 LG today announced that the LG Arena will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona. Unwired View recently revealed that the LG Arena would offer a 3-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels (WVGA). That's a dramatic increase in screen real estate compared to the 240 x 400 pixels resolution found in Samsung's all-touch phones, and simply matches smartphones such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and HTC Touch HD.
Crucial to the LG Arena will be its 3D S-Class UI, offering a cube-based layout that provides four customizable home screens for direct access to music, movies, pictures and more. According to LG, the interface will offer rich 3D graphics and is claimed to be intuitive and easy to navigate. When we reviewed the LG Dare all-touch phone last year, we found a feature-rich phone seriously hampered by its touch interface performance. If the 3D S-Class UI turns out to deliver on its claims, the LG Arena will become quite an all-touch powerhouse.
In addition to 7.2 Mbps HSDPA support, Wi-Fi connectivity and A-GPS, the LG Arena will feature Dolby and DivX technologies. LG says that more specifics about the LG Arena will be announced at Mobile World Congress, including some surprises. That said, according to Unwired View, the LG Arena will offer both Mobile TV support and a 5-megapixel camera with VGA recording. Of course, these specifications are based on the European version of the LG Arena, but we hope to see an American version being released with high-end specifications at some point too.
Unlike most other manufacturers, LG has been focusing heavily on improving its cell phones rather than spending too much resources on developing phones based on smartphone systems such as Symbian (LG KT610) and Windows Mobile (LG KS20 and LG Incite). However, most of the high-end LG multimedia phones we've tested have left us somewhat disappointed when it comes to overall performance. If the LG Arena should impress in that regard, the company could have found a viable path to gaining ground in the high-end market, on the expense of smartphone makers' new multimedia approach. And for consumers, it would obviously be positive if not all the latest and greatest phones required a data plan.
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