Introduction
Lately we received quite a lot of feedback regarding why are we testing niche models, or handsets that have been launched a while ago. Of course we could say that it’s all due to the financial crisis, but that’s not the main reason. The most important event of the mobile industry is held every February in Barcelona, this is the MWC, and all manufacturers are preparing like hell for this one, they are trying to focus their announcements to these couple of days. This means that after the great Christmas present rush we won’t really get any more new stuff, as everyone is preparing for this week in February. As we still have to wait some more until the models announced at MWC arrive, we just have to look around in this period and see if we have missed something. Fortunately the new phones are on their way to use, so there’s not much left until these reviews.
LG KP100 is not a phone awaited by tons of people, which is quite normal. The handset is from the entry-level that is less accentuated besides mid- and high-end LG’s, it’s a typical model that quietly has high sales. KP100 won’t be the favorite model of manager’s, but it won’t even attract part of the youngsters either. It’s hard to define it’s targeted audience, the only factor could be its price, which has been set rather low by LG.
The Korean giant had the name Goldstar in 1958, when it was established. This has been their name until 1995 when it has been renamed to the well-known acronym, which abbreviates Lucky Goldstar, although nowadays they like to mention the “Life is Good” slogan as well. LG Electronics created their first mobile phone in 1997, which has been made for the American market. From then their development and expansion was fast, today there are the third largest mobile phone manufacturer. KP100 has arrived to us in cooperation with MGSM.hu. The small box has only the phone, its battery and a charger inside, this being a sign of its features.
Exterior
The box emphasizes that the handset has a slim design. Well, I don’t consider the thickness of 12.9 mm as being a real breakthrough in this matter, we have seen much more “razor-like” phones from the Korean company, so I’d say this is more like average. The phone has rounded corners and edges and it has the classical candbyar form factor. On the front we can see the 128 x 128 pixel large little thing called a display, below this there is the rubber keypad, its only decoration being the silver colored, round navigation button.
The buttons have a really bad pressure point, the keys are not separated enough and the rubber surface is not pleasant at all. Regarding its shape, the phone looks pretty much like a Motorola. The cSTN display above the keypad is no big deal either. There are no problems with its view angle, but the refresh rate is typical of these kinds of displays, things take a fraction of a second to disappear, so we have a ghost image. The brightness and the contrast are just okay. I think a monochrome display can be more useful, at least that can be read in sunlight as well.
There are no buttons on the side of the handset, the only thing spicing up a bit this desolate view is the rubber covering the charger connector on the left side. This is fortunately fastened to the case, so we won’t lose it. Under this we can see LG’s proprietary connector, although this doesn’t really matter as we will only be charging the phone. On the back there isn’t anything of interest. The wine-red-white color of the phone I had looks quite pleasant, but there are like 4 different color variants, so anyone can choose to their liking. There is no camera, and the case cannot be swapped out at home. Assembly quality is okay, the Korean guys are really good at this.
Basics
The little LG plays a rather long startup sound, and although it supports polyphonic ringtones (like Samsung SGH-T100 from 2002), this cannot be “felt” on the tones. We can hear a tone when turning the phone off too, so our first task will probably be to turn these and the terrible keypad tone off. The menu has 6 icons, while the submenus have a list view. Handling is logical, no one will get lost in the wilderness of features.
The phonebook is no hot-shot, it can store only 300 contacts. This is not too much, although it will be probably enough for the target users. On the other hand I didn’t like the keypad unlocking method: first we have to bring the display to life by pressing any key, and then after pressing the left hotkey we have to hit the one on the right, but we won’t have much time. It makes things even harder that the display and the buttons light up only if we succeeded in this process, so when in a darker place we have to remember the method.
Sound quality during calls is okay, and there are no problems through the handsfree either. The ringtones have quite a lot of boominess, they are very hollow. We have to choose one from the ones already on the phone, as there is no way we can copy new ones on it. The same thing is true for the 4 wallpapers, that’s all we have. The handset practically has no internal memory for such things, but we won’t be bothered too much by that, as we wouldn’t be using it either.
The extras include a calendar with month view, a graphical world clock, a calculator, a stopwatch and a converter, these would be fine even in a higher category. There is an alarm clock as well, and it works even when the phone is turned on, which is a nice thing to see on such a phone.
Others
There is not much multimedia stuff. There is no camera, and the same is true for the music player. We will have to do without an FM radio as well, and since the Java language is unknown for KP100, we won’t need to painfully think about what games we will install on the phone. There is a Sudoku on-board, we can have fun with that for a while. We should forget about PC synchronization really fast, this is not the phone we will use to store our meeting dates. Unfortunately Bluetooth is missing as well, so the only way we can use the phone during driving is to obtain a wired headset.
I think it’s no surprise now that there is no WAP browser either, and since no data transfer protocols are supported we can forget about MMS as well. SMS messages are supported (wow), but I didn’t find any information about how much of these can we store.
The 900 mAh battery can keep the little LG on for a rather long time, which is due to the lack of features that could consume power. We can make calls with the phone, write text messages and that’s about it. I think the color display was quite unnecessary for all these. The phone is cute and small, its shape might be preferred by girls, but I think it’s not very good as a granny-phone, thanks to its display and keypad size. The SIM-free edition costs about 30 euros, but its price is much lower in other countries. If you can get it only at this price, then I don’t really recommend it, there are much better ones with a similar price-tag.
I can image only one place on the market for this phone: they could give it away as a surprise gift in fast food restaurants in the kids’ menu. This way part of the targeted users would get a phone (although it’s hard to think about a kid today who would be ok with a phone that has no camera and music player) and they wouldn’t cry for more than two minutes if they lose it.
Gubro
Translated by Szaszati
LG KP100 has been provided by MGSM.hu. Thanks.
The handset can be purchased online at www.mgsm.hu.
Specifications
| LG KP100 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 101 x 46 x 12.9 mm | |
| Weight | 65 grams | |
| Available colors | Red, black, white, blue | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 1.5” | |
| Display resolution | 128 x 128 pixels | |
| Display type | CSTN | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 300 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | ? / - | |
| Internal memory | no data available | |
| Memory expandability | - | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | no / no | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | no / no | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | no / no | |
| WiFi | no | |
| USB | - | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | no / no | |
| GPS receiver | no | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | yes | |
| Vibra function | yes | |
| Built-in handsfree | yes | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | no / no | |
| Sound recorder | no | |
| Alarm clock | yes, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | LG | |
| WAP / HTML browser | no / no | |
| E-mail client | no | |
| Java | no | |
| Games | 1 (Sudoku) | |
| Currency converter | yes | |
| Extra software | - | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | no | |
| Secondary camera | no | |
| Video recording | no | |
| Music player | no | |
| Equalizer | no | |
| FM radio | no | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 900 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 630 hours | |
| Talk time | 6.5 hours | |
| Others | ||
| - | ||
