Finally making its debut into the music phone space, LG's new M4300 doesn't make much of a fuss but delivers the basics: Jørgen Sundgot investigates.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: 2005 is the year of the music phone. LG, of course, has no choice but to jump on the bandwagon, and at this year's CeBIT unveiled the M4300; a fairly basic entrant about which - expectedly - little detail was revealed, but I'll do my best to convey my hands-on impressions of this little clamshell.
Sporting GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz, the M4300 is a device aimed at Europe and possibly Asia, with the obvious exception of Korea - where the manufacturer is already pitching a range of far more advanced handsets. In addition to being a quite capable handset, albeit on the large side for such a recent clamshell model, the M4300 focuses almost exclusvely on music.
 | | LG M4300 |
The list of supported formats is a bit on the thin side, however, with only MP3 and AAC present - not quite on par with handsets being flung out from larger manufacturers; LG will have to do quite a bit better if it at all hopes to compete in this area. The Porsche design doesn't help even a little bit, but at least there is memory card expansion by means of miniSD cards.
Audio quality was adequate despite being on a noisy showfloor, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the user interface was rather intuitive and sported a graphic equalizer which actually worked.
 | | LG M4300 |
Also on the feature list is a pair of stereo speakers with virtual surround sound, as well as 40-chord polyphonic ringtones, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, as well as a rather mediocre 0.3 MP integrated camera with Flash. As is typical with LG, there's no word on when or where the M4300 will be available except for '2005', and mum is also the word on price.
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