Straight out of A Space Odyssey, LG's new KG800 slider (aka Chocolate) is a black monolith of a slider with an unusually stylish exterior; Jørgen Sundgot finds out whether its beauty is merely skin deep.
Review summary of the LG KG800:
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 With the KG800, LG clearly made the decision to keep specifications on the down low in order to bring forward a small, light and supremely stylish handset - although its price tag claims otherwise. Its feature set - including a mediocre camera and music player - compares reasonably well to other slim and fashion phones; its most aggravating fault is the lagging text input, which stands in contrast to its responsive touch-sensitive navigational controls. This is a handset for those who primarily call and text, and want to look good doing it. Price: $500.
Pros: Superbly suave design; touch sensitive navigational controls; compact
Cons: So-so battery life; lagging text input; lacks memory expansion
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Full LG KG800 Review:
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Joining a crowded space, the fashionable LG KG800 slim phone has its work cut out for it. At 95 x 48 x 15.2 mm and 83 g, it's slim, lightweight and undoubtedly one of the most stylish handsets we've ever reviewed - provided one favours minimalist designs, that is. In fact, its front half is completely flush; flick the handset open, and 9 touch-sensitive navigational controls are lit up in bright red. Not only rather cool, the setup works very well indeed, although it takes a little adjustment to avoid accidental presses from resting ones thumb on the surface.
Let me entertain you
Another aspect of the KG800 which lights up when opened is its bright and crisp medium-resolution display, which does a good job of conveying the colourful, pretty and mostly intuitive interface of the handset. This also works as the viewfinder for the integrated 1.3 Megapixel camera, which - with the exception of a slight blur and slow picture saving - does a decent job at taking pictures and recording short video clips. Its 128 MB of onboard memory will hold in excess of 700 highest-quality pictures, which should suffice for most shutterbugs.
The music player of the KG800, however, quickly runs out of space due to the handset's lack of memory expansion. Capable of storing only in the range of 40 MP3 files at best, out-of-box audio quality as delivered by the bundled handsfree kit is at best mediocre - as compared to a dedicated music phone, that is. Furthermore, the only functionality offered is a simple playlist and shuffle, and USB 1.1 is merely sufficient; basic sums it up.
Keep your eye on the basics
Speaking of basics, this is an area where LG should have paid more attention. Although the keypad of the KG800 is equipped with large, comfortable keys, they not only lack a backlight for use in the dark but also suffer from not being able to keep up with rapid-fire text input. Similarly, wireless reception doesn't quite compare to other slim phones, although voice quality in general and the handset's Bluetooth performance - including headset and laptop connectivity - are good. GPRS is the only option for data transfers, which means business users should look elsewhere.
Also present in the KG800 are the usual trappings such as SMS, EMS and MMS for messaging, along with a barebones e-mail client. A WAP 2.0 microbrowser makes for light surfing, while a 500-entry phone book joins a calendar and memo function in taking care of daily duties. Lastly, it should be mentioned that the battery life of the KG800 is unimpressive; talk time hovered in the 2 hour range, while standby time clocked in around 140 hours.
Price and availability
The LG KG800 will start selling for $500 () in November 1999.
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