Introduction
It has begun. Sony Ericsson Z770i was the first model we had in our clutches of all the handsets presented in Barcelona, but now LG KF600 is here. And this is commercially available too, we have taken this one from XXL GSM. Those guys from the Far East are fast and at a first glance they present a fair little phone for people keen on mobile communication.
KF600 is approximately the middle phone from LG’s new generation series, and now the KF series has 5 members. Bocha has discovered the LG stand at Barcelona and there we haven taken some pictures and a video of KF600 and my colleague has appraised the handset. And he did this in spite of being against such touch-controlled mobile devices, in which LG has a nice little history (Chocolate, Prada and Viewty).
Since iPhone literally blasted through the world, all manufacturers are trying to create some kind of touch interface, but KF600 is different, although not unique. The principle is that the display is split in two and only the lower third part is touch-sensitive. This gives the opportunity of placing such functions and virtual keys over here that track where the user currently is in the menu. Where did we see something similar? Yes, in the case of Samsung U900. But that is not yet available and the two parts are much more separated there, Soul is more phone-like if there is such a notion nowadays..
Box, exterior
The packaging is a black box and it is really cool. After folding it out the phone becomes visible and in the bottom of the box the charger, the headset made up of two parts, the USB cable and a nice little velour case are crammed up one over the other. There is no memory card included, we have to take care of that in case we need it.
The device itself has a really attractive exterior. It is simple, but still elegant, that the mostly black model has a chrome decoration on its side; there is nothing extra, just what is absolutely needed. It is susceptible, even before turning the phone on, that the display is made up of two separate parts, as there is a darker stripe between them.
After powering it on it becomes visible, that the split ratio is about 1/3:2/3; the larger screen (240 x 320) is the classic display, while the smaller completely replaces navigational buttons. Fortunately LG doesn’t want to make all functions controllable by touch: KF600 is a slider, thus we get standard numeric keys, call accept/reject buttons and since there was some more room, we have a C (clear) button too.
The whole assembly makes the impression of high quality; the silky plastic of the back cover fits like a charm to the front’s mirror-like slippery surface; the device is very massive, it seems really hard-wearing and it feels that there is a considerable amount of materials of used, as it is heavy, it weighs 107 grams. On the right side are the volume control keys and the shortcut button of the music player, while the camera’s exposition button and the door of the data connector are on the left side. The memory card can only be slipped in under the SIM after taking out the battery, although the SIM can be changed without this. It should have been inversely…
On the back the only thing breaking the monotony is the discrete frame of the camera.
Handling, menu
KF600 basically can be controlled fine without the numeric keys too. The 240 x 176 pixel large touchscreen under the QVGA display is large enough to avoid our fingers blocking each other. The system recognizes not only touches, but movement too, so it’s really scrolling in the phonebook for example.
KF600 has charmed everyone at the stand because it has tons of themes pre-installed; these can be used to change anything but the icons. This covers animated backgrounds too, which look really cool. The main screen functions in a way, that when we close the lid, the background extends to the lower display, so we can see some really fascinating stuff.
Although we have done a series of screenshots of the display (showing for example that we can choose as much as five types of fonts in the menu), but a video tells more than any picture, so let’s take a look at it:
The main menu with twelve icons is really logical. The graphics can be organized one under the other, if someone would like it that way, but the web-like layout is much better arranged. The dial screen can be modified too, a thing I was more like missing is the possibility of changing font size.
Basic functions
After enjoying ourselves over the spectacular and well-usable interface, it’s time to touch some deeper parts of KF600’s soul. The phonebook can store a lot of data (many numbers, email, picture) for every contact, but unfortunately my favorite, the avatar is missing from these features. Just like postal address, workplace, title and birthday are also missing from the list; this shows that this is not a business model.
Messaging functions compensate us very well, however. Besides SMS and MMS we have an email client too, which is willing to support authenticated SMTP servers as well as attachments. Text entry is based on the numeric keys, but since there is such a large touch-sensitive area, there is the possibility of using handwriting recognition too. I think no one would have needed it, but it’s nice of them to have thought about it. Of course there is T9 too for text entry prediction.
