LG KM900 Arena Mobile Phone Review: In A Different Dimension?

RATING: 4/5 – For a phone so feature-rich, it certainly is light and has evident visual appeal. The on-screen keyboard let it down quite a bit – but if you are looking for a phone that can extend beyond its duties and serve you for other media purposes, this could be a good buy.

With dozens of touch-screen phones being released by mobile phone manufacturers by the quarter, the consumer is being dazzled by more and more extravagant features that would have been unthinkable in a phone just three years.

 
Things are presented to you very graphically

One of the defining things that make this phone stand out from the others is the 3D user interface. The phone’s graphic uses a cube to allow you to flick between your multimedia, contacts, widgets and shortcuts – everything that matters to you.

The phone takes accessing your files and information a lot more interactive. A great example of this is the contacts list – when slipping in your SIM card, you find your contacts presented to you on a film reel of sorts (very similar to the Cover Flow seen on iTunes). The good thing that the interface has is consistency – this film reel design in contacts is similar to those seen when you access your music and photos, meaning that when you master using one aspect of the phone, you have more or less mastered them all.

When it comes to music, the phone is versatile in the file format it accepts. One point of appeal is the way it accepts the AAC+ format. AAC+ is the type of file you purchase off iTunes – this phone is very rare in the way it is iTunes compatible.

The type of touch-screen is advertised as ‘real touch’ by LG. When you get to grips with the phone, you can see what they mean. Navigating around the phone, the brightness and accuracy of the touch-screen brings a sense of realism to the experience you have when you are using your phone.

The layout is arguably very similar to iTunes in some respects – especially in how the menus are presented. The four by four square icons just scream iPhone.

 
It’s more than a phone – it’s a multimedia hub, too

The different features which develop this phone into a centre for your multimedia are excellent. The phone has an outstanding Dolby Mobile system which brings surround sound to the Arena – and it is awesome. Using Dolby Mobile really is a credit to the mobile if anything, because if you were to just use the player constantly, you would get 30 hours of playtime – showing the battery life of this phone is spectacular.

With a 5MP camera integrated into the phone, picture quality makes the requirement for a camera questionable – and that is without the face-tracking and image stabiliser that comes as standard. The super-high resolution screen (conveniently widescreen) makes viewing your masterpieces an extreme pleasure.

This phone is so powerful, it requires two chipsets. This power is truly put through its paces when you run the camcorder – which can shoot video of DVD resolution quality: outstanding for a mobile phone. Alas, when in low-light, graininess comes into play and the lack of 2 flash LEDs really compromises the lighting of your imagery – making the subject of your photo look rather artificial. Of course, such quality requires a high storage, 8GB is the standard microSD card which is included with the mobile, although the card slot accepts memory of up to an impressive 40GB.

 
If there were any criticisms… 

Typing was certainly not easy on the KM900 Arena. It seemed to be very hit and miss when it came to texting because the on-screen keyboard was simply too cramped to use. This can be quite inconvenient, especially if you are in a rush.

Lastly, zooming was quite an issue when using the phone. Considering it was a touch phone, the accuracy was found to be quite off to navigating the Internet for this review. It was a hassle having to zoom in when every single web page loaded, as the Internet software was defaulted to zoom out. Hopefully, this could be fixed in future with a bug fix of some sort, but I wouldn’t be too sure.

All in all, the KM900 Arena has impressive battery life and all of the standard features you would expect of a touch-screen phone. The memory capacity, camera quality and surround sound are just some of the things that make this phone stand out from the rest – not to mention the way you can hook up your phone to the TV, which hasn’t been seen in many phones before now. The LG KM900 Arena has great cheap mobile phone cashback deals on the Internet, you can easily manage your budget with the terms they are offering.