It’s rare that a phone lands in your palm and instantly screams icon. But that’s exactly what the Chocolate phone succeeds in doing with its devastatingly stylish and universally appealing good looks.
Taking pointers from the iPod design ethos of ‘less is a lot, lot more’, the LG Chocolate KG800 has to do very little to sucker you in. But what it does, it does with utter class.
Chocolate’s party piece is its invisible set of touchpad controls hidden on the face of the handset that spring stylishly to life with a stroke. Unlike some sluggish touch interfaces the KG800’s touchpad shortcut keys react instantly, making menu surfing a cinch. The only slight downside is that it’s perhaps too hypersensitive, making it unforgiving to the slightest accidental brush. Slide it open and the keys are refreshingly large, enabling you to text like lightning.
So if style is the main attraction of the KG800, its feature set is an entertaining but slightly forgettable sideshow. The MP3 player kicks out good quality audio, but doesn’t offer the flexibility to mess with your music or funky interface of say the Sony Ericsson W880i.
That said, the LG KG800 remains an icon of phone sophistication. So if you don’t need a handset rammed to the rafters with high-spec features, this simple masterpiece is one of the tastiest ways to go.
Verdict
Setting the style benchmark for fashion phones everywhere, but not the brainiest blower on the block.
Best features
Amazing body
Invisible touchpad
Jumbo easy-to-text keys
Not so good
Only packing a 1.3-megapixel camera
Only 128MB of storage with no memory card expansion slot
100% secured payment