My first problem with the calendar is that it only has month view. I’m not sure that we shouldn’t expect in 2008 from a device of this category to show at least a week view. There are no categories for notes, everything is the same, we can note a category in the subject, but this is not the real thing. The world clock, however, has a fascinating globe, while the alarm clock can fortunately handle multiple time points. The calculator is also a nice piece of software as it knows trigonometric operations too. Another powerful feature is the document viewer from Acces, that can be used for opening Office and PDF files, of course only in read-only mode.
Multimedia
The 3.2 Mpix camera with autofocus is quite a success. This time there are no extra lenses, it just works, takes pictures, focuses and we can browse a load of settings in the menu. What I didn’t like was that after taking out the battery the software forgets that best picture quality was selected and it has to be switched back manually. Still, a considerable number of pictures have been taken, here they are:
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The phone has to be held horizontally when taking photos, the menu also pops up this way. Besides setting image size, quality, environmental profiles and autofocus, we can also enable macro mode, face recognition (I couldn’t see any difference when using this), effects and a software-based image stabilizer is also present on the list of features. Videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Another really ingenious feature is that while zooming in on photos we can scroll the picture by stroking the touch interface with our hands.
There can be no complaints against the musical part either, at least not regarding functionality. There is playlist handling, equalizer presets (the differences are clearly audible), random and shuffle playback modes and of course the player runs in the background if required. The one thing that burnt a fuse in my sweet little brain was that the software only reads music files from the memory card if they are in the “Sounds” folder, otherwise it doesn’t even see them.
KF600’s speaker’s volume is brilliant, its quality is medium. The situation improves much when we use a headset, but we shouldn’t be necessarily experimenting with the included one, as the accessory can be taken apart in the center and we can plug in any 3.5 millimeter jack connector here. The FM radio has only very basic features, it can store 12 channels, but there is no RDS. We have found two games, both being really poor, as it would have been expected to create something more clever for this touchpad; the many minigames inside the two games are quite simple but annoying.
Data transfer, battery
Let’s star with the bad news: KF600 has no 3G. EDGE is the fastest data transfer standard supported. The browser’s menu includes the service called Yahoo! Go, which provides a kind of web presence for the user; it includes blog, photo, news and different Yahoo services. The browser can display HTML pages too, but the poor guy is quite desolate, it doesn’t know either screen rotation, or any kind of page optimization. Although the possibility to roam freely on websites (just like at the zoomed pictures) would have been given, the designers missed this one.
For local communication we can use Bluetooth 2.0 and USB with the same version number. The latter wants to use the content of the memory card as an external drive (and so does it see), but if we install the software from the included CD then we can sync the phonebook and the calendar with our PC.
The battery under the hood has some serious fights because of the dual-screen solution. This can be felt on its performance, in no case did it take it for more than two days, and moreover it went offline by surprise: one could have went to work happily (seeing that there are two marks from three have a strong presence on the charge-o-meter) just to be thrown back to the cruel, real world by the horrible view of a dark KF600 – that’s in case he didn’t throw the whole thing against the first wall he came across. (Based on a true story…)
Conclusion? The KF600 is the repository of missed opportunities. It looks astonishingly good, the menu is fascinating, its use is ingenious. On the first day I’ve been telling everybody that “look here man, what a phone this KF600 is, this is really something, we’ll just write a really wonderful article about it”, than I just had to observe that there are piles of useless feature, while a couple of important things are just simply not present. However there is an important thing left to be mentioned: this split-screen fun is absolutely brilliant; the path LG has stepped on is very good, only perfect functionality has to be added.
This way, however, KF 600 has become what is very characteristic of LG phones: precisely though-out fashion-gadget with loveable trifles, about which the customer has to decide in advance that how much these will disturb him or her. We still think that it’s:
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| LG KF600 |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
LG KF600 has been provided by XXL GSM. The device can be bought at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| LG KF600 | ||
 | General | |
| Technolgy | GSM | |
| Size | 101.2 x 50.7 x 14.1 mm | |
| Weight | 107 grams | |
| Available colors | Black | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels + 240 x 176 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | n.a. / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 25 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236,8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice calling / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | LG | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 2 | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | Document reader | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 3.2 megapixel, autofocus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (max. 320 x 240 pixels) | |
| Music player | present, runs in background too | |
| Equalizer | present | |
| FM radio | present | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 800 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 480 hours | |
| Talk time | 4 hours | |
| Other | ||
| partially touch-controlled | ||
