LG KM900 Arena vs. Samsung M8800 Pixon

Image the scenario. You have an LG Arena and your friend has a Samsung Pixon. You go to the pub, put your phones on the table and settle down for “Just the one.”

Several drinks later, wary of missing the train home, you say your goodbyes, grab your phone and head off… Only to realise when you get home that you’ve taken the wrong handset. It could easily happen. That’s how similar looks-wise the Arena and Pixon are – certainly so after a few beers.

There are some differences on closer inspection, but on the face of it, the two handsets look like they’re related with their sleek and classy finishes and large, vibrant touch screens. The Pixon has a slight upper hand when it comes to screenage, offering up 3.2-inch to the Arena’s 3-incher which, truth be told, isn’t likely to prove a deal breaker for most would-be phone buyers.

Carrying a bit of extra weight
But with the power of extra screen statistics comes the great responsibility of carrying around a whole 16g of extra weight (The Arena weighs just 106g co-megapixelared with the Pixon’s 121g).

While the added bulk is unlikely to result in the user sustaining any injuries, the actual dimension differences (55.3x12x105.9mm and 54.6x13.8x107.9mm for the Arena and Pixon respectively) could mean that those who favour the skinny jeans look and associated slimmer pockets may opt for the Arena over the Pixon.

Of course it would be foolish to choose a handset purely based on whether it is pocket friendly enough for today’s fashion fads. Thankfully, both the Arena and Pixon have a lot to offer in terms of features.

Both make use of highly intuitive and easy to use touch screen interfaces. The essence of 3D is there with the Arena thanks to the ‘cube’ and ‘carousel’ and, while it’s a pretty quirky atte-megapixelt to be different, it wasn’t entirely our cup of tea.

Widgets – with drag and drop functionality – are in attendance to varying degrees in the Pixon and the user experience is not unlike a desktop that’s been shrunken whether you’re playing with the Arena or the Pixon. Both also put accelerometers to good use for web browsing and photo viewing.

Talking of photos, the cameras on both handsets are pretty high caliber. At least when it comes to holding their own in the megapixel wars. The Arena boasts 5-megapixel with Schneider-Kreuznach optics while the Pixon goes three steps higher to server up an 8-megapixel snapper. But, as we know, it’s not all about the megapixels, it’s what you do with them that counts.

Both handsets boast a host of camera-specific features such as auto focus, LED flash, image stabilisation and geo tagging, the latter of which should come in handy for remembering where you were when you thought it was a good idea to take all those drunken pics and then upload them to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Our reviewer found the Arena had a slight aversion to indoor shots – serving up snaps that were a bit grainy but good enough. However, macro mode and its detail capture more than made up for that. The Pixon’s duel LED flash, on the other hand, came to our aid for low light indoor snaps.

The Arena can also shoot DVD quality video at 30fps but we would have found this feature more useful had there been a TV-out cable in the box.

The Pixon also boast a few extra camera features such as panorama assist mode and Face Link. The former is pretty self explanatory and very useful indeed, while the latter proved more puzzling than helpful. Using the tool you can tag people and then search for them by name as well as sorting photos by date, time and predominant colour. This last aspect certainly had our reviewer scratching their head as to when you’d ever need to search photos by predominant colour but the world is full of unsolved mysteries.

A touchy subject
Alas, like their touchscreen peers – included the seemingly sacred iPhone – both the Arena and the Pixon suffer from grease prone screens that take the edge of the otherwise cool aesthetics.

Both the Arena and the Pixon boast a list of the usual suspects when it comes to connectivity, with Bluetooth, EDGE, GPRS and HSDPA (up to 7.2Mbps) boxes ticked.

Shamefully for a handset that is otherwise on a par with its co-megapixeletitor (in this instance the Arena), Samsung has shunned Wi-Fi support for the Pixon. This is a bit of a shame as both consumers and business users alike have become accustomed to snacking on wireless on the move. And, if they choose the Pixon over the Arena, they’ll now go hungry.

Where users won’t feel unsatisfied, however, is when it comes to multimedia as both handsets offer decent support for audio and video and decent speaker and headphone quality. So, when you’re not taking snaps – and searching for them by colour or whatever – you can chill out with a tune or a flick.

Verdict
It’s not all about the megapixels and, while we very much like what the Pixon has to offer, 8-megapixels just doesn’t do it for us in this instance. Especially when you factor in the lack of Wi-Fi. The Arena may have a slightly quirky 3D interface but it’s not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination and we have to give it respect for trying something new. Ultimately, it’s a very close race and the Arena wins in by a very small, Wi-Fi-shaped nose.

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