LG KM900

The LG Arena is getting set to storm its way across Europe but not before a proper courtesy call. Yes sir, one of the Barcelona Mobile World Congress headliners is feeling right at home at the arena. And the pleasure is ours too.

The well-rounded feature set - which could've been a major asset in any reputable handset - is easily eclipsed by the interface that boasts some of the best looks and handling in quite a while. S-class is a not a name to misuse so let's hope the Arena lives up to the expectations.

LG KM900 Arena official photos

Our LG namesake is the first ever handset to run the new touch UI of the Korean company. In addition, you get a state of the art connectivity package and a nicely sounding 5 megapixel shooter. Well, obviously it's not a top of the line imaging monster like the Renoir but the target audience is different here.

Having made a great first impression with its brilliant screen and inspiring UI, the LG KM900 Arena is now to face a more serious test. It's a quick little preview we've got for you here but hopefully the Arena will have no secrets left.

For starters let's have a look at the LG KM900 Arena main specs.

LG KM900 Arena at a glance

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 2100 or 850/1900 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Dimensions: 105.9 x 55.3 x 12 mm, 105 g
• Display: 3" 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Memory: 8GB flash storage, microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• User interface: S-Class Touch UI
• Still camera: 5 megapixel autofocus camera, Schneider-Kreuznach optics, autofocus, LED flash
• Video recording: 3GP D1 (720x480)@30fps, QVGA@120fps high-speed recording, QVGA time lapse recording
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm audio jack, TV-out, microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, Multi-touch input, 3D hardware accelerator, DivX support, Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement, FM radio, FM transmitter, office document viewer
• Battery: Li-Ion 1000 mAh, Talk time: 3 h 50 min, Standby: 300 h, Music playback: 30 h
• Retail price: 400 euro (540 US dollars)

LG KM900 Arena at ours

There are several things to note on the KM900 Arena specs sheet. To begin with, the screen is a giant leap for LG. No, WVGA is not unheard of but the company sure was stuck at WQVGA far too long. The all-round functionality isn't unprecedented either but this here package is quite well balanced. Save for omitting an 8MP shooter the LG Arena hardly has anything else missing.

However, the more important test for the Arena is usability and user experience. If the S-Class manages to reinforce the first impression we may certainly have a winner here.

LG Arena finally in our hands

But let's not rush. That would be the worst thing to do with plenty of work on our hands and so little time. Hit the jump for the design and ergonomics of the LG KM900 Arena.

LG KM900 Arena 360-degree spin

The LG KM900 Arena has a pleasant design with metallic frame on the front and a whitish cover on the back. Since we are hardly fond of white phones, we cannot help but sigh over the Titan Black version of the handset that was just announced as one of the T-Mobile UK exclusives.

Design and construction

At 105.9 x 55.3 x 12 mm the LG KM900 Arena is like a slightly downsized version of the Samsung i900 Omnia. Its lighter weight of 105 g makes it even more pocketable than the popular WinMo handset.

While the S-Class UI functionality of LG KM900 Arena is superior to all previous LG touch phones, but physically it's quite like the LG KC910 Renoir, which is only a tad larger. Both phones have 3-inch displays and almost the same hardware elements on the respective sides.

Comparing it to the LG KC910 Renoir

The LG KM900 Arena is not direct competitor to Apple iPhone 3G, but comparisons between both are inevitable. The Arena has a higher-res screen than the iPhone 3G, but it's smaller and its legibility under direct sunlight is quite lower. The advantage of the KM900 Arena over the iPhone 3G is its compact dimensions, the sensor keys on the front panel and of course the higher-spec'd camera.

Comparing it to the iPhone 3G

Lining up the the usual suspects for an eye exam is just inevitable. These are among the most popular full touch handsets on the market and chances are you've probably already seen one, held one in your hands or even had one of them.

Passing any verdict on the design seems rather pointless since the engineers don't really have much room for improvisation designing a full touch handset.

The front panel is all about the 3" 16M color capacitive touchscreen display. Even though it uses the TFT technology as opposed to the OLED one on latest Samsung handsets it still provides excellent picture quality. The brightness and contrast levels are top-notch, comparable to the best examples in the class.

The front panel is dominated by the large 3" capacitive touchscreen display

Probably part of the explanation for this is the fact that the LG KM900 Arena has the most pixel-dense screen on the market (a title it shares with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 and, as an observant reader reminded us, the Toshiba G900). The resolution of 800 x 480 pixels cramped in the 3" screen results in more pixels per inch than any competitor can offer.

