LG KG800 European Chocolate Review

The Chocolate is a relatively small slider phone with a polished black surface and metal lining between the upper and the lower parts of the slider and around the OK button on the upper part. The buttons are not raised and when the phone is closed they are not illuminated and therefore not noticeable, having a completely black and smooth surface. The phone is hardly felt in the pocket, and despite its edgy form it handles comfortably, and opening it with one hand is a real pleasure, because of the supporting slider mechanism. The opening of the phone also unlocks the keypad. The making is exceptionally precise and is pleasing to the eye because of the used materials. The entire phone is solid and produces no irritating noises during usage. When opened, during normal usage there is no unpleasant movement of the slider unless you want to close it, which is as easy as opening it. Sadly the surface is “fingertip friendly” and you can hardly keep it clean. That becomes quite obvious when the phone is reflecting bright light, but there is no way not to touch it since you have to open the slider.

The display is a TFT unit with a relatively good resolution (176õ220) and 262 thousand colors. Displays with similar resolution and colors are used in Motorola L7, V3i and Sony Ericsson W810. The physical size of the display is small, but the picture is good - saturated colors with very good contrast. It would have been nice to have in a phone of this class some ultra bright and large QVGA display, so that it can outstand the competition. Since it is a TFT, it is gray when not in use, therefore it contrasts from the otherwise black phone – design wise it would have looked much better if it was from the OLED type, which conceals when unused (that screen type is used with the Samsung SPH-A640). In direct sunlight, the display is very hard to read, since it has some unpleasant reflections on it and fingerprints as well, which tend to stick to it and wiping them off is a complicated task.

The buttons of the upper slider are really interesting and unique. They are well illuminated in red and seen well in the dark, and when not lit are almost invisible on the black surface. Because they are not raised and unlike the RAZR and the SLVR pushing is not necessary – the buttons work of the flowing electricity from ones fingers, which is somewhat confusing since they do not react mechanically at all. 

The navigation buttons (4 directions) are around the OK button, which is rounded by a metal stripe, but that didn't help our misusage at times, since we kept pressing the OK button instead of one of the navigation buttons. Because of the type of the buttons, when pressing and holding a certain button, the reaction is slow – for example if you wanted to delete lots of text at once and you pressed and held the C button, you would have to wait a while. When on a call those buttons turn off so that the touch of your face doesn't activate them. To activate them you need to press the MP3 player button and then use the menu.

The bottom slider holds a standard numeric keypad for 0 through 9, *, # and the side buttons. On the keypad the buttons are aligned in a 3x4 grid being in different shades: the odd digits and the zero are black and glossy, while the even ones and the two symbols lighter gray shaded surface. The alignment reminds us of a chess board, but it looks like blocks of chocolate as well, just like the name of the phone itself. The buttons are all easy to press despite their different shades, they all have good response and without almost any grove, where the chance of misusage is minimal. We tested it by opening it and dialing an unknown number a few times.

On the left side there are volume buttons. They can activate the navigation buttons so that the phone can be used without having to open it. On the right side there is a multimedia button (camera/mp3) and the red headphone. All four buttons are small, but well positioned and comfortable to use. On the right side there is a connector for the charger/usb cable/headset as well, which is covered by a rubber top.