At the Microsoft Mobius conference in Amsterdam, we managed to snag a few moments with the LG KS20, available in Europe on Vodafone's network. The KS20 bears a family resemblance to LG's Prada phone, in that both are small, stylish touchscreen phones that lack a hardware keyboard. Unlike the proprietary interface on the Prada phone, which was pretty but not too advanced, the KS20 runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional. This presents some problems of its own, as we've seen on the other touchscreen-only WinMo phone, the HTC Touch. Still, as we've seen on some of their Verizon Wireless offerings, LG has taken some steps to make the interface more usable.
Instead of going for a remodeled Today screen, as HTC did with the Touch, LG instead offers a reorganized menu system, with a handy set of touch icons on the side of the screen. Obviously, the icons make the phone easier to use, but as soon as we started digging, we came smack up against Windows Mobile.
Instead of forgoing buttons altogether, LG has included a tiny joystick at the bottom of the KS20, and we found this a help in navigating WinMo's slim menus. A front-facing camera provides video call support, and we were dying to test the feature in our short sojourn in Europe, but without a working 3G account ourselves we were unable.
Rounding out the features, the phone has built-in Wi-Fi with 802.11g networking, as well as 3G over HSDPA. The 2-megapixel camera around back has an auto-focus, and stores pics on the microSD card. Media is unfortunately handled by Windows Media Player, but LG has included an FM radio.
We'd like to see this phone come to market in the U.S., if for no other reason than we weren't thrilled with the HTC Touch on Sprint, and we'd like to see some competition in the Windows Mobile touch-phone market. We're not fond of Windows Mobile 6 on phones without a keyboard, but LG makes some effort to make the OS easier to use on a touchscreen. The changes are not as deep as HTC's recent additions, but again, that's why we're interested in competition. Oh, and a better touchscreen OS from Microsoft. We're interested in that as well.
The LG KS20 is available now in Europe from Vodafone, but for U.S. users, we've seen them available unlocked for around $700. You won't have access to the 3G networking, but EDGE and Wi-Fi should work just fine. We say it's not as compelling without the 3G networking, but we'd like to see LG produce a Windows Mobile touch screen phone for the U.S. market. As this phone added Windows to the Prada form, some of LG's other recent phone's might benefit from the same trick.
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