The capacitive touchscreen technology makes sure that the KM900 Arena only needs a slight touch to register a click. On the negative part it cannot work with a stylus making features like handwriting almost impossible to implement.

The increased sensitivity of the screen however combines brilliantly with the powerful hardware under the hood, resulting in excellent responsiveness of both the screen and interface. More on the actual operation of the phone will be discussed later in the interface part as we now get back to the hardware.

Unfortunately, the LG Arena screen legibility is much like the one of the LG Secret, which practically means it's almost unusable under direct sunlight.

The LG Arena display in the dark • compared to the Apple iPhone

The other functional elements on the front panel of the LG Arena are the earpiece and the video call camera at the top as well as the three touch sensitive buttons at the bottom.

Those buttons include a shortcut to the cube interface and the two standard call operating keys - Call and End. Having the same feedback as the screen they make it easy to make the transition from one to the other.

The elegant earpiece grid and the video call camera on top

The left side of LG KM900 Arena features the LG proprietary USB port. It's hidden under a nice sliding lid that should prevent it from getting filled with dirt and grime. Unfortunately, LG are still using their proprietary connectivity port.

The left side reveals only the USB port hidden behind a sliding lid

On the right-hand side of the Arena are the volume rocker and the camera keys. Those keys are definitely too thin for our taste they are obviously designed with looks rather than usability in mind. And great looks they really have blending seamlessly with the handset sides.

The volume rocker key and the discrete camera key at the left side

The bottom part of the LG Arena is perfectly plain, featuring no controls whatsoever.

Bottom side is pretty bare

The top hosts the 3.5mm standard audio jack, the power key and the back panel release button. The audio jack hasn't received the same treatment as the USB port and isn't covered at all. That way it will probably be easier to access and use, but it would eventually fill up with dirt.

The power key is again a bit too small, but this time this ain't too much of an obstacle to usability since it is slightly jutting out.

The top hosts the 3.5mm audio jack slot, the power key and the back panel release button

Flipping it over

The back side of the LG KM900 Arena hosts the 5 megapixel camera and its loyal companion - the LED flash. The lens doesn't have any protection at all.

The single other thing on the back that might be of interest is the second microphone pinhole at the bottom. That second microphone is used for recording sound during video capturing.

We cannot pass without saying that the back panel looks quite similar to the one of the first-gen Apple iPhone - the matte surface, the camera location and shape as well as the cut-off bottom section - they all add up for an eerie iPhonish look.

A look at the elements on top of the LG Arena reveal the same positions of the on/off key and audio jack shape.

The mat back panel looks similar to the one in the old Apple iPhone • several similarities on top

The 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery is under the battery cover, which much like the first-gen iPhone is made out of plastic. It is quoted to last for 300 hours of stand-by, 3 hours and 50 minutes of talk time or 30 hours of music playback. At this stage we are unable to comment on its real life performance due to the short time we've spent with the handset.

Removing the aluminum battery cover

The general build quality of the KM900 Arena seems really good with the metallic panels seeming very durable and all.

Holding the LG KM900 Arena in hand

S-Class user Interface

A well designed and smooth running user interface is among the most important features of a phone these days and the iPhone and its amazing market success is the quintessential example. LG have equipped the Arena with their spanking new S-Class UI and what can we say - high-end is implied.

The capacitive touchscreen is quite sensitive and haptic feedback has always been on the LG feature list. The hardware graphic acceleration is essential: everything from homescreen to dropdown menus rolls, sweeps in, unfolds and revolves extra smoothly.

The S-Class builds upon the previous UIs of the house thus still feels familiar despite the enormous amount of upgrades.

This time around, there are four homescreens and they break down the homescreen UI to four easily manageable chunks: widgets, contacts, shortcuts and multimedia.

The four homescreens - Shortcuts, Widgets, Contacts and Multimedia

No matter which homescreen you choose the UI never skimps on eye candy - smooth animations, reflections, 3D spatial effects, motion blurring - it's all there for your viewing pleasure. And better still - the 3" WVGA screen makes sure the image quality is exceptional.

It kinda reminded us of the day that the Apple iPhone arrived in our office and how amazed we felt back then. However it's been almost two years now that the iPhone is out and the bar is as high as ever.

A new and eye catching addition to the interface is the cube interface - the four homescreens are placed on the sides of a cube that you roll by finger sweeps. You can zoom out by pressing the center Home key and roll the cube to select a homescreen.

The sides of the cube are the homescreens

The main menu is accessible via the dedicated shortcut on the home screen. The new thing about it is the layout. 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.

