The LG Arena

What are LG on? They are churning out five-star touchscreen phones almost as quickly as all other manufacturers put together. For this reason, we are willing to forgive them for giving their latest touchscreen phone the same name as the former NEC in Birmingham, which is now called – you guessed it – the LG Arena!

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Features of the LG Arena KM900 include:

• 5 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, autofocus & LED flash
• Video recording (DivX playback)
• 3G video calling
• Touch sensitive screen: TFT LCD, 262k colours, 480 x 800 pixels (3 inches)
• Music player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC++/WMA formats) with Dolby Mobile
• FM radio
• FM transmitter
• Assisted GPS with geo-tagging of photos
• Speakerphone
• Voice recording
• Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
• T9 predictive text
• Document viewer (TXT, PDF, DOC, PPT, XLS)
• Ringtones: 72 voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
• Wallpaper
• Java 2.0 games
• Phonebook (1000 names)
• Memory: 8 Gbyte plus microSD memory card (expandable to 32 GB)
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, Bluetooth 1.2, WiFi, 3.5mm headphone socket
• Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 12, EDGE, 3G HSDPA (7.2 Mb/s)
• Vibration alert
• Triband (GSM 900/1800/1900) plus 3G HSDPA
• Size: 106 x 55 x 12 mm
• Weight: 105g
• Talktime: 3.8 hours
• Battery standby: 300 hours

How to review the LG Arena? It’s a brilliant all-rounder. The list of things it doesn’t do is shorter than the list of things that it does do, so here we go: it isn’t a smartphone (LG have yet to enter the smartphone market (we nearly wrote “arena”) and it doesn’t have an 8 megapixel camera. That’s all it doesn’t do (it doesn’t make the coffee or run you a bath either, but LG are rumoured to be working on this.)

So, regular readers of Mobile Phones UK will know that we lurve LG touchscreen phones. And we just lurve the Arena. Is it LG’s best phone so far? Probably. It’s a gorgeous phone to look at. It’s quite a bit smaller than the iPhone 3G, which is a bonus, although this does mean that the screen is slightly smaller – but at 3 inches it’s still a whopper. The brushed metal finish is lurvely too and radiates quality. But the best thing about the Arena becomes apparent when you turn it on: it’s the drop-dead high resolution screen. With 480×800 pixels, it’s a truly high definition display and is absolutely at the cutting edge.

The Arena is the first phone to showcase LG’s new S-Class touchscreen user interface. Based on a “cube” idea, which you can see in the photo above, the screen contains a 3D cube that you can turn around to reveal one of 4 sides: contacts, widgets, shortcuts and a customisable home screen. It’s kind of fun, but doesn’t really add anything. But the touchscreen UI itself is first class. We’ve always been a fan of the LG touch phones, from the Prada to the Renoir, and the Arena is at least as good. Watch the youtube video below to learn more.

The Arena may not have an 8 megapixel camera (choose the LG Renoir KC910 for this) but it is a very well balanced multi-media device. The camera is 5 megapixels, with autofocus and an LED flash. It’s clearly not in the same league as the 8 megapixel monsters such as the Renoir, Samsung i8510 or Sony Ericsson C905, but it’s still a good camera. It records high quality video too, and you can use the front-mounted camera to make video calls. The music player can play all popular formats, including MP3, AAC and WMA, and supports Dolby Mobile for high fidelity virtual surround sound. A welcome addition is the 3.5mm headphone jack, which enables you to plug in any headphone with a standard connector. An FM radio is included too. The Arena also comes with a built-in FM transmitter, which enables you to play music wirelessly through a car or home stereo.

When it comes to memory, the Arena delivers the goods in abundance. Not only does it comes with 8GB of flash memory, but it also supports microSD cards up to 40GB. This dwarfs the memory capacity of even the iPhone! LG clearly are wanting users to make full use of all the multimedia functionality that the Arena is capable of, so whether you have a massive music collection, or want to watch full length movies on your phone in high definition, this phone is eager and willing to do the job.

There are so many features available, we can’t cover everything in this review. We need to mention that the phone supports assisted GPS with geo-tagging of photos. We also need to mention that it’s connectivity is outstanding – as well as the FM transmitter and 3.5mm headphone socket, it supports Bluetooth, USB and WiFi. It’s a 3G phone with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps for rapid downloading of data, and it’s equipped with an excellent web browser.

That’s the end of our whirlwind tour of the LG Arena KM900! The touchscreen phone market is getting very crowded in 2009, and there are some brilliant phones competing for your attention, but we feel that the Arena is probably the best phone to be released in the first quarter of 2009, and we expect it to be a massive hit. Tech-heads will probably still prefer the Samsung Omnia or HTC Touch HD though.

The LG Cookie is jam-packed full of essential features! The built-in 3.0-megapixel camera and video recorder are great for capturing all those fun spontaneous times. The FM Radio and MP3 Player are just what you need to listen to the latest and your favourite music tracks. You’ll be able to store all your favourite tracks and photo’s with the 48MB internal memory. But what’s even better is you can get up 8GB of external memory with MicroSD memory card!.

Viewing pictures is great on the LG due to the Accelerometer which allows the display screen to auto rotate so you can view pictures` both landscape and portrait! Plus you’ll have WAP 2.0 which allows you to access your emails and a range of information from the internet!.

• The LG KP500 Cookie is a mobile phone with a recipe for success! Use the most affordable touch-screen mobile phone on the market!
• Capture great pictures with the built-in 3.0-megapixel camera.
• Get access to a range of information from the internet via WAP 2.0
• Listen to all your music via the MP3 player and built-in FM Radio.
• Store all your multimedia files with the 48MB internal memory or expand to up to 8Gb with a microSD card.
• View pictures in landscape and portrait with the accelerometer for auto rotating the screen

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The LG KC910 is a real multimedia monster packed with a whole load of amazing features such as, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity to hook up to facebook and emailing on the go, plus TV output and video record. It‘s also the first phone to include Dolby mobile – this includes the NEW ‘Jogging Buddy’ program that uses the built-in GPS technology to help track workouts, a feature sure to please exercise enthusiasts.

• Capture the very best quality pictures with the 8.0-megapixel camera with Xenon flash
• Use the Schneider-Kreuznach camera optics and protective cover for good quality photography
• Track workouts with the NEW ‘Jogging Buddy’ program included
• Use ‘Geo tagging’ for adding automatic local information to pictures
• Watch TV output on the impressive 3 inch colour display touch-screen
• Surf the internet and access emails with super fast HSDPA at speeds of up to 7.2Mbps

Get your LG KC910 – 8.0-megapixel FREE with Free Gifts on O2, and T-Mobile Network from SAFFtrack Mobiles