The touchscreen mobile phone is a device long associated with the high end sector. An area that conjures visions of the BlackBerry Storm, T-Mobile G1, HTC Touch HD, Samsung's Pixon and Tocco, LG's own Renoir and arguably the culprit responsible for them all: the Apple iPhone.

The problem however is that until very recently only Apple had managed to get the touchscreen experience right with many pretenders plagued by unresponsive displays and poorly thought out software - so isn't it a bit premature to be pitching this tech at a budget level? In short no, not at all because straight off the bat let's spill the beans: LG has baked its Cookie just right.

At just £149.99 network unlocked or from free on virtually any monthly contract, the Cookie causes a sharp intake of breath and breeds a certain amount of cynicism so let's get the crazy wish list out the way: there's no 3G, GPS or Wi-Fi - the first of these may have been nice, but we're limited to EDGE so if any of these are deal breakers then 1. You need to get back to reality or 2. Move along now.

For everyone else let's now move onto the good stuff and given that we are in prepay territory here it is safe to say the Cookie looks superb. The plastics used in its construction may not match some of the metal and Chrome finishes seen on more expensive models but it feels well built and comfortable in hand. At 106.5x55.4x11.9mm the Cookie is also compact and at just 87g deceivingly light.

Despite this attractive exterior, the best news comes when switching the handset on as LG has fitted a generous 3in widescreen display which at 240 x 400 pixels is certainly a cut above the QVGA (at best) resolutions generally available in this sector.

The pleasant surprises keep on coming with a well designed home screen which can be customised much like that of the Samsung Tocco or G1 by dragging applications to and from it and also swiped left or right to bring up secondary and tertiary screens. There is a handy favourites' shortcut button as well which displays a personalised pop-up menu that is accessible from any part of the UI.

Navigation is a breeze too with the touchscreen itself extremely responsive (despite using resistive rather than capacitive technology), the Flash menus quick to load and while there is a stylus supplied with the Cookie (it is neatly tucked horizontally behind the physical call, favourites and hang up buttons) it is of great credit to LG that it rarely needs to be used. In fact, if pushed, I'd be tempted to say putting the iPhone, G1 and Storm aside, this is one of the nicest and most well thought out touchscreen experiences to date.

Of course this all stands for nothing if the functionality is horribly stifled but again the Cookie punches above its weight with neatly designed media software that supports Mpeg4 and 3GPS landscape video playback at up to 24fps plus MP3, WMA and AAC audio formats. The inclusion of Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP means it will also play nicely with wireless headphones and there's even an FM tuner with built in RDS.

In terms of productivity we get email support and a document viewer for Doc, Xls and PDF files, a voice memo recorder and an external speaker for handsfree calls. Native memory is extremely limited at just 48MB but with a microSD expansion slot included and capable of handling cards up to 8GB storage space shouldn't be a problem.

Concerns? To be honest they are all fairly forgivable. Despite being a reasonable three-megapixels, the camera lacks autofocus and flash so results are mediocre and videos record at just 12fps making them somewhat choppy - but it would be ridiculous to expect Renoir performance. Similarly, 3.5 hours of talk time isn't overly long but the absence of the battery sucking trio of 3G, GPS and WiFi means standby of up to 15 days. These claims seem reasonable during my time with the Cookie with moderate use requiring a charge only every three to four days.

In sum, perhaps the biggest factor for many will be whether they need extensive social networking tools because here the Cookie does come up short compared to something like the INQ1 with no IM or Web2.0 clients installed out the box. That said, the Cookie marks the first time a full touchscreen handset has successfully broken into the budget market and as such it comes highly recommended.