Tech Revi

LG is known to pull no punches when it comes to dazzling designs. And the KF510 looks nothing less than spectacular. A shiny metallic finish, a classy silver strip running around the edge, and a black-gray gradient on the front and back... flamboyance could well be its middle name. The device is thin enough at 104.5 x 49.5 x 10.9 mm, but at 91g it's also a bit heavy for its size. So far so good, but does it live up to its looks? Let's find out.

The KF510 incorporates a slider mechanism. It works fine but for practical purposes it can be a bummer. There are no ridges – that is to say, the front is absolutely flat and this hampers an easy slide. Often you will be reduced to pressing down on the front, maybe even the screen, to get it to move up. This is a pity – the phone is a fingerprint magnet to begin with, and secondly it's enough to cause the phones to start creaking soon.

Another problem is that the upward slide is facilitated with a bulk of the phone kept on the portion sliding up, rather than down. It’s more like the phone is sliding down than up, making the slide pretty heavy.

Apart from the sliding glitch, I think the phone looks pretty useable and snazzy. The lower portion houses the coolest bit – the touch-sensitive keys. The whole pad is made up of many dancing lights that flicker from one end to another every time you touch the navigation keys, which are also touch-sensitive. The call/cancel and the two open keys are also on the touchpad.

For good measure, the phone incorporates a lock slider on the right, which is the mainstay in getting your phone to unlock – or to get to the home screen. Every time you need to access the menu while you are on a call, you will need to press the camera/MP3 button. Also, you will more-or-less need to touch your chin to the touchpad while talking. Hence, while talking the touchpad will be out of use as a rule, unless you press the camera/MP3 button located right below the lock slider.

The phone is targeted at the budget bracket and doesn’t really offer much more than its competitors. That doesn’t mean there’s little to talk about. For one, it comes custom-fitted with LG’s proprietary UI. Another USP is the handset's sparkling look and feel – the kind you can flaunt in clubs and have people assume it costs twice what it’s actually worth!

In keeping with the thrust on fashion, the themes have been upped, much to my liking. Thanks to haptics, the phone vibrates with every move. You can customize the vibration to make it strong, soft or medium. The screen is a highly reflective 2.2-inch TFT that can display up to 256K colors (240 x 320 pixels).

There’s nothing else that's radically new. The phone supports EDGE and GPRS (no 3G though). The settings are a bit wonky, so beware if you are one to manually key in the GPRS settings. Some operators like BPL and Trump don’t even have the settings for this phone yet.

It comes with the usual bundle of tools like calendar, alarm clock, stopwatch, unit converter etc. Nothing exceptional though. It supports Bluetooth

with A2DP profile, but which phone doesn’t? There’s a fairly decent MP3 player, and a good FM radio that can catch reception in the unlikeliest places.

The Camera is a 3MP job, and decent for web purposes. The pictures tend to be splayed, and vignetting is a big problem. It comes with a flash and autofocus, though macro is out of bounds. Detailing is zero in actual size, but again the pics are not meant for A4-size printing, no matter what they tell you about the megapixel count. The dullness of the pictures was another downer.

The battery life isn’t great either. With all the dazzling touchpad lights, you will need to charge it every day or maybe twice a day depending on your usage. The phone costs Rs 10,500 and will really appeal only to those who like to flaunt their sense of style. The Sony Ericsson W580i offer more value at a similar price.