Even better, if you turn the phone sideways, the menu items are all visualized with smaller icons fitting the screen perfectly with no need for scrolling (but with no text labels as well).

Main menu in portrait and landscape mode

Here's our quick video walkthrough of the amazing LG Arena S-class interface.

LG Arena - the four homescreens. Watch in HD

LG Arena again has a multitasking menu (a basic task manager), which is launched upon a press-and-hold of the center key, is another way to access the most common features, not just switch between the active ones. The active apps are signified by the respective icon bouncing up and down in smooth animation.

Pressing and holding the center key launches the multitasking menu

Multitasking is limited - there is a limit of two applications at a time and Java apps interfere with other apps. For example, with a Java app running in the background you won't be able to turn the Radio on.

Tapping the Status bar at the top of the screen launches a semitransparent menu that can be used to toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off, change profiles and view recent events.

Easy access to common settings

Unfortunately, this connection manager menu is available only on the homescreen. It would have been handier if it was usable throughout the interface - the way notifications are handled in the Android.

Managing contacts is a breeze, so is inputting text

The phone book is quite good has received a redesign and currently seems the best touch-optimized phone book we've seen.

While scrolling the contacts list for instance, a tap on any of the contacts expands a drop-down summary of their contacts details without interfering the browsing in any way. The options for communicating with that particular contact are part of that expanded info and are further scrollable horizontally - quite impressive.

Phonebook • Editing a contact • smart dial is also available

Quite naturally, the LG KM900 Arena offers an onscreen alphanumeric keypad in portrait orientation and a landscape QWERTY thumboard. The QWERTY keys are smallish but each symbol you tap is clearly marked by iPhone-style pop-ups.

The alphanumeric and QWERTY keyboards

Gallery is a real 3D treat

LG Arena offers two gallery modes depending on the handset's orientation. In portrait mode images and videos are displayed in a grid while in landscape mode one image is displayed in the center and two more by its side in an impressive 3D spatial view.

Did somebody say Cover Flow? Yes, the layout is quite similar to the Apple iPhone Cover Flow Album Art browsing, but let us remind you that the iPhone offers that view mode in its iPod music player only.

The gallery

As the LG KM900 Arena supports multi-touch you can zoom in images with the pinching gesture well known from Apple's iPhone - we really hope that Apple don't have a patent pending on this one or LG are toasted.

Dolby enhanced music playback is just fine

The LG KM900 Arena Music player is accessible both from the Cube interface as well as from the main menu. The homescreen music player is rather basic but it does the job of quick access to the playing music.

The tracks are displayed on a rotating reel and get visualized with their album artwork "printed" on virtual vinyl records.

One of the two music players aboard

The full-featured music player sits in the main menu. You can sort tracks by artist, album, genre and your rating. The current track's artwork, name, album and artist are displayed in the screen's center while the next and previous track are visible at the top and bottom of the screen.

The main music player is just great

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, when you tilt the phone, the music player automatically switches its orientation from/to landscape mode.

The main music player in portrait and landscape mode

A very useful feature is the Search option. However, if you have applied some sorting such as album view, for instance, you can only search the album names and not the actual tracks.

There are tons of equalizer presets (all non-customizable, though) and among all of them two managed to impress us. The first is the highly advertised Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement.

With Dolby Mobile the sound gets more spacious and richer. Bobcat Mobile was also a really nice preset which is best suited for techno tracks. However with all the presets available we're sure you'd find yourself a favorite one as well.

There are tons of equalizer presets, all non-customizable, though

Surely a nice touch to the LG Arena feature list is the in-built FM transmitter allowing you to stream wirelessly the currently played tracks to any standard FM radio receiver (e.g. car audio or home multimedia system).

A nice touch is the built-in FM transmitter

Video player

The LG Arena comes with a relatively large touch screen (especially for a device of that size) measuring good 3". That, along with the DivX/XviD support turns it into a potentially excellent portable video player - especially considering the good track record. The LG Renoir for example managed to play every desktop XViD/DivX video we threw at it. Unfortunately, we had issues with DivX/XviD support in our pre-production unit, but LG will surely fix that in the retail version.

To switch the video player to full screen mode you only need to tilt the phone to landscape position. A tap on the touch screen reveals the onscreen overlay controls. Except for the standard controls (such as play/pause, volume, etc.) you can also change playing speed and to zoom in or out.

The video player

Unlike the LG Renoir, with the LG Arena the Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement can be turned on during video playback. Of course, that enhancement is put to best use with headphones.

