Can something be so easy to use that it's hard to use? The answer: yes. That's what i call ''The Silky Problematic.''

Club music thumps out across Lan Kwai Fong. Friday night. Sophisticated revelry. The hypnotic evening. Drinks.

Me and the lady, Alice, walk from watering hole to watering hole, looking for the spot and, as we're walking, Alice gets a call. I realize that she's using LG's new micro-sensitive touchscreen phone, called LG's Black Label Series, The Chocolate.

Warning, the site is a flash player orgasm.

Basically, Alice and I went out on the town for some drinks and running around in the rain. We used the phone and here's the report. Alice offers her on-the-ground assessment in an email, which I have altered to capitalize her sentences. People who write emails should also write as they normally do when writing letters or a business report. Please, people! Punctuations! See me after class!

''Here is the pics we took from last weekend,'' Alice wrote. ''This is first time I downloaded pictures from my phone. I realise something is kinda strange.''

''When I took the pictures, it shows in my phone monitor as vertical but now you can see all pictures are in the horizontal. So, it means I can only see the middle part of the picture from the phone monitor. Means: I have to guess what's in both sides of the picture. Is it a normal thing to happen in the other camera-phone, too?''

Alice, I don't think so. But here are the pictures.







These pictures were taken at a club in Hong Kong. Here's my assessment of the phone. Overall: It's a wonderfully sexy little electronic festival of computer interaction, but not worth it.

First of all, the touchscreen on the Chocolate is waaaaaaaay too sensitive. You tap your nails or your thumb on the surface and you think you are pushing ''take picture',' but you end up going three steps over and pushing ''flash'' or ''save'' or ''delete''. It's like ice skating. One little nudge, and you're way too far over, or way too early in your reaction time.

Picture quality, not that good. As Alice pointed out in her email to me, what you see is not exactly what you get. We tried to take an ''arthouse'' shot of Alice, using only half of her face.



Did not work, lah. It looked like one-half of her face was smudged.

And the ''flash'' on this thing is like the high-intensity headlights you see on expensive cars. The flash has the tendency to annoy people when you turn it on since it doesn't work like a flash, but like a flashlight. Or torch for those influenced by British idiom. Very good for if you want to find your keys at 4am, however!

Style points? This phone will get you a date. It's hot. It is sexy. It is sophisticated-looking. Anyone who sees this phone is likely to fondle it. And if you are into that sort of thing, by all means...

Sound quality? Average. No losses here. No different than other phones in that price range which, in Hong Kong, is under HK$2,500.

Personally, I say buy this phone and learn to love the slipperiness of the Chocolate, or you can get your touchscreen jollies buying an iPod or something. If you are into that sort of thing.

 

rion
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