By Damian Koh
15/07/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,43361267p,00.htm

Chocolate, Shine and Secret are not names you would normally associate with mobile phones. But thanks to LG, these monikers, together with the Prada and Viewty, have become just that. LG has undeniably done an excellent job here in creating an intangible brand attachment by replacing confounding numeric product names. Moving on, the Secret KF750 is the third iteration in the Korean chaebol's Black Label series. So what does it bring to the plate?

Design

The Secret's svelte 11.8mm body and solid build quality are what you'd notice when you first pick up the handset. On the front, a silver rim runs along three sides of the phone and a horizontal strip of faux leather wraps around from above the display into the back of the handset. The 2.4-inch QVGA LCD screen made from tempered glass and patterned carbon-fiber back give the slider handset its scratch-resistant properties. This is important for a phone with a large area prone to being nicked in the pocket.

There are three shortcut keys, along with the volume control on the right edge of the Secret. These give quick access to the Touch Media (we'll discuss this later), running apps (you can't close the programs from here) and 5-megapixel camera. On the other side is a proprietary connector for the bundled headset and charger and a lanyard eyelet. The microSD expansion slot is hot-swappable, but you'd have to remove the battery cover first.

To LG's credit, the Secret is dressed to impressed and we won't contest that. The problem here is the confusing use of the touch keys and dialing controls. The touch keys look mesmerizing with electric blue concentric circles radiating outward whenever they are touched and there's haptic feedback to let you know when it registers your finger taps.

Our peeve with it? It was very confusing having to switch back and forth between the touch keys and the center button which requires you to physically depress it. For most of the menus, there are three options at the bottom edge of the screen. This baffled us even further. We didn't know when we had to press up (on the touch directional pad) or use the central enter button. And it didn't help that the area surrounding this conventional button was touch-sensitive, so we often ended up activating them accidentally.

That's not all. While we like the option of having hard buttons for the call/end keys, on the Secret, it might as well do without them. These buttons have horrible tactility and are one of the worst we've used so far. Overall, it's a user-interface disaster for a phone with touch keys and LG seriously needs to rethink about implementing something similar for its next phone.

Features

Like the Viewty that came before it, the Secret houses a 5-megapixel autofocus camera capable of recording videos up to 120 frames per second for shooting slow-motion videos. There's now even an option to shoot QVGA "fast videos". The end result is a fancy clip that plays back faster than the usual speed.

As a camera-phone with video recording capabilities, the Secret is actually quite entertaining to use. There's also a host of post-editing features for those who like to tinkle around with their works. Regrettably, there's no Xenon flash and you can shoot only QVGA resolution motion images at the maximum 120fps (or VGA videos at 30fps). The Secret also supports DivX playback in VGA quality. So you can upload AVI format clips directly to the phone without any conversion.

The Secret actually has a full touchscreen display, but it's enabled only in the "Touch media" menu, which is a little odd when its features are quite similar to the Viewty. This adds to the quirky use of the touch properties and hardware buttons and we are not sure if it's for the better. In this Touch media menu, you can listen to music, browse photos, play games, read documents and tune in to FM radio. By itself, it works rather well (and you can use the touch-sensitive keys, too), but it's a shame LG didn't implement it throughout the interface of the Secret.

We've raved about the use of built-in accelerometers in some of the Sony Ericsson handsets before, but the Secret takes motion gaming to a whole new level and can be a real bundle of joy for casual gamers. There are six preloaded games--Dart, Magic Ball, Maze, Homerun Derby, Hammer and Fishing--and each of these titles makes full use of the onboard accelerometer. In Dart, we had to flick the phone in a forward motion to throw the dart, while Magic Ball requires a vigorous shake of the mobile for a random answer to any question you pose to it. Perfect for situations where you leave the most important decisions to fate, or the Secret.

Connectivity-wise, the Secret supports HSDPA, EDGE and Bluetooth stereo.

Performance

According to the literature, the Secret's 800mAh Lithium-ion battery can power the phone for up to 3 hours 49 minutes of talktime and slightly over 10 days on standby. On moderate use, be prepared to charge it every two days. This is dependant on how much you use the various features of the phone.

Our biggest issue with the Secret, however, was the delay when opening menus. It got worse when we were accessing multimedia files. You might get used to it with time (and a lot of patience), but it was something we felt shouldn't be the case for a non-smart phone.

Camera performance also wasn't one of the Secret's strengths, surprisingly, considering its imaging-heavy features. Shutter lag was measured at 0.4-second which was decent and it took about 4 seconds to save a picture taken at 5-megapixel resolution. Autofocus speed bordered onto average in broad daylight, but failed to achieve a lock nine out of 10 times under dim lighting. Video playback was smooth without any noticeable lag and its support for DivX formats up to VGA resolution was a huge plus point.

Sonics-wise, it was decent, but for better audio, we recommend using your own headphones with the bundled 3.5mm adapter that connects to the proprietary port on the handset.

Screen legibility was another issue to contend with under the overhead sun. You'd probably find yourself trying to shade the screen to read what's on the display, while the glossy surface wouldn't help matters.

Conclusion

For a flagship model, we have to say that we were pretty disappointed at how the Secret KF750 turned out. It may have the looks, the specs muscle and entertaining casual games, but all that combined won't take away several fatal flaws in the Secret.