Middling camera, first-rate video recording

We really had high hopes for the 5 megapixel camera on the Arena but the best we can say about it at this point is OK. The full-res samples reveal poor detail. But let's not forget it's a pre-release unit, which may as well have most of the issues fixed before it's retail-ready.

The good things about the camera are that there is no over sharpening and the colors are lively and perfectly matching the scenes we shot. If it wasn't for the problematic detail we would've called the camera perfect. It's hard to find a cameraphone with such accurate colors and crisp contrast.

The LED flash is useless. It really struggles in poor light and will hardly make a difference, even in close quarters.

Camera samples downsampled to 1024 x 768 pixels

The viewfinder is not the typical LG. Access to all the camera settings is via the left taskbar in the viewfinder. There you get virtual buttons for settings, flash, focus mode (auto/macro) and exposure.

This left task bar auto hides and is brought back as an overlay when you tap on the screen. On the right hand-side of the screen is another bar with a virtual shutter key, exit and gallery buttons. It's fixed and is actually not part of the viewfinder - that's the way to get around the wide aspect ratio of the LG Arena screen. That way the Arena doesn't crop part of the scene like the LG Renoir.

The actual Settings menu is a clever rotating dial with the available options for each setting displayed as a list. The interface is very handy, neat and usable, geotagging and image stabilization are among the nice extras.

The camera interface

The LG KM900 Arena is capable of capturing video of up to D1 (720x480) resolution at 30 fps and slow-motion QVGA clips at 120 fps. The Arena, much like the LG Secret, takes the extra step of adding Fast videos. This is the time-lapse video capture seen in many digicams.

The actual quality is more than adequate and there is no trouble with frame rate either. Slow and Fast motion recording is available and with the right things to shoot can be real fun. Unfortunately, those are still limited to QVGA resolution. Even YouTube.com publish higher-res videos online these days.

Camcorder options

The flash can also be turned on to act as a video light. Quite naturally, you can also record sound with videos, except in fast/slow-mo of course. As we already pointed out, the dedicated video recording microphone is on the back of the phone. Videos are encoded in MP4 but are saved in 3GP format.

Here's a sample to check out.

Web browser is nice, but still slow

The browser is decent, almost identical to the one on the Renoir and Prada 2. Scrolling and panning is quite prompt and smooth. Thanks to the multi-touch implementation on the capacitive screen, the Arena delivers where other browsers fail - the legendary 'pinch' zoom the iPhone is popular with.

Loading pages though is a bit slow. Compared to the iPhone, the LG Arena browser takes double the time to open the same web page - both over Wi-Fi.

Entering a web address

The multi-touch zooming has been tweaked since the latest Prada and now it takes less time than before. There still is an annoying lag but at least the actual zooming is more accurate and does not interpret the gestures wrong. It's not as fluid as the iPhone but does the job right.

Browsing GSM Arena on the LG Arena

The controls don't auto-hide and the only option to make them disappear is to turn on the full screen view from the browser menu or rotate the phone to landscape. There the accelerometer comes into play and does its job pretty well.

A useful feature is that you can have two pages open at the same time in tabs and switch back and forth between them. Saving pages for offline viewing is another thing that you'd probably use quite often.

Full-screen view * the browser visual history

Another handy browser skill is searching web pages for specific words - the first match gets highlighted and the total number of matches is displayed, with up and down buttons for switching between them.

A visual enhancement of the plain browsing history list is the option to view snapshots of the pages you've visited. You can flick between the pages and tap to open the one you are looking for.

The LG Arena web browser lacks full Flash support.

GPS enabled

Google Maps is the most popular electronic map software for mobile phones and it comes preinstalled on the LG Arena making use of its built-in GPS receiver. Still the Java-powered version of the app wasn't meant for this screen resolution (480x800) and looks awkward on the phone.

Google Maps * the GPS settings screen

Overall, the fact that the LG Arena is not a smartphone will be quite limiting when it comes to picking a GPS voice-guided navigation software as only Java apps can be installed additionally.

Final words

LG have always been prominent on the touchscreen map but the KM900 Arena adds a whole new dimension to their portfolio. The first ever WVGA screen of the house and D1 video recording are enough to make the LG Arena a landmark device. However it’s the S-Class Touch UI that propels the handset to a higher league. It’s elaborate, responsive and impressively attractive – and we’re keen to see more of it, especially on top of the Windows Mobile OS that LG so heartily embraced in Barcelona.

As to the handset itself, the LG Arena hasn’t lost a bit of the impact it made at the WMC. It’s got the novelties right and blends the best of the LG high-end expertise. Maybe it’s too early for vicious head-to-heads but LG seem to have themselves a big enough player in the multimedia game.