LG KT610

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At the Mobile World Congress in February this year, LG unveiled a new range of mobile phones. Among them was a clamshell with a conventional number pad and QWERTY keyboard--the KT610. There are a few handsets with this form factor in the market. One of the first was the Dopod (now HTC) C500, followed by the HTC S730, and recently, the S740. Asus also had the M930, and Nokia, the E90 Communicator, but these are bulkier. Who would buy it? People who use the conventional keypad most of the time but won't mind having a full QWERTY keyboard for punching out long emails.

Design

The pocketable KT610 is exactly that. To be honest, we haven't seen such big number buttons in a while. The numeric keypad provides good travel and the tactility is one of the best we've tested. The build quality is also rather sturdy with a faux leather back that adds a slight premium feel to it. LG has made a compromise on the front, though--the display size.

You can't do much with the external 1.45-inch screen, but at least the Korean phone-maker has made sure you can access vital phone functions such as contacts, text messaging, music player and camera with it. We like the fact that any program we access on this screen gets us onto the same page when we open the clamshell. It's convenient when you are typing a message on the numeric keypad but midway decide to use the QWERTY. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way.

Due to the tiny screen, the camera viewfinder is cropped at the top and bottom. This makes it close to impossible to frame a picture properly as you'd have to estimate where the non-visible parts of the frame end. Another thing to note is that photos taken using the external keys end up as portraits, compared to the usual landscape mode when the phone is open.

Once you open the clamshell, you'll come face to face with a larger 2.4-inch LCD flanked by speakers to its left and right and a full QWERTY keyboard. It's a waste of real estate since the speakers take up only a very small area, but the reason for sticking to this screen could be due to ensure compatibility with programs that have been written for this resolution.

We noticed a few inconveniences with the four-row keyboard layout once we started using it. For example, the spacebar is aligned to the right, unlike on a regular keyboard. Common punctuations such as full stop and comma are relegated to secondary keys, requiring two keypresses to activate. In addition, the almost flush keyboard makes it difficult to distinguish each key from the adjacent one.

Tags: Keyboard, Camera, numeric keypad, LG Electronics Inc., music player

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