LG KF700 Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

It seems that the South Koreans have taken note of the iPhone's success and are heading into touchscreen territory faster than you can say, "hmm, that looks a bit like the iPhone". If you're not keen on Apple products, you may want to check out the LG KF700. It not only features a touchscreen but also comes with HSDPA (3.5G) and a slide-out keypad. Can it compete with the Jesus phone?

It's currently available on O2 from free on a monthly contract.

Design
The LG KF700 falls somewhere in between the LG Chocolate and the LG Prada. It's not particularly large compared to a phone such as the Nokia N73, but it will take up space in your pocket. We didn't find it too heavy to carry around and it felt solid enough to handle a few drops and hits.

The LG KF700 has a large touchscreen that gives you access to all the phone's features

On the front of the KF700, there's a large touchscreen similar to the Prada's. Hidden underneath, you'll find a standard keypad, and Chocolate owners will be familiar with its layout. It's not the most inspiring of designs, but it is functional. The keypad works well when you need to text and the screen is good for quickly jumping to apps and content.

Adding to the screen and keypad, a scroll wheel at the back of the KF700 gives you access to various features, such as the Web browser and music player. You can also use the scroll wheel to search through your contacts and music, which is useful if you want to look through a long list quickly.

Features
Similar to the LG Prada and Viewty, the KF700 uses a simple, icon-based interface that's fairly easy to understand. When you start the KF700 up for the first time, it gets you to align the touchscreen using your fingers or thumb, and there's no need for stylus. Vibrating feedback ensures that you know when you've tapped the screen.

An interesting feature on the touchscreen -- we've seen it mirrored on the recently launched Samsung Tocco -- is the ability to add widgets to the KF700's home screen. These include two clocks, a calendar and a notepad for taking quick notes. You can only have one widget up at the time but you can change them quite easily by opening the widget menu on the side of the screen.

On the back of the KF700, there's a scroll wheel that gives you quick access to certain apps and also lets you scroll quickly through your contacts and music

Once you've calibrated the touchscreen, you can get on with using the KF700's star features. These include HSDPA for accessing the Web at up to speeds of 7.2Mbps. To our disappointment, the KF700's browser doesn't render pages well, making full sites look like WAP sites. Plus, the browser interface feels clunky.

The KF700's music player fares better than its browser, providing a straightforward interface that allows you to create playlists, shuffle your music and display album art or visualisations with relative ease. Audio quality from the headphones is acceptable and you have the option to plug in your own cans using an in-line adaptor.

Although it's flat, the KF700's keypad is easy to use when texting

Rounding off the KF700's multimedia offerings is a 3-megapixel camera on the back that boasts autofocus, a relatively fast shutter speed and an easy to understand interface. Disappointingly, the LED photo light only worked okay for close up shots and didn't perform well at over a couple of metres, which meant photos of mates in dark pubs and clubs didn't come out well.

Something we did like was the photo editor. It's pretty basic, but lets you add effects and text to your pictures. You can quickly scribble text over a photo using your finger or the keypad, which is useful if you want to caption a shot and then send it to a friend.

Performance
Battery life lasted for around two days with intermittent use of the browser and music player. The battery was drained very quickly if we used HSDPA a lot, which is something you should watch out for if you're a mobile Internet addict. On a separate note, although the interface worked smoothly, there was a slight lag occassionaly.

Conclusion
The LG KF700 is definitely not the most exciting touchscreen handset out there, but it does work. Being able to use the keypad or touchscreen is useful -- neither is the epitome of greatness, though. In a market packed with better-featured touchscreen phones, the KF700 will struggle. If you're not bothered about owning a super phone, then it's worth a look.

Unless you're living under a rock, you'll know that Apple's new iPhone 3G will be available on 11 July as an alternative. You could also try the Samsung F700 that has similar features and boasts a full Qwerty keypad.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

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