LG New Chocolate BL40 Preview

Introduction and Design:

The first Chocolate became a fashion icon and byword for stylish, elegant and exquisite device almost immediately after its official release. It inaugurated the manufacturer´s Black Label lineup that has recently got two new members. The first is the LG New Chocolate BL20 that will probably be the direct successor to the first Chocolate. The second is the offbeat LG New Chocolate BL40 – the celebrity we are introducing to you today. What´s unique about the phone is its 4-inch touch sensitive display with multitouch, 21:9 wide-screen ratio and 16 million color support. Moreover, the handset boasts a host of nice features like Wi-Fi, 3G, full HTML browser and 5-megapixel camera, although the device is not a smartphone really, because it runs the S-Class 3D interface of the manufacturer. Now, enough with our beating about the bush, let´s get to brass tacks.

Alongside of most other phones, the BL40 comes in a different form factor. The phone is long and narrow, partly due to its non-standard aspect ratio of the display. Being a member of the Black Label series, it sports an incredibly stylish overall look. Black seems to have taken over almost entirely, but the red upper and lower parts of the body lend some color to the austere, graceful design. Perhaps the New Chocolate BL40 will prove to be the next PRADA, despite the fact it´s not branded by the fashion label. This preview is based on a prototype, but still, we simply must tell you about the amazingly beautiful image quality its 4-inch TFT display with native resolution of 358x800 pixels and 16 million colors deliver. Colors are really saturated and the only displays we have seen that provide such a superb image quality are AMOLED ones. Way to go, LG!



You can compare the LG New Chocolate BL40 with many other phones using our Size Vizualization Tool.

There is no single button on the front side of the device, not even touch sensitive keys, but just the awesome screen, earpiece, video call camera and proximity sensor above it. On either side you have microUSB port, button to fast start the audio player, 3.5mm jack, screen lock button, volume rocker and camera shutter.



The 5-megapixel camera equipped with Schneider-KREUZNACH optics, flash and additional microphone taking care of the audio tracks to your videos is on the back, while as expected, the SIM and microSD card slots are under the hood.

Interface and functionality:

LG stakes on its proprietary S-Class 3D interface with the New Chocolate BL40. We have already examined it in great details in our reviews of the Arena KM900, Viewty Smart GC900 and the unique Crystal GD900. Well, there are some changes indeed, mainly due to the non-standard aspect ratio of the display. The 3D cube is now a parallelepiped and at the bottom you have a soft key to access the multitasking menu. The gestures to start applications while the phone is locked are still here as well as the cool transition effects on changing screen orientation and navigating through the phone menus.



There are 4 home screens once again, but the one dedicated to Multimedia has been replaced with a Browser screen, where you can place shortcuts to your favorite web pages like phoneArena.com. The other three remain unchanged and they are:

•    Widgets – the screen hosts widgets. Our prototype came preloaded with just 10, but we couldn’t find an option to download more.
•    Contacts – you can place up to 30 contacts of your own choice and they are visualized in a cool looking grid or as a really eye-catchy list.
•    Shortcuts – up to 18 shortcuts to applications and functions to your liking are allowed.

The menu to activate the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functions, set an alarm, start the audio player, look at missed events and make changes to your sound profile pops up on pressing at the upper part of the screen (the band that provides information about the battery status etc.)



The main menu icons look more appealing than ever, but you can change the way they look via the settings if you need to them to appear in more boring and austere design. The category titles in landscape mode no longer show up above the rows, since they have been moved to the left. Other than that, everything else is the same and icons can be rearranged by pressing and holding.



The maximum number of contacts that can be stored is 1,000 and you can enter a lot of information, including birthday and anniversary, but the only to do it is via the standard screen numeric keyboard. The full screen QWERTY layout is only accessible when you get down to writing messages or browsing the Internet. It´s really huge thanks to the 4-inch screen, so making mistakes even if you type fast is unlikely.



The most significant changes in the interface relate to the phone messaging and we must say LG has come up with a brilliant solution on how to take advantage of the non-standard aspect ratio of the display. You can split the screen into two tabs on turning the phone aside to landscape position, no matter if it´s an SMS, MMS or email you´re looking at. The left pane shows the list of messages and the right – the message you´re reading. Moreover, the size of the panes can be changed to your liking as if working on a computer. If you double tap the message, you will see its contents in full screen mode and several options will appear at the bottom – reply, add to calendar, create a note etc. You can read emails in full HTML format and content gets visualized in the phone browser. Quite nice, really! As a whole, we do like the novelties and must congratulate LG on their innovative spirit.





Speaking of the World Wide Web, surfing feels really pleasing. We would rather withhold our comments on the performance of the browser, since we´re using a prototype. Still, we have to admit that browsing large web pages is not a problem at all and you will be able to see the entire page if you switch to landscape. Thanks to the multitouch technology, zooming in and out on things is as easy as pinching, just like on the iPhone.

Camera and Multimedia:

There are some minor changes in the interface of the 5-megapixel camera that relate to its appearance. Its look has been slightly altered so as it goes better with the overall design of the New Chocolate BL40. The options it delivers are not any different from what other LG handsets running S-Class 3D UI offer and you have face detection, white balance, macro focus, flash modes etc. We are using a prototype, so we would rather reserve judgment and tell you about the picture and image quality when we get our hands on a retail unit.




The gallery sports a major design overhaul, but seems based on the same ideas as the version on the ARENA KM900, Crystal GD900 and Viewty Smart GC900. It unifies your pictures and videos and they can be sorted by various criteria (date, type, name) or filtered depending on whether you need to see only images, videos, favorite content, files saved on the memory card etc. You will find yourself in an utterly enchanting, 3D fairy-tale world on switching to landscape mode. You can navigate through your multimedia files in whatever direction, turn them to the right or left at an angle and zoom in and out on things. Pure bliss to behold.





LG New Chocolate BL40 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution

We didn’t see anything new about the audio player when we started it, but it managed to wow us once we switched the screen orientation to landscape. All available tracks got visualized in a beautiful way on the 4-inch screen. The album art gets displayed in the form of CDs in the left part of the screen, the right pane is dedicated to playback progress and you have a control tab at the bottom. Content filtering is unavailable in this mode, so we don’t suppose that many people will find it handy to use, especially if you happen to have like 1,000 tracks.




Naturally, we couldn’t resist the temptation and played a few videos so we could see what watching a movie on the awesome 4-inch screen with 21:9 aspect ratio felt like. The image quality is good and the player supports video panning, so you can stretch the video, but the overall result is not so good. If you want adequate 21:9 widescreen playback, you will have to convert your files and that´s that. At least LG promised the necessary software will come out of the box.



LG New Chocolate BL40 Video Preview: