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SMART STUFF #7, VOLUME 2. JULY 2006 |..1..2..3..4..5


LG KG800 Chocolate

Hands on with the LG KG800.
LG's advertising people sent us a KG800 mobile phone a while back, and we have been taking it through the paces for a few weeks. Let us say right from the start that we like the phone for its looks, but we are not really convinced that it adds so much new features and ideas to be declared really smart. Read on, and find out why.

Round 1: Look and feel.
The shiny grand piano black of the mobile is of course cool. But there is also a LOT of fingerprints. If we had not wiped it down regularly we could probably now identify every single person who has touched it since we got it. (We, too, watch C.S.I.) There is a small wiping pad in the box with the KG800, and it is supposed to be attached to the lanyard dock, but we felt a bit silly wiping the phone with it, so we left it where it was. Brushing it against a shirt sleeve every now and then works just fine. How it stands up to scratches is too early to say, but our KG800 cellphone has no scratches yet, but we have been careful to keep it away from pockets with keys, coins and other scratchy things. There is a small pouch in the box, too, but it seems to us as over-kill. It is a phone, after all, not a piece of jewelry.



Round 2: Buttons and navigation.
The coolest thing about the KG800 is the piano shiny surface and the back-lit touch buttons on the front. But, cool as they are, they are also pretty hard to get used to. More than once, we, and others handling the KG800, have accidentally called the first person in our phone book(!). To avoid this, we put a dummy number in the directory under the name 111Aaron. The keypad under the slide is excellent, though, big enough for thick fingers, and with a distinct "click" to let you know you have successfully punched a number. The slide seems pretty solid, too, bearing in mind that we have been using it for a couple of weeks. How it will feel after a few thousand calls is anyones guess.

1.LG KG800 keypad 2.LG KG800 touch keys
The keypad is easy enough, but the cool touch buttons require a bit of practice.

Round 3: System and U.I.
We will pass the KG800 in this round, even if we bounced around inside the U.I. quite a bit to begin with. We credit this to the "slippery" touch buttons that took a while to get used to. Apart from this, the different functions and settings are easy enough to find. Since we think a U.I. should be intuitive, we have also stayed away from the manual as much as possible. The 2 inch screen with its 176 x 220 pixels is A OK.

3.LG KG800 display
The 2 inch 176x220 pixel screen is OK.



Round 4: The camera.
The 1.3 Megapixel camera in the KG800 cell will pass the exam, but not much more than that. Maybe LG could have put a 2 Mpix in there and raised the price a bit and had a better product. We have compared by photographing the same object both with the KG800 and with our regular Lumix DMC-FZ20 that has 5.0 Mpix. Unfair? Maybe. But we do think a phone camera should be able to do what a normal compact digicam does. If not, what's the point in buying a cell with a camera in the first place? (We know that the Lumix is not a compact, but that's what we use...) We think the camera in the KG800 reproduces colors as well as can be expected, (compare pictures 4 with 5, and 8 with 9). In picture 4 and 5 you can see that in the light we used, not even the 5.0 Mpix Lumix could reproduce the difference between the two darkest reds (at 4 o'clock in the circle). The KG800 also does not reproduce the dark purple (5 o'clock) and the bluish purple (6 o'clock) to our complete satisfaction.

4.Color circle with the KG800 5.Color circle with the Lumix DMC-FZ20
Color circle with the KG800 (left) and with the Lumix DMC-FZ20.

The KG800 would have benefited from a auto focus function. Now it's practically impossible to take a decent close-up (compare picture 6 with 7). On the other hand, the focus works fine with the strawberries (pictures 8 and 9) that are photographed a bit further away. In a decent light, though, portraits taken with the KG800 at a distance of about a meter (approx. 3 ft.) like across a table, turned out as good as with any compact digicam.

6.Page from dictionary with the KG800 7.Page from dictionary with the Lumix DMC-FZ20
Page from dictionary with the KG800 (left) and with the Lumix DMC-FZ20.

8.Strawberries with the KG800 9.Strawberries with the Lumix DMC-FZ20
Strawberries with the KG800 (left) and with the Lumix DMC-FZ20.



Round 5: Music player.
The sound quality is, as far as we can tell, as good as can be expected, but the real music fans may find the 128 Mb memory in the KG800 to be a tad cramped if they are used to a 40 Gb iPod. The earbuds are okay, even though we had to add the usual foam plastic pads to make them fit. This happens all the time; our ears are simply too open to keep any earbuds stay in. We prefer our old Koss', and the switch is quite easy, since the headphones are attached not to the KG800 proper, but to a box with a remote. Music can be used as ring-tones, we tested with our favorite Miles Davis tune. Access is also easy. The phone connected to our PowerBook G4 running MacOSX 10.4.7 without any problem whatsoever.

Conclusion.
The KG800 is a really tasty morsel design-wise, but it does not really live up to it technically. Don't get us wrong, the KG800 is a reasonably competent cell, but its looks had us expecting more. This is not uncommon, so take our opinion for what it is. If you are looking to buy a cell that is right at the very edge technically, you should probably look somewhere else. But if you are in the market for a really cool looking phone with all the normal trimmings, you have a reason to take a closer look at the KG800. The lowest price we could find in Sweden was SEK 3.079:- (approx. USD 448:-); the highest SEK 3.899:- (approx. USD 567:-). Via Pricerunner. However, we understand that phones in the US and UK often are linked to phone companies, so you'll have to see who's offering the LG KG800 where you live.

20 July 2006



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