At the last WMC in Barcelona, the LG Electronics Company has bet on its top devices - Viewty and KF600. It’s a reasonable fact: the same would have done any of the other vendors’ merchandisers. That’s why is no point to blame them that KF240 was not seen at all.
The Design
Let’s remind that during the exhibition, the LG company has held a press conference at the Fira de Barcelona media center under the slogan "LG: Smartly Touchable, More Usable", where the team presented its new mobile devices. "… More Usable…" – they were talking about KF240.
On the stand, however, was present the Vodafone - KF310 operator version. It differs of the 240 by supporting UMTS, embedded Google package instead of Yahoo! and support for MSN Messenger. The rest is a complete copy.
It’s evidently from the first sight that in front of us stands a mass model, not too attractive for the hi-tech amateurs. However, if the price of the device eventually will not exceed $ 150-160, it should be expected popularity and demand. The phone idea resembles the Samsung E250 and the like ones. The manufacturer declared the phone as a musical-slider with an original design.
The Exterior
KF240 - is a slider, ideologically similar in design to the novelties of this year - KF600, KF700 and KF510. At least, the "tribal" feature is present – the metal contours of the upper half. And it is important to note again that we are not dealing with painted plastic stylization. The phone plus battery weight is 83 grams, the size - 94 × 47 mm × 15,8 mm. Compared with the new LG products of this year, the KF240 relatively is more compact.
The body’s materials are pleasant in every aspect. They, as it turned out, are not heavily exposed to abrasion, pleasant to the touch, diverse and have a decent look. The front side is glossy. Such a decision we have seen on the LG Chocolate, its younger version KG280 and on the musical KE600. Let's say only that fingerprints are not so noticeable.
The material used to cover the keyboard, looks like soft-touch, but it is not so "matte" on touch.
In what concerning the cover, it’s interesting the rear side of the slider. Pain was applied, as they say, "from the soul". If carefully to look, then it can be seen small garnet red particles mixed in the paint. A similar technology is used by the nail lacquer manufacturers – that’s the interesting detail. The case is assembled at a very high quality: well-tailored details and nowhere nothing looses.
It was a pleasant surprise the slide mechanism realization. If you open the phone and look at the rear between the halves, then you can see that the main spring is supplemented by other two spring units, which provide softness and confidence in move. The slider is fair enough easily opened and closed with one hand. The developers deliberately somewhat had hardened the progress in the very beginning that will protect from "dropped" calls when trying to get phone from the pocket.
The digital camera and the near mirror are protected from damage with a plastic shield. The battery lid is not combined with the battery and can be easily removed. The memory card slot as well as the SIM-card slot are hidden and can be accessed only with the battery removed.
The additional controls location is standard. The keys have a small height and a well appreciable progress. The multimedia key, somehow defined as "Photo", brings a list of links to: audio player, FM-radio, camera and voice recorder. Next to it is a separate button for the player.
The connector for headset and charger is the same one. It is covered with a linked plastic plug.
The KF240’s display has a resolution of 176 × 220 pixels and can reflect up to 262 thousands of colors and shades. The decision is medium from the performance point of view, but is well realized. The screen has a large reserve of brightness / contrast, the small grains do not discomfort. The toner level from the protective plastic is small, so the display behaves well in the sun.
Settings for the screen are enough, which pleasantly surprised: clock, backlight time, the brightness / contrast, fonts (5 styles), themes and Standby Text. Moreover, the phone has the necessary number of settings for all the major parameters.
The display light is also directly regulated by the Power Save mode. It may be disabled, permanently enabled or only at night. For a phone with a 800 mAh capacity battery this option may seem useless. However, the producer has fairly declared: 2 hours of talk-time and 200 hours in standby mode. In practice it’s two days without listening to music - this is the limit.
Inside the phone
The hardware part is very similar with the 2007 model, KE600. At least, no evidences was found that could indicate a possible update. The LG Electronics Company last time when proudly declared that had a new basis for their phones was way back in December 2006. The main innovation at that time became the EDGE support. The UMTS-version KF310, even if supports the third-generation network, in the rest is the same hardware.
