LG’s newest mobile treat, the VX-8500 Chocolate offers minimalist-inspired style and a silky-smooth slider design. Deluxe features include support for V Cast Music, glowing touch-sensitive navigation keys, a powerful integrated music/video player, a 1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder, stereo Bluetooth capabilities, and a microSD memory slot for extra storage. If you value extreme style mixed with powerful substance, this is the phone for you. And now, the VX-8500 is available in white chocolate.

Design
The phone features a seriously attractive open-faced design with an internal antenna and a vibrant 240 x 320 pixel, 262,000-color TFT/TFD display. A touch sensor click wheel, similar to iPod, and sliding design set the phone apart stylistically. Opening the slider reveals a numeric keypad, as well as the 1.3-megapixel camera and LED flash, which are housed on the rear of the phone. The volume and voice slide keys are on the left of the phone, while the music, camera and “end” keys are on the right side. A memory card slot is provided for MicroSD/TransFlash memory cards of up to 2 GB capacity (additional cards sold separately). The phone includes 512 MB of internal memory.

Calling Features
The Chocolate boasts powerful calling functions, such as speaker independent voice dialing, which makes it easy to call contacts by simply saying their names. No prior voice training is required and you can even speak individual digits to the phone for quick dialing of numbers you know by heart. And because the Chocolate is Bluetooth enabled, wireless headsets can be configured with the phone for total handsfree operation.

The Chocolate’s internal memory can hold up to 500 contacts for quick access to email addresses and phone numbers. The phone lets you easily assign pictures as well as ringtones to your most common callers. In addition to vibrating alerts, the phone supports polyphonic ringtones, and a number of ringtones come preloaded on the phone and more ringtones can be downloaded from Verizon’s Get It Now service. Lastly, the Chocolate’s GPS location technology pinpoints your exact location when you dial 911.

The LG U900 is a 2006 model mobile phone. The handset comes with 1.3 MP camera and 72-voices ringtons support. MobileWhack.com reviews the LG U900 and writes, “LG Electronics keeping in mind the Sports event of the year FIFA World Cup 2006 just recently in Italy unveiled the LG-U900 DVB-H mobile phone which will be fully capable of viewing the world cup live on the handset. This has been possible due to the joint efforts of top industry guns like Hutchison 3 Italia, Microtune and of course LG. If you remember, LG had first showcased the U900 handset at a ceremony in Rome, Italy on April 27 and one also found the phone making an appearance at CeBIT. Hutchin 3 italia a leading Italian mobile telecommunications service provider will broadcast the event on mobile phones.”

The LG,s UMTS(WCDMA) DVB-H phone, the LG-U900, is a mobile TV broadcaster with a wide-swing screen. Its premium digital broadcasting functions include ESG (Electronics Service Guide) and CAS (Conditional Access System). These functions shall support enhanced business models for mobile and broadcasting operators.Users can watch TV for up to three hours because of the phone’s long battery life. The LG-U900 is also equipped with a 1.3 mega-pixel & VGA digital camera, an internal memory capacity of 58MB.The UMTS(WCDMA) DVB-H technology was improved from DVB-T, European terrestrial digital broadcast technology to become the European mobile broadcast standard. It provides high-speed data transmission, various channel services, a high-resolution image and strong mobile broadcasting.

If you liked the LG Prada or are considering an iPhone, then the LG Viewty should definitely be top of your list of phones to check out first. Touchscreen phones are the hot product of 2007/2008 and LG have a proven track record in this area with the LG Prada. The Viewty is basically a souped-up Prada without the designer logo, and it’s a very accomplished product. We loved the Prada’s touchscreen user interface, and the Viewty retains the best features of the Prada, but with the addition of 3G, a 5 megapixel camera, an uprated video camera, more memory and longer battery life.

For the benefit of those who haven’t seen a Prada or iPhone, let’s recap the touchscreen concept. Not to be confused with touch-sensitive buttons (e.g. the LG Chocolate or Samsung U600), the Viewty has a touch-sensitive screen. This means that icons and menus appear on the screen itself, and you touch the screen to activate the “buttons”. The Viewty uses subtle vibration feedback to confirm when you’ve pressed a button, and you’ll very quickly get used to the concept. There are real buttons below the screen for making and ending calls, a jog wheel, and also side buttons for controlling volume, the camera and the music player. We liked the touchscreen interface very much, and the technology now seems to be mature enough for touchscreens to enter the mainstream. If you’re a fast texter you might find that the touchscreen slows you down a little, but the sheer pleasure of using the on-screen menus more than compensates for this. T9 predictive text is supported too. A stylus pen is provided if you find the interface too slow using your finger. The Viewty also supports handwriting recognition, so you should be able to find an input method that you’re comfortable with.
Adigital camera inside a cell phone is not exceptional these days. It becomes a different case when a 5 Megapixel digital camera is integrated in a mobile phone. And although there are more handsets equipped with a 5 Megapixel digital camera, for example the Nokia N82, Samsung G800 and the Sony Ericsson K850i, there is a vast difference in the quality of the camera. The KU990 is the first 5 Megapixel cell phone of LG. It looks like LG is starting to take mobile photography seriously. The Viewty is the successor to the LG Prada. The latter was introduced in the beginning of 2007. The LG Viewty is up to date with its large touchscreen, 5 Megapixel digital camera and multimedia player. The LG Viewty comes in a compact black box including a headphone, charger, CD-ROM and USB cable. We were able to test the LG Viewty extensively and our findings of this digital camera with cell phone function can be read in our LG Viewty review.
The user interface has been fairly well thought through. Four tappable icons at the bottom of the Home screen let you get to messaging, contacts, the dialpad and the main menu of the phone.

