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Geekonomics

World tells geek how to curve & geek tells world how it can move.

by Nicholas Aaron Khoo, Singapore


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Launch of LG KS20

Mar 14, 2008 07:31

This geek hopped along to the launch of LG's latest WM6 PDA-phone, the KS20, yesterday to check out what all the fuss was about.
Qiaoyun and Claudia did not seem very excited.


Farinelli did not seem very impressed, either.


nadnut seemed to have her doubts (as Qiaoyun looked on).


The geek goddess looked like she needed some help from the LG babe.


And Daryl was just a sorry sight (like all his profile pictures).

So, what's up with the LG KS20?
Thanks to Sabrina, this geek decided to brush aside all the "noise" and try out this Prada-looking gadget for himself.

And being a proud user of the HTC Touch Cruise, I must say this nifty little machine took me by quite a bit of surprise!

First of all, the speed was really fast in navigating around the OS as well as picture-taking. Apparently, it's very fast for its HSPDA performance, too? (Did not manage to try downloading any content.)

After holding it in your hands for a while, its lightweight starts to sink in on you too.

Of course, for those who like the style of the LG Prada, this looks so much like the sister model for a moment, I wondered why it's called KS20 instead of Gucci or Armani?

As a non-keypad user, I loved almost every bit of this phone, although I do hear complaints from those who cannot live without the keypad? (Which probably explains all the expressions you saw earlier)

I did a quick comparison of the quality on My Touch Cruise (3-megapixel camera).

And then on the KS20 (2-megapixel camera).

Both photos were not touched up except for the resizing and watermark.

Too bad, I did not manage to get two exact same photos for better comparison. But I guess you can see that the KS20 was not really designed for taking quality pictures. However, I overheard somewhere that camwhores would love the LG Viewty?

Except for the lack of GPS, I'm actually very impressed with the phone and toyed with the idea of getting one for myself! At least it beats the Touch Cruise in picture-taking speed!

I won't go too much into the technical details because you can find them all here.
However, since I do not need the keyboard, I'd rate this sleek little box higher than the other users did.

Overheard in another conversation:

E: "LG's gotta do better to differentiate themselves in this space..."

M: "How so?"

E: "When you hear LG, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?"

M: *without hesitation* "Refrigerators."

Well, this sure looks like a really new-age funky fridge to me!

Can I have five, please?

One is not big enough even for a day's groceries!



6 comments   |   Share


 

    Talkback
damiankoh says...
I had a random thought.. when vendors organise seperate events for the media and the non-media, do they try harder to impress the latter group? Not referring to the mainsteam media, non-mainstream media, bloggers, channel partner, citizen journalism debate here. But I was just wondering if I were to attend events as an individual and not representing a company..

Mar 14, 2008 12:52
 
 
Geekonomics says...
Hey there Damian, thanks for popping by!

I'm not sure if they try harder coz I did not go to the morning launch for the media but I was told the one I went to in the evening was for the online communities. We had more fun as you can see in the casual settings but it doesn't necessarily mean they made more effort to impress I guess.

I did not even bring my camera to the event! Went in so casually not really knowing what to expect. The pics you see here are all improvised from my HTC Touch Cruise.

Mar 14, 2008 14:19
 
 
WifiCafe says...
It's slim :D

Mar 17, 2008 18:05
 
 
Geekonomics says...
Which one? :D

Mar 17, 2008 18:33
 
 
ks20isniceshit says...
Are you sure you aren't a LG employee ? Then how much did they gave you for this review ? If neither of the previous is right - which I really doubt -, then at least have the honesty to really test the device and document yourself (do you know Google ?) before writing a pseudo-revew that may lead users to buy this product without having been warned.
This device is actually plagued by numerous problems, and many users in Europe (where it was first launched) are returning them for exchange :
- the micro becomes mute when switching between 2G and 3G
- many applications do not work, especially because of GAPI and DirectDraw graphics API bugs (SPB games, PointUI, ...)
- many device locks while browsing using PIE
- many locks while powering on the device: you have to sometimes wait more than 1 min before being able to use it, and most of the time you will have to soft reset
- about the soft reset that you will need to frequently do (my count is already 209 according to the device after less than 4 months, and it is not even accurate since I tried several hard resets to see if the problems were due to some installed software...): when the device is unresponsive, the only way to do a soft reset is remove the battery, since it is not possible to do it with the usual hardware pin.
- 2D performance is sluggish, as with the recent HTCs : for example, PIE page scrolling is awfully slow, and video playback is barely fine with 320*200 resized movies. Do not expect to use it to view your digital camera movies without a desktop computer to process what you want to see on this crap.
The situation is even worse than with HTC devices since LG did remove the hardware decoding support provided by the Qualcomm chipset (named QTV) : so you will not be able to use this mode under Coreplayer which provides very good result with HTCs.
My 5 years old mio 168 clone, and my previous HTC P3600 are 2 to 3 times more responsives under WM, and do play movies bigger than 320*200 without a glitch.
- their customer service is terrible - to say the least -, and they ignore customer complaints by playing the usual "we were not aware of these problems" when internet specialized mobile forums are full of customers explaining that they returned theirs because of those. I already returned mine 1 time and got it after 2 weeks without ANY difference. I will returned it one more time with the same result and will then have Vodaphone exchange it for a HTC like many angry customers like me (they have by contract to propose an exchange after 2 returns for unsolved problems ! :) ).

Those that do not trust what I wrote here can verify it on forum.xda-developers.com, www.forummobiles.com... and www.corecodec.com...

My advice is to stay away from this crippeled device, unless you do not plan to use it and only want a nice brick.

Mar 19, 2008 17:15
 
 
Geekonomics says...
Hi there KS20isnice****,

(Are you sure you are not working for a competitor?)
I really don't see how my post was so 'pro-LG' seriously, unless you were doing selective reading? Which seems like the case here.

First of all, everybody who is around this scene and knows me will know that I'm not working for LG and all the people who attended the event will know that they did not pay me :) But a couple of bloggers did walk away from the event with free units I just wasn't one of them.

Anyways, I did say that whatever I wrote about the phone is based on what I touched and felt that day at the launch event itself (selective reading again).

I don't see how using Google = testing and documenting the device for myself??
Especially since I really tested and played with the device at the event?
Or maybe you overlooked the fact that I used my HTC Touch Cruise to take all of these pictures you see here except for the one that I took with the KS20 itself and then transferred over to my HTC?(selective reading again)

And you really should read carefully - I did state that I was invited to the event by fellow blogger Sabrina and there's a link to her site there. (selective reading again?)

The way you make yourself sound so smart (by using google) and yet complain at length about the phone makes me wonder why you even got the phone in the first place? hmmm.

So please give your 'smart' advice to my readers on your own site instead of coming over to try insult me without even bothering to read my post carefully or find out about me (my profile is at the bottom of this page, selective reader).

LG didn't even bother to come here to reply by the way, in case you missed that out in your selective reading.

Mar 19, 2008 22:38
 
 
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About Nicholas Aaron Khoo

Nicknamed "Gadget Boy" by friends at age 18 because he used to scribble Grafitti on a PalmPilot faster than most would type, Nicholas Aaron Khoo is web developer turned technopreneur and Singapore tech blogger who also pretends to do strategic advisory for tech startups and 'un'Fortune 500s (when he's not pretending to be the gadget-loaded Batman). A digital nomad, his tech interests range from gadgets, games, tech trends, social media, security, and just about anything that runs on 1s and 0s. See his industry affiliations here.
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