LG KP 500 | LG Cookie | LG KP500

The LG KP 500 or LG Cookie is something really special baked by LG.  LG Cell Phones have proved with this model that touch screen phones with some very decent specs can be affordable and within everyone’s reach.

The LG Cookie is a wonderful phone having some decent specs and a very interesting user interface to say the least. The LG Cookie has a 3″ 256K-color TFT touchscreen. The first thing that you’ll notice about the phone is the fun widget interface. Linux users may be familiar with this interface as it is part of the Kubuntu desktop. Widgets have also been used in Windows Vista; the sidebar at the right of the screen that holds the time and calender and other widgets. Now that you are familiar with widgets, imagine this fun-interface on your mobile phone. Widgets can be added or removed, they can also be moved around. The Viewty could have used an interface like this

LG Cell Phones has made sure that the cookie comes in various flavors. The LG Cookie comes in black, brown, silver and gold. Cookie is also available in pink and silver but these two are exclusive to Orange.

LG Cookie has various attractive features i.e. a Quad band GSM phone, a 3 MP camera (which is very good for its price), an accelerometer for auto screen rotate, multi-tasking with a real task manager and so much more.

LG Cookie is not all that good as it does have some disadvantages, the more prominent ones are no 3G support, no Wi-Fi, video recording could have been better, there is no autofoucus and unlike the Viewty the phone cannot support DiVX file formats.

Design:

The dimensions of the phone are 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm. That makes it the smallest and thinnest touch screen phones around, also at only 89 grams it is the lightest phone in its category.

The front of the phone looks pretty much like the LG Renoir due to the three hardware keys below the screen i.e.  a Call and an End key on either side of the Multitasking key that brings up a menu of shortcuts and a task manager. However the keys don’t look exactly the same, I had mentioned in my review of the Renior that LG Cell Phones could have done a better job with the keys as it made the phone look a bit ugly. And it looks like LG heard our prayers and the hardware keys on LG Cookie looks nothing like those on the Renoir.

The buttons are smaller than the Renoir’s and are placed in a stylish chrome frame, they’re also much responsive. The keys are slightly concave, which adds to the excellent design and feel.

Above the keys we have a massive 3 inch touch screen display above the screen we have the earpiece and the LG Cell Phones logo.

[smartads]On the left side of the phone we have the volume rocker keys and the universal connectivity port. The connectivity port is covered by a small plastic lid to prevent it from filling up with dirt. Whereas on the right of the phone we have the shutter key and the lock key. It would have been better if the keys on the right of phone had been made a little bit bigger as theyre a bit small and pressing them is a pain at times.

On the back of the phone we have the 3 megapixel camera with no lens cover and no flash to help us in low lit environments

Camera:

The LG Cookie comes with a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with a maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. As I mentioned earlier, the LG KP 500 has no flash of any kind, so night photography would be a major pain.

Now don’t let the low price tag and 3 mp fool you, the image quality of this camera are superb, one would think that without autofocus the images would suck. But I’m glad to find out that the pictures taken with the LG Cookie  are simply excellent.

As for video recording the camera captures video in up to QVGA resolution at only 12 frames per second. Well that is a kind of disappointment as phones such as the Viewty and the Renoir are able to record in higher frame rates and resolutions than this, but considering the price tag I think its reasonable. If you only watch your videos on your mobile screen then in that case you’ll find the videos to be of excellent quality.

Specifications:

Display: TFT touchscreen, 256K colors, 240 x 400 pixels, 3.0 inches.

Network: 2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 190.

Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 900mAh.

Size: 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm . Weight: 89 g.

Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, video (QVGA@12fps).

Features: SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, WAP 2.0/xHTML, pre-installed and download able Games.

Connectivity: GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps, EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G: N/A,  Bluetooth: v2.1 with A2DP, USB: 2.0, WLAN N/A.

Memory: 48 MB internal memory, MicroSD card slot supporting up to 16 GB card.