LG KP500 Cookie Review

LG has come up with the new KP 500 Cookie to ramp up its smartphone sales and create a presence for itself in the mid to low range smartphone segment. With the rise of Apple, LG’s market share is slowly eroding, and that coupled with the current recession has resulted in a not so good 2008 for LG. It is priced very competitively and offers a nice design, touchscreen display with a easy to use, fun interface and has good features. Although it is priced much cheaper than them, it competes mainly with the Android G1, Nokia 5800 and the HTC Touch Viva. It is aimed at those who want smartphone like features with a good spec list but aren’t very concerned about the OS or other technicalities. It doesn’t sport GPS, Wi-Fi either, but then you shouldn’t be asking for more at this price.

LG KP 500 Cookie Specs:

• Dimensions: 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm
• Weight: 89 gms
• Display: 3.0 inches TFT touchscreen, 256K colors, 240 x 400 pixels (WQVGA)
• Memory: 48 MB (Internal) with 16 GB MicroSD support
• Connectivity: GPRS Class 10, EDGE Class 10
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth v2.1
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels, Video Rec (QVGA at 12 FPS)
• Battery: Standard Li-Ion 900 mAh Battery
• Other Features: Flash UI, Accelerometer, FM radio with RDS, Java MIDP 2.0, Document viewer (DOC, XLS, PDF), MP3 / WMA / AAC player, MPEG4 / 3GP video player

Design and Build Quality:

The LG Cookie KP 500 sports a nice, simple and cute design. It is very appealing and is reminiscent of the recent generation of touchscreen smartphones with its huge display and a minimum number of buttons. The phone feels nice and the design is well thought of. The KP 500 Cookie has dimensions of 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm and weighs just about 89 gms. The build quality is also very nice, it should easily last you for years with proper usage. The dsign should appeal to almost everyone – casual users as well as business users.

The front face consists of the 3.0 inch display and three keys – Call, Launcher, End. Above the display, you will find the earpiece. On the left edge, there is the volume rocker and the connectivity port. On the right is the camera shutter key and the lock key as well as the MicroSD slot. The stylus slot is located at the bottom. On the back of the phone, the 3 MP camera stands alone.

Display:

The LG Cookie KP 500 comes with a 3.0 inch touchscreen display with a WQVGA resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. While the resolution is no match for the likes of the Nokia 5800′s 360 x 640 pixels, it is still pretty decent and looks great with the Flash UI. The display has nice nrightness and contrast and also realistic, vibrant colors. Watching a movie should be a joy on the Cookie. The touchscreen is a resistive one like Nokia 5800 and offers nice response and sensitivity. Once you get used to it, navigating through the interface is fun. The display supports haptic feedback – vibrations when a click is made. The display is one of the strong points of this phone. It has decent sunlight legibility as well. Generally, you don’t expect good displays from low cost phones but the LG KP 500 Cookie sets an exception.

Interface:

The LG KP 500 Cookie sports a custom Flash based UI by LG. It is very cute, easy to use and reminds you of the iPhone OS. It is very similar to interfaces sported by the LG KC910 Renoir and the LG Prada with slight cutbacks in functionality. It is very intuitive and user friendly. The interface is very responsive and fast with no lags or delays. The interface is divided into 4 tabs – Communicate, Entertainment, Utilities and Settings. The UI animations and manu transitions are very pleasing and will definitely be liked by everyone. It has dual homescreens – the first homescreen supports widgets and the second one lets you arrange contacts around the screen. You can customize the homescreen with all the widgets you like. The flash UI with the widgets etc is superb, though it doesn’t support OS-native 3rd party applications. You can install Java MIDP 2.0 applications and games though.

Text input on the KP 500 Cookie is easy to use, the virtual keyboard is fun to use once you get used to it. The alphabets are large enough so you can click them easily. The Cookie also supports handwriting recognition if you prefer to write your messages. The font is big and pleasing, messaging is a breeze on this phone.

Multimedia:

The LG KP 500 Cookie can easily double up as a multimedia device. The large display facilitates video playback, but it doesn’t support the standard DivX, XviD formats so you will have to transcode all your files. The video playback quality is nice though, you can also play videos in the landscape mode as well as full screen. You can also take screenshots of your video. The built in audio player has a superb interface. The music player supports album art and also has EQ presets. It supports all the features any normal music player would – it can sort tracks according to artist, album, genre, and recently played etc. You can also create custom playlists. The music player can also be minimised and run in the background as a widget. The audio quality is very good and should satisfy all your casual music needs. The only qualm we have is that there is no standard 3.5 mm audio jack so you can’t plug in earphones of your choice directly.

The KP 500 Cookie also comes with an image gallery to view all your image files. The interface again, is very cool and stylish. You can browse images in portrait or landscape modes, zoom into them, and perform some basic editing. This is one of the most feature packed image gallery we have seen. You can edit the brightness, contrast, color, hue and saturation, sharpness, blur etc. It also has red-eye removal as well as color effects.

Camera and Other Features:

It also comes with an FM Radio with RDS support. The FM reception is quite good. It also has a 3 MP camera which captures images at a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It records video at QVGA resolutions at 12 FPS. There is no flash with the camera so night shots are ruled out. The camera capture quality is pretty decent. The colors are accurate and the images bright with good contrast. There is minimal noise. The camera interface is also pretty easy to use and covers all the basic features.

It isn’t really very good with connectivity stuff – it lacks Wi-Fi and 3G. The built in web browser is decent. It also comes bundled with some games. It is powered by a standard Li Ion 900 mAh battery. The phone lasts about 2.5 days with moderate usage. The battery life is a bit less than we would have liked. The LG Cookie KP 500 comes bundled with a phone charger, a data cable and a wired handsfree. Apart from that, you get the required manuals and guides.

Pros:

• Priced Cheap
• Nice Design, Build
• Superb Interface / OS
• Nice Display

Cons:

• No Wi-Fi / 3G
• Average Camera with no Flash
• No 3.5 mm standard jack

Final Words:

The LG KP 500 Cookie is a nice phone overall with nice features and a pleasing interface. It is priced very intelligently and should become very popular among the masses who want a cheap but functional touchscreen smartphone which is also good to look at.

Our Rating: 4 / 5.