A Slice of Chocolate Heaven

The above phone is an early press picture of the first Korean model, the EU spec phone looks slightly different. The two main things changed are not illustrated above. Their was a slight bulge at the top of the phone and it used to have a different lense, below are two pictures showing how the current EU model looks.




Some people love sitting on the cutting edge of mobile technology. These people are normally called geeks, which is kind of a contradiction to the stereotypical geek who sits at home never leaving his 'battlestation'. When it comes to phones I've always been a browser rather than an early adopter. I've only owned 3 long term phones (alongside a slew of temporary phones which I always find fault with), all nokia, all pretty middle of the road phones made to last and have good all round features.
There have been plenty of times when I've wanted to splash out on the latest phone for a feature or new design styling but none have grabbed me enough to make me chase after a particular model until I owned it. However, the Chocolate (LG KG800 in the EU) grabbed my attention back in late November when Cyon (LG's imprint in South Korea) debuted the phone (LG KV5900) as their new slim-slider phone. At the time it looked like a nice phone with new age simplistic design ethics and a nice set of features. I then proceeded to see the phone pop up on most of the big Korean shows that season which showed off the phone in real life situations and firmly establishing the design as a masterpiece of a slider just as the v3 RAZR has been the epitome of the flip phone for the last 12 months. It also gave a vague highlight to the touchpad style front which seemed to ooze high class appeal.
Now normally phones from Korea and Japan are just objects to lust after, pointless handsets that would never make it to the West and are as useful as bricks if they were imported. On the odd occasion I had seen some LG/Samsung phones designed for the Orient make their way to the Middle East. But normally these were budget or out of date handsets which made them pointless token gestures.
When I heard rumblings indicating that the Chocolate would be making it over to the U.S. and Europe I treated the news with derision. It would probably get here in 2007 was my initial reaction. Within a week a date had been set for early to late May, this coincided with my mobile phone contract renewal so I thought it would be perfect if the phone did land on it's designated release date. After looking around at the useless phones offered to me by my current network I decided to look elsewhere All the other network providers were useless, providing no release date or price. By pure coincidence I decided to check out some 3rd party retailers and to my surprise I found the phone a full week before May has begun.
Now on to the phone.



Packaging :

The packaging is pretty nice, with a luxury feel reminiscent of other high-end phones like the early v3's and the 8810. A nice sturdy hardboard box with a magnetic clasp and simple but elegant compartments for the phone and it's accessories. It also proudly displays it's 2 awards for design on the back of the slip cover.

Inside the box :

Inside the box you get the phone in a custom pouch, a keyfob with a screen cleaner on one side, a charger, a very elegant remote, a pair of stereo headphones, a charger, USB cable, assorted manuals and the install CD.

The phone :

Feel and software :

If you've ever owned or used an iPod you'll kind of understand the sensation you get when you use the touch surface on this phone, it feels odd but comfortable. The first thing I'd like to address is the software which has become a very important part of overly complex modern phones. Some manufacturers just do not know how to get it right at all (I'm looking at you SE and MOTO) with overly clunky interfaces and simple features absent. The LG makes it halfway, it has most of the simple stuff down to a tee with plenty of nice touches to make traversing the menus much easier, but they also have somehow missed out completely with some elemental things. The main one is a design fault in my opinion. To put the call end/power button on the side of the phone is just awkward and shortsighted. If it were just the button for power this wouldn't be a big problem as it isn't used that often. But, the fact that I have to fiddle my thumb over to the right of the phone to end a call instead of just pressing the cancel key on the touch pad is just plain idiotic. It wouldn't have been hard to put this into the software as a dual use key, but evidently they chose to leave it out. The minor fault that is closer to a missing feature is the lack of speaker phone. Maybe I've been spoilt by phones catering to the essentials of making calls, but this seems like a major oversight for me. Both of these niggles are things I'm sure I'll get past within a few days and they pale in comparison to the overall design and ease of use offered by the no nonsense software.


Look :

The first thing you think when you see this phone is, "Wow! How slim is it going to be once I put the battery in?" And once you put the battery in you will be amazed by just how slim and sleek this phone is. Obviously the surface of the phone is prone to fingerprints, but they don't show up as much as you'd first imagine. Then, when you look at the front you are met with this incredibly smooth, almost superlative surface which lights up once you turn the phone on. Giving you an amazingly beautiful phone to coo over.

Battery & Inter-operability :

After a full charge/discharge cycle I recharged the battery fully which gave me a rough talktime of ~200 minutes and a standby time of ~30 hours. As this is the first proper charge I can't say if this is indicative of it's performance. I tried the phone with a few random Bluetooth dongles with successful connections to all the headsets and no problems during calls. I also tried transfers to/from a few phones and a PC all with successful results (though one transfer was slightly slow, as the other phone only had Bluetooth v1).

Other features :

The camera, video camera and mp3 player are still being tested thoroughly by myself, so I won't judge these features of the phone just yet.

Overall :

The phone is amazingly sexy with a great suite of features and is pleasant enough to live with. It also has that intangible quality that may see it become the next big thing in mobile phone handsets.