LG
 A lot of money had gone into the LG exhibit at CommunicAsia – there was everything from a giant moving KG800 Chocolate handset (with real LCD!), and even live break-dancing shows and giveaways. The LG girls were more than willing to let us in on the details of the company’s latest mobile phone offerings. A section of the exhibit was dedicated to the new mobile TV (DVB-H) compatible handsets which can display and even record live TV streams.
LG KG810
The KG810 is the second handset from the Chocolate range which had the biggest focus at CommunicAsia. The handset takes on a clam-shell form factor but the front of the display has a similar invisible external-LCD and invisible keys. The keys outside are dedicated to media playback and control and operate with the same infrared heat sensor technology. This ensures that you’ll never accidentally press the buttons and activate the music player while it’s in your pocket which could drain the battery.
The KG810 has a touch-sensitive keypad when you open it up and the display is your usual Smartphone specification at 176 x 220 pixels and 262,144 colours. The invisible external LCD is 96 x 96 pixels and 65,536 colours. The internal display takes up the entire top of the clam-shell and looks awesome. Thankfully LG have included their new menu system like we saw in the original chocolate handset!
The same type of camera found in the KG800 has made its way to the KG810, a 1.3mpx camera with still and video capture. Other features on the handset include a Java runtime environment, media player with MPEG4, MP3, and AAC file format playback, and GPRS Class 10. Your usual set of messaging features (SMS/EMS, MMS, and e-mail with T9) are included.
LG KG920
The KG920 is a 5mpx (yep, I’m serious!) camera phone from LG. The camera on this baby is amazing – but I’ll go more into that a little later. Other features on the KG920 include a QVGA 240 x 320 pixel TFT LCD display (2inches), 128MB of internal memory, miniSD memory card port, Bluetooth/USB connectivity, and a unique candy-bar swivel form factor.
A bit more on explaining this form factor is necessary if you can’t figure it out from the images. The basic idea behind it is that for the most part the handset is your standard form factor handset with the display at the top and numerical keypad at the bottom. The actual difference with the KG920 is that you can twist the bottom section of the handset (where the camera is located) so you can capture “satisfying self portraits!” You’ll also be able to get into the more difficult-to-shoot areas with the swivelling camera.
As I mentioned before the camera is of 5mpx specification with still image capture at 2560 x 1920 pixels. I was taking pictures at CommunicAsia with my own Sony DSC-W1 camera which is only 5.1mpx – I felt out-dated next to the KG920! The handset offers video recording at VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels). With 128MB of internal memory you’ll be able to cram quite a few photos on before needing to invest in a microSD memory card. The camera has its own dedicated flash (a strobe flash) and auto-focus ability and there are a heap of customizable features inside the camera application.
The user interface of the KG920 was great to use and surprisingly fast! I found the key alignment a little hard to get used to because of where the navigational key is located in relation to the rest of the numerical keys. The left hand side of the handset also has a heap of camera-only keys which I felt got in the way a little bit.
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LG M6100
The M6100 is a multimedia handset in the slider form factor with tri-band GSM network support, a 1.3mpx digital camera, 128MB of internal memory, and a 262,144 colour TFT LCD. The main demographic of the M6100 would probably be the female consumer base judging from the size and feature list of the M6100.
The M6100 looks almost exactly like an MP3 player more than it looks like a phone. You can thank the white (or black) colouring of the handset and the slider form factor for that, though. This look isn’t exactly a bad thing because the M6100 boasts being a multimedia rich handset – just take a look at what’s in the sales package. A stereo headset acts as the remote for the media player on the handset, and this in turn has a 3.5mm headphone jack which you can plug in your own headphones for the best music experience available.
The only thing I didn’t like about the M6100 was the screen size – at only 128 x 160 pixels it’s definitely not in the large end of things. Maybe it’s because I was just over gawking at the 240 x 320 pixel Sony Ericsson handsets. Nevertheless the size of the display does keep the overall size of the handset down which is what LG were aiming for.
The camera quality is ok, but not the best 1.3mpx camera I’ve seen. Video can be recorded at QCIF (176 x 144 pixel) resolution in 3GPP format with audio.
Other LG handsets on show
Many other handsets that we probably won’t see in Australia in the near future were on show at the LG exhibition. The most exciting of these were the mobile TV compatible handsets which were actually receiving live broadcasts.
One of the DVB-supported handsets I got to have a play with were the LB1500 and KB1500 phones. These both support DVB-H broadcasts and can record TV streams onto their memory for later playback. They have TV-out support and swivel displays for viewing widescreen streams. Both handsets (and most others with DVB-H support) are currently available in Korea. They’re some of the slimmest DVB-compatible handsets out, at only 19.6mm and 120grams.
A new range in mobile TV handsets were also shown off at CommunicAsia (We haven’t even got a major DVB-H network in Australia yet!). Handsets supporting the Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting technology (S-DMB), Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting technology (T-DMB) were being displayed in glass cases around the exhibit. The SB120, SB130, LD1200, and V9000 handsets will be available in Korea.
Inside some glass cases at CommunicAsia were some exclusive U880 handsets that have been designed by Italian designer Roberto Cavalli. Gold, silver, and black variations of the U880 have animal designs that are hand-printed. The handsets have been launched in 7 countries (including Australia!) but will be very hard to get your hands on – they’ve only made 1089 of each design, globally.
More photos
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LD1200 |
LD1200 |
LD1200 |
LD1200 |
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SB120 |
SB130 |
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Much time has passed since our original megapixel camera phone comparison article of late 2004, and manufacturers have had the opportunity to improve the...