There is also a ‘swipe’ mode. Run a finger along the bottom edge of the home screen and a bank of nine icons pops up giving you quick access to features like the Web browser, games and apps, alarms, calendar and Bluetooth settings. If you want more than is on offer here, the main menu provides full access.

More impressively, you can use a finger to drag images you have zoomed so that only a part of them shows on screen. It is a smooth and easy process.This is a fairly large phone at 103.5mm tall, 54mm wide and 14.8mm thick. At 112g it is approaching the weight and girth of a proper smartphone.

The 3.0 inch touchscreen occupies pretty much all of the front of the Viewty. It displays 262 thousand colours and 240 x 400 pixels. It can be configured with one of three themes: ‘Black’ is a simple black background theme. ‘Silver’ offers a lighter grey background with some graphics that whizz onto the home screen for no apparent reason. But ‘Fish’, aaah ‘Fish’ is delightful. On the home screen a goldfish swims against a blue background. Put a fingertip on the screen and the fish swims towards it. Yes it is silly, yes it is trite, but I like it.

Whatever theme you choose, the home screen has a set of animated arrows running along its bottom edge. Sweep a fingertip along them and a 3×3 bank of icons pops up offering tap-access to Web browser, messaging, profiles, games and apps, memo, alarms, my stuff, calendar and Bluetooth settings. Sweep again and this menu disappears. The sensitive area is wide enough that you hit it right every time, and so, crucially, this part of the touch screen element works well enough to use intuitively and regularly.

The LG KP200 phone is a cheap low end clamshell phone. It does not belong to any of LG’s specialized brands like Chocolate or Shine, but it does sport the usual LG colors - grey and silver. The phone measures 86 X 45 X 20.1 mm and weighs at about 76 grams. Although the phone is of the low-end type, it does support features such as Java, an FM Radio, Photo album, Photo editor, and even Wallpapers; but of course, you couldn’t expect more from this low budget phone.

The main attraction of the LG Prada is probably its enormous 3-inch diagonal touch display. The brilliant screen supports 256,000 colors that really show off the rich and colorful detail of the Prada’s gorgeous menu interface. You can adjust the brightness and backlight time, but not the font size. That sits just fine with us, however, as the default font is quite nice and large already. You also can choose from a variety of innovative themes that take advantage of the touch screen interface–one of our favorites has a moving fish on the home screen wallpaper that you can direct with your finger.

The phone comes with a large 3 Inch high colour screen which provides a high screen resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. The screen is an LCD TFT touch screen which comes with a touch screen menu interface which eliminates the users need for a keypad. The KE850 Prada runs on a Macromedia Flash user interface which is highly useable & effective.

Specifications:

Network GSM
Form Factor BAR
Message Email
Pixel 2.0 MP
FM Radio yes
MP3 Player yes
Bluetooth yes
Ringtone 32ch
Memory Slot microSD
Standby time(h) 300
Java yes
Digital zoom yes
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE yes
USB yes
Touch Screen yes
Video Camera yes

The white backlit keypad takes up almost half of the real estate on the front of the phone, with the 5-way navigational keypad, flanked by the right and left soft keys along with the call and end keys, situated just below the screen. The numerical keypad is large and very easy to press. When the phone is in its power saver mode, the keypad light will not come on at all, which proved to be pretty annoying, as there is no way to turn on the keypad backlight in this mode. This made the power saver mode pretty worthless, since you can’t use it in the dark.

On the right of the handset, you can find the multimedia/camera shutter key. The position of this key is awkward, as it is located pretty close to the middle of the phone when it is used in landscape mode. It would have been better if it was positioned lower down, as this would simulate a real camera shutter key, giving better handling and ergonomics when using the KG320 as a camera in landscape mode. On the left of the device there is an eyelet for attaching your favorite lanyard or wrist strap, and the universal connector for the charger and handsfree kit can also be found here. On the back of the LG KG320, the 1.3 megapixel camera is well protected by a sliding cover, similar to the one found on the Sony Ericsson K800. I really like this design, as it makes the KG320 look very much like a regular digital camera. The camera lens is located next to the LED flash light and self-portrait mirror.

The KG320’s music player is compatible with most of the common audio file formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, M4A, WMA. It also comes with onboard support for MPEG-4 video playback. What’s missing, though, is an FM tuner. One drawback is that the music player can’t work in the background. Listening with the provided ear buds, the KG320 sounded tinny and lacked bass. The LG KG320’s 1.3 megapixel camera is capable of capturing images in five different resolutions, and provides quite an impressive range of settings for users to tweak. A big letdown here is the time the camera takes to activate - the user is left waiting for three seconds before the camera starts, and shutter lag is an agonizing three seconds on top of that. The KG320 is also capable of recording video clips.

The KG320 comes with a built in music playing feature which can play music in MP3, AAC, AAC+ & AAC++ music format. The music player is a fun source of entertainment when the user is travelling or simply wants to sit back & relax to their favourite tunes. The user can update their music files & manage their music easily using the phones connectivity options. The user can play music over the phones speaker system or the user can listen to their music more privately using their stereo handsfree headphones which are provide with the LG KG320. The phone can play ringtones in either MP3 or polyphonic sound which allows the user to have the ringtone that suits their music taste. The phone supports Java™ which allows the user to download Java™ games & use Java™ application on their LG KG320. The KG320 comes with messaging facilities which include a text message service, email service & a multimedia message service. The user can use the multimedia messaging service to send photo or video recordings to any multimedia messaging compatible contact, which is an easy way to share photos & video recording. The email service allows the user to send & receive emails messages to & from compatible email contacts. The text message service is extremely easy to use & allows the user to communicate with all text message compatible contacts using text input which can be either short text or long text messages.