see in future models.

While it's not aimed to be a smart phone, the lack of 3G might annoy some users. Happily, you can install Java apps, such as Opera Mini, which do add extra functionality should you want it. Overall, though, the KF510 feature offerings are lacklustre.

Performance
Battery life is quoted at 400 hours standby and 4 hours talk time. We found it lasted for over two days before needing to be recharged. The lack of 3G or Wi-Fi meant that we didn't use it to browse the Web that much, therefore conserving power.

Conclusion
The LG KF510 is an attractive phone. Initially, we were swayed by its charms and we didn't know how to feel. Having now spent a lot of time with it, we find the touch-sensitive pad too frustrating to give the KF510 a higher mark.

We didn't have stars in our eyes either as the lack of any dazzling features disappointed us. We really wanted to like this phone more, but it ended up feeling like an upgrade of the Chocolate phone but without any major improvement to the endlessly frustrating touchpad issues.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday