LG KF600 review

You may have played around with a touchscreen mobile before, but you won't have come across anything quite like LG's KF600. The KF600 is a sliderphone that's been created with a unique a two-part touchscreen interface on the front of the phone. While the upper larger screen shows menus and functions in a mostly regular phone mobile style - and is not touch sensitive - the lower of the twin displays is a touch operated control panel that changes as you use the phone.

This touch-controlled InteractPad, as it's called by LG, adopts a novel contextual control system, the interface altering depending on whatever function or application you're using. The InteractPad has virtual control buttons that pop up and change as and when you need them - for example, music controls when you're working the onboard MP3 player, camera buttons when you're taking snaps with the built in 3-megapixel camera, or messaging options when you're composing texts.

The LG KF600's touchscreen doesn't come completely out of the nowhere; it draws inspiration (and lessons) from LG's previous touch sensitive controlled mobiles, including the Chocolate phone, and the touch-operated Viewty. But this implementation is very different from anything else around at the moment. The concept is certainly interesting, although whether this is the shape of things to come or just a stylish maverick remains to be seen.

It's interesting too that LG has introduced this sophisticated technology in a non-3G phone. The KF600 is a tri-band GSMGPRS/EDGE handset, with a decently specified 3-megapixel camera on the back (a flash and autofocus capability are present), a multi-format music player inside, and an FM radio built in. MicroSD card memory expansion complements its 25MB of internal storage. This is more mid-tier spec than high-end Viewty features territory.

The KF600 doesn't compromise on looks to incorporate its new InteractPad technology. With no visible front panels in standby, the black casing with chrome trim is quite sleek and stylish. A rubber-feel back panel also makes it feel comfortable in the hand, and has a solid build quality.

The twin screen panels on the front panel sit one above the other, with a small gap between. The top is a 2-ich 262K-colour QVGA (240x320 pixels) conventional display, while the lower one is a 1.5-inch 262K-colour QVGA touchscreen. The InteractPad screen also supports handwriting recognition.

One quirky visual touch is the way you can have the two screens interacting in standby mode. Among the phone's pre-loaded themes are a selection based on colourful Keith Haring artwork, which as well as theming the menus provide striking moving images that appear to slip between the displays. Unusual, but extremely effective.

A numberpad slides out from beneath these, and the flush but large keys offer some operational support if required - as well as being used for old-fashioned dialling and texting.

The InteractPad is the star of the show on this phone from the first time you switch it on. From experience, we know that touch operation can be a difficult beast if not implemented effectively. This LG system is easy to follow right away and you pick up the rhythm of using it quite quickly. Initially in standby you're presented with six icon-labelled virtual function quick keys on the lower display. One of these takes you into the main menu (four others are shortcuts to other functions, one shuts down the quick keys and locks the pad).

This intuitiveness is partly due to the easy way the InteractPad does the job usually taken care of by a standard mobile phone navigation pad - the touch pad buttons often replicate up, down, left, right, select and clear buttons. This could means that this is a good adaption of touch technology, or simply that it's replacing an already effective button-led navigation method with a similarly functioning touch control alternative.

Haptic feedback - a slight vibrating buzz - let you know that a key's been successfully pressed, eliminating some of the double-pressing dilemmas of non-haptic touchscreens. There's an autolock on the touchpad to avoid random unwanted pressing, but this can be unlocked easily by pressing the camera fast-access button on the side of the phone.

Initially we found ourselves instinctively trying to press the upper screen to make option selections as they appeared. This could be just a reaction to our recent over-exposure to full touchscreen operated handsets, but it felt odd having a bit of the screen touch-controlled, and a bit not.

The top screen menu user interface is easy to follow, and sub-menus are arranged in familiar numbered lists (you can use the touchpad or numberpad keys to choose options).

The InteractPad gets more inventive when you try playing with some of the more headline-grabbing multimedia functions. Call up the MP3 player, by pressing the KF600's MP3 player quick key on the opposite side to the camera button, choose a track to play, and the lower touch portion of the screen transforms into music player controls. This gives the overall face of the phone an impressive look and feel, particularly if you have cover artwork for tracks onscreen.You can use your finger to move through tacks as well as press control keys.

The menu options and categorisation of tracks before you get to this part are quite limited, though you can create your own playlists, select recent songs and favourites, and shuffle tracks. You can sweep through track lists with a finger swipe, and adjust equaliser settings too. But in truth the KF600 isn't aiming to be an iPhone rival.

The music player happens to put in a pretty good performance. The supplied earphones come as a two-part set - there's a 3.5mm headphone adapter on the part that plugs you into the phone's LG proprietary connector, so you can add your own better quality headphones if you want to upgrade sound quality. The in-box earphones are quite average, and decent earphones definitely make a difference to the performance. You can use Bluetooth stereo headphones with it too.

Another key feature benefiting from the InteractPad user interface is the camera. This 3-megapixel shooter has a sophisticated set of control adjustments and settings overrides for a cameraphone at this level. Autofocus is a welcome addition, as is the macro setting to enable close up sharp-shooting. A flash on the back panel gives some added illumination for low-light snapping too, and there's an anti-shake setting for steadier shooting.

The main screen and InteractPad automatically switch to landscape mode when the camera button is pressed. Despite the range of settings options, the digital camera-like user interface, is straightforward, with the touch screen controls kept nicely minimalist so as not to overwhelm the camera user.

Results from the camera demonstrate that you can achieve fine quality results, with the autofocus system earning its corn. Unsurprisingly, brighter lighting conditions resulted in better quality images, but overall the camera is a significant plus point for this phone. Video can be shot on this handset too, at maximum QVGA (320x240 pixels) resolution - providing average mobile phone quality, but nothing special.

The touchscreen interface, music player and camera may get most of the glory on this device, but the KF600 has a reasonable selection of mid-tier standard fare features. These include email support with a document viewer for attachments, a web browser, Yahoo! Go software pre-installed, and a roster of organiser tools - calendar, calculator, memo taker, voice recorder function and so on. There's also stereo Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

With two displays working in tandem, battery performance might be an issue. LG quotes a standby time of up to 300 hours or talktime of up to 3 hours - far from the longest on a non-3G handset, but it shouldn't cause excessive charging issues. Call quality on the handset was of a high standard in all our test calls, which is always pleasing.

The InteractPad twin-screen interface is a novel mobile user interface development from LG. For some simple menu functions, it may be seen as just a fancy way of doing what a phone navigation pad could do just as easily. Similarly, a regular phone navigation pad and softkeys already change to suit the function with which they're being used - and arguably can carry out functions more quickly and more responsively.

But the KF600's ever-changing context-dependent virtual buttons make for quite an easy and intuitive way of finding your way around the functions. Sure, it does this partly by adapting some conventional mobile menus to meld with the InteractPad. But this phone shows some clever and interesting thinking on LG's part.

It may not be the best featured touchscreen handset on the market, and its user interface isn't up there with the likes of the iPhone's for usability. But LG has come up with something distinctly different with the KF600, creating an attractive-looking handset that has plenty of quirky charm to it.

LG KF600 technical specifications