The arrival of the Prada phone and the powerful Viewty clearly shows LG has well and truly embraced the ticklish world of touch phones. However, its fetish for all things touchy feely has taken a new direction with its latest handset, the KF600.
This dual-screen slider phone sports a ‘context specific’ touch-sensitive InteractPad that morphs its controls depending on what feature you’re indulging in.
This voodoo magic 1.5-inch touch-screen nestles just below the main screen, taking over navigation duties from your traditional four-way mechanised joypad. But fire up the MP3 music player for example, and music controls will appear. It’s almost like it’s reading your mind! OK, maybe that’s going a tad to far.
However, while the InteractPad clearly shows the newfound flexible talents of the touch-screen, the KF600 execution is unquestionably flawed. The navigation pad can be frustratingly frigid to your touch and taps while scrolling through menus or lists is almost like living your life at half speed. The K600 proved to be rather irksome to operate.
Thankfully, LG has drafted in a mechanised keypad to help out with day-to-day texting duties and this is very welcome after the annoyances of the touch-pad. But generally speaking, the K600 is a neatly designed and well-built phone, despite the touch-sensitive issues.
Unfortunately, the misfiring InteractPad is just the start with the KF600’s feature line-up flat-lining on arrival. First up, 3G has done a Lord Lucan, leaving download speeds in the dim-witted hands of EDGE. It’s so painfully slow at loading full web pages that it should come with a government health warning.
Don’t be fooled with by the three-megapixel snapper either. It will seduce you with its sweet line in photographic features like image stabilisation then let you down with its dopey autofocus and time-stopping shutter lag. Picture quality isn’t all that either with fuzzy fringes checking its talent for true colour rendering.
Like the camera, the music player also impresses and disappoints in equal measures. The mighty 10-band equaliser lets you tinker with the audio but when you realise there’s no artist or album sub menu headings, the thought of trawling through your music collection to find that Frank Zappa song fills you with dread. This is such a major oversight from LG, it’s untrue.
Verdict
An exciting touch phone prospect that didn’t follow through on its promise because of an incredibly flakey InteractPad and flaccid feature list. Back to the drawing board for you LG.
Best features
Stylish design
Context specific touch talents
Not so good
Fitful touch dynamics
No 3G
Poor autofocus and slow shutter lag
Lack of sort option in music player
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