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Not Just Another Me-Too

With Arena KM 900, will LG manage to shake off the ‘iPhone clone’ tag and shine? Tushar Kanwar finds out
01 June 2009

Big shoes to fill, really. A few years ago, the ‘touchscreen phone’ branding would sell just about anything. These days, if you are in the market to produce a touchscreen handset with a really flashy UI, there had better be a decent set of features under the hood. Ask any one in the long line of iPhone killers — once the novelty wore off, these were pretty much basic phones. With the KM900 ‘Arena’, will LG managed to shake off the ‘iPhone clone’ tag and shine?

Now now, you must think the ‘iPhone clone’ label is too harsh for the newest steed from LG’s stables. Trust me, it isn’t. Pull it out of the box, and it looks very much like a smaller, slightly chubby first generation iPhone, even more so when you turn it around. Switch it on, and the main menu pays due homage to the iPhone’s menu icons — a familiar black background with a 4x4 grid of colourful icons. Too close for comfort, I say…

To its credit, the Arena blows the iPhone out of the water in terms of features (most current smartphones do!). It seems to have almost everything going, including all you would ever have missed in the iPhone: copy/ paste, MMS, FM radio, a landscape Qwerty keypad, proper Bluetooth — you name it. The build quality is excellent, though to be honest, the use of superlight (titanium?) metallic elements leaves it feeling a bit cheaper than it really is. Buttons are almost non-existent on the Arena, with only a single camera button and a volume rocker on the right side, and touch-responsive Call, End/back buttons and a button that calls up the phone’s USP (more on that later). Neat touch — the mains power connector is protected by a sliding cover, which I really like since it guards against dust and grime when you are not charging the phone — definitely stuff others can copy! Also useful is the 3.5mm headset connector on the top edge.

Now, if the grey titanium backplate and sides don’t grab enough attention, the glorious 800 x 480 WVGA resolution on the 3-inch screen will do the job, with colour support up to 262,000 colours. The big draw for this phone is the S-Class 3D user interface, and for a change, it takes it premium moniker seriously and delivers. The main highlight is the cube interface — the four homescreens are placed on the sides of a cube that you roll by finger sweeps (much like the HTC TouchFlo, only smoother).
Select the main menu through a dedicated shortcut on the home screen, and you’re presented with the iPhone-esque interface, with a small difference. Instead of using the four tabs in a vertical column, LG now have opted for a layout of four rows of menu items, which are scrollable horizontally. That way almost all menu items are accessible simultaneously without jumping from tab to tab.

Now here’s the really good news — even though I am spoilt with the iPhone user interface experience, I would say that the Arena delivers admirably on this count. There is enough animations and visual effects to really enjoy using this phone, nay even watching it being used! And it all works smoothly too thanks to the hardware acceleration being used. Also, the capacitive touchscreen is quite sensitive and the vibration feedback always helps know you have made the selection when you touch the screen. The accelerometer is a little slow to respond, but I have made my peace with that.

Under the hood, the LG Arena is impressive, with a cracking 5.0-megapixel auto focus camera with flash and a media player capable of playing DivX. The Arena comes with a built-in FM transmitter, so that you can wirelessly connect it to your car radio, for example. It also has TV-out for watching your mobile content on a big screen. Hardware wise, the battery is a mild let down, needing a charge almost every day with moderate use. Where it fails for me is where the iPhone has succeeded — applications. The limited set available on the Arena will get almost all your jobs done, but the gear envy will soon follow when you see the unimaginable limits to which current iPhone applications have taken the platform. The Arena is a snappy challenger, but maybe a little too late? The next iPhone is but a few months away… so you would be better of waiting and watching this space!

Quick Specs:
Networks: GPRS/EDGE(850/900/1800/1900)
Display: TFT Capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 3 inch WVGA (800x480 pixels) with 3D, S-Class user interface
Connnectivity: GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi, Assisted/standalone GPS, USB 2.0, WAP 2.0, BlueTooth 2.1 + EDR
Memory: 1000 (22 fields), 8 GB internal memory with expansion via MicroSD to upto 32GB
Camera: 5.0 megapixel CMOS with image stabilization, geo tagging and LED flash, secondary VGA camera
Audio: MP3 player with equalizer, Dolby sound, 3.5mm jack, FM radio
Other Features: TV-out, USB charging, document viewer (doc, xls, ppt, pdf), Anti-theft Mobile Tracker, Google (Maps, Search, Mail, YouTube, Blogger), Motion Sensor games (Tepong, Wheel mania, Flying dices), Application lock
Battery: Li-Ion 1000mAh
Dimensions (W x H x D): 105.8x 55.3 x11.95 mm
Weight: 105g
Rating: 8/10

Price: Rs. 24,990
URL: http://arena.lgmobile.com/in/