The 2008 phone, KF240, has no three-dimensional profiles of Java that is simply outrageous. However, the results obtained in testing with Jbenchmark, are impressive: Jbenchmark 1.1.1, Score - 3807, Jbenchmark 2.1.1, Score - 375. This is at least two times higher than that of the notorious Shine (KE970).
The menu is realized as usual: in the matrix form or cycling list. The horizontal submenu movement was left present. 12 sections was made.
"Games and Applications" also contain profile settings for the Internet. Java-MIDlets can be transferred to the phone via cable or by "air". When installing the application, the device courteously is asking to which group it should be attributed.
"History calls» is also standard, the maximum call record number is 30. All sorts of non important counters are present.
The "Organizer" includes a "Calendar", "Notes" and "To do list ".
The "Multimedia" section offers to listen radio or music, to make a photo or record video. More information about this will be just below.
The messaging is realized without innovation. There is present an E-mail-client capable of functioning with attached files.
"My files" still serve as a substitute for the so much-desired file manager. However, the simplest operation as copying / moving is managed without problem. The files, which is typical for the LG Electronics phones, are stored in folders by type ("Images" - means JPG, GIF, etc.). The received files are sorted automatically.
The total phone’s memory is a little less than 21 MB, which is very modest at current standards and it is normal for such a device. In KF240 there is a slot for memory cards, microSD format (the device confidently works with at least two gigabytes). If the card is installed for the first time, then it necessarily must be formatted for a standard telephone set of folders.
The preinstalled profiles can be edited, but their total number (5), as well as the name, cannot be changed.
The "Utilities" section includes an alarm clock (no more than five), calculator, stopwatch, unit converter, world time and STK-menu of the SIM-card (if any).
The "WAP-browser" offers to use the Yahoo! search engine. It does not support HTML.
The "Communication" section is divided into "Bluetooth", "Network" and "USB". The settings for each service are standard, sufficient and applicable. The manufacturer has declared support for Bluetooth 2.0, however, judging by the performance of KF310 and speed file transfer, it seems that the version is still1.2.
The "Options" sections - an extensive and useful section. We’ve managed to find “Flight” mode, the radio module is turned off.
On every key (except the first one, which traditionally is linked with the voice box) can be assigned one of the 10 menu items (here somehow fallen the "Profiles") and the "Phone Book". The last mentioned is realized modestly, but not bad. For a contact can be set the name, two numbers, e-mail, group picture, and even call memo. Gentleman's set, nothing else to be said.
The multimedia set allows catching the FM-radio waves and to save on one of the 30 positions. The audio player is copied from KE600, but decently finalized. It supports MP3, AAC, AAC +, but the WMA will have to be converted to any of the proposed. The WAV files are played incorrectly. It supports playlists, but even so, the main is still based on the contents of the Music folder. There are quite adequate equalizer settings, as well as the opportunity to see on the screen the real analyzer spectrum. Now the player can work in the background.
The Digital Camera
Video during playback cannot be turned in full screen mode, but supports rewind/forward roller inside the clip. Supported formats - MPEG4, H.263 and H.264.
In KF240 is installed a 2 megapixel digital camera module without autofocus. There is a mass of settings, such as image size (1600 × 1200 - the maximum), three-leveled system of compression, white balance, night mode, and other effects.
The quality of the images has met our expectations - we have in front of us a good 2 - megapixel module. The colors are only slightly different from the real look and the roughness is not associated with lighting errors. For this level of camera phone the results are quite decent. Video is recorded in a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels, 15 fps.
Conclusion
LG KF240, which is very pleasant, does not have serious shortcomings. The absence of the three-dimensional profiles cannot be a cause of low sales of the model. The manufacturer did not promise anything supernatural, and all the details are realized at a decent level.
Quite an interesting design, quality materials and assembly, decent screen and camera - all are evidences that LG managed to create a decent model for the middle class. The developer has not yet indicated a price, but if it does not overcome the average price category, the phone should be successful.
Source: GSMpress ®
