LG Electronics is selling a new convergent phone in Korea. The LG KP8400 is an average mobile phone with an integrated blood sugar tester.
While many companies are trying to integrate multimedia features into their mobile phones, LG Electronics has targeted another type of mobile electronics for integration; blood sugar meters for diabetics.
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The LG KP8400 features an integrated blood sugar tester. Just as diabetics would normally take a drop of blood on test paper and insert it into a dedicated reader, users of the KP8400 can insert a drop of blood on test paper and insert it into the side of the phone, which will then display a blood sugar reading. It can also take advantage of the phone's connectivity to upload the reading to an online database for later access and tracking rather than requiring the user to record it manually.
In order to accommodate the testing equipment the phone is a bit thicker than a normal clamshell phone, 80 x 40 x 21 mm, but still weighs only 85 grams. Other than the diabetic equipment, the KP8400 is a fairly typical phone. It includes a 252-thousand color TFT display internally and a 65-thousand color STN display on the top cover for photo caller ID. It does include an integrated camera but it is only 0.1 megapixel, rather small for modern phones, and polyphonic ring tones. It runs on CDMA networks, which dominate South Korea.
The KP8400 is available now in South Korea only for the equivalent of about $380 USD.
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