LG’s newest flagship smartphone, the LG Arena, packs in a ton of features you seldom see in its category and price point. We took the new phone for a spin in the last two weeks to see what’s the catch. Check out the review after the jump.
Design and Construction
The LG Arena’s design looks really simple in the outset, not too slim and not too thick either at 12mm (although it’s actually thinner than the iPhone 3G). The faceplate is surrounded in metal with a brushed finish while the backplate is covered in aluminum and plastic. It feels light and fits very well in the hands too. (See full specs and unboxing photos here.)
There are very few physical buttons here — a power button, a camera switch and volume controls — and it gives you an impression that everything else is controlled via the touchscreen.
Navigation and Touch UI
The touch UI of the LG Arena allows for multi-touch, a feature very few touchscreen phones support; and since it has a capacitive screen, the Arena no longer needs a stylus and it’s all finger-flicking from hereon. LG also added a haptic feedback mechanism which you can completely control — vibration volume, touch sound and vibration type.
The S-Class Touch UI gives the screen a 3D effect with an eye-catching Cube navigation that rotates around in 4 panels (Contacts, Widgets, Music and Shortcuts). The Home Screen is packed with all icons for all sorts of controls for Communication, Multimedia, Utilities and Settings (reminded me of the iPhone home screen) — it even re-orients horizontally in landscape mode.
Text input is done via a virtual alphanumeric keypad at the vertical position and switches to full qwerty in horizontal position (landscape mode). While the full qwerty is large enough and easy to get used to, there seems to be some response lag once you start typing real fast. Typing is pretty accurate with a miss-rate of about 2 characters for every 5 words.
Connectivity
LG didn’t hold back to complete the connectivity features in the KM900 — WiFi 802.11 b/g, 3G (HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS with AGPS support — you won’t look for anything more than that on a mobile phone.
What I found bit lacking though is WAP 2.0/xHTML browser which is a little slow even on WiFi although it has some nice features like tabbed browsing and multi-touch navigation (pinch, stretch, swipe etc). Since the Arena can multi-task, you can run several applications and load multiple websites all at the same time. Of course, there are some noticeable slowing down of apps and functions when running them all at the same time.
Multimedia and Entertainment
The LG Arena has a large 3-inch screen with a resolution of 480×800 pixels in bright and crisp 16M colors. This is evident when playing videos where even at an angle, the display still projects the same video quality (no bluish haze like in the iPhone).
The music player is fast and easy to use with some pretty nice visualization. Although I found the volume not too loud, applying the Dolby Mobile in the equalizer made some nice improvements on music playback (at full volume, songs are less pitchy and has a little bit more bass).
Another rare feature of the LG Arena is the FM Tuner with Transmitter so you can broadcast music from the phone to any FM receiver at home or in your car’s stereo (last time I used this feature was with the Nokia N78).
The 5-megapixel camera takes nice quality photos (Schneider-Kreuznach optics) with a fairly fast and stable autofocus. See sample photo below:
Video capture isn’t as impressive though (since there’s no autofocus) despite the large resolution of 720×480 @ 30fps. See sample video below:
Video quality degrades on close-up shots (see another sample here) and ability to do slow-mo video recording is a really nice addition. Video files are saved as 3GP instead of the more familiar MP4.
There’s an internal storage of 8GB but it can be extended to 40GB by adding a 32GB microSD card (haven’t seen one available in the local market though). The battery is rated at 1000mAh and last about 2 to 2.5 days on regular use.
Conclusion
At its price point, the LG KM900 Arena could be a hit to those looking for a full-featured touchscreen phone. It’s got everything you’ll need from a smartphone in a good form factor and pretty nice UI.
The LG Arena has a suggested retail price of Php24,990 and comes in Silver, Titan Black, Dusty Pink colors.
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nice phone for students and teen agers but the price is to high though…it would be better if less than 20k hehehe..
Other sites says that LG Arena is not a smartphone. Anu po ba difference ng smartphone sa hindi?
What OS is it running? and can it run 3rd party applications?
@emenyueru – there’s no official definition for a smartphone but my take on it is that as long as the phone is high-end and capable of some advanced tasks normal phones can’t do.
It’s a featured phone not smartphone. Smartphones are those phones powered by OS like symbian, winmo, android and iphone OS.
Wow my LG Viewty just got b*tch-slapped by this phone! I’m wanting it right now!
just waiting for this review to make-up my mind on buying one!=) but i heard that the cube is static, i hope they will upgrade this feature. did the touch response ok enough to battle the iphone? iphone 3G s or this phone? what do you think?
@mark – the touch response is not as responsive or smooth as the iPhone. There’s no acceleration of sorts when flicking or scrolling.
i see. but the response is not that laggy right? omnia hd, iphone 3G S or this? what do you thnk yuga?
it seems good but its not affordable
@Abe and @Neil, thank you for the reply. If only Nokia 5800 looks like this, even just a bit, i won’t be having a hard time deciding what phone to bye
maybe LG should look at their price points in the Philippines and see about adjusting their prices downward to increase sales and profits. The price of the LG Arena seems a bit high to generate substantial sales in the Philippines
LG Arena it is great phone, is bettre than all of products LG
lg arena feels and looks better in person.. you must touch it to really appreciate it.. and yes, it’s not a smart phone.. it’s a stand-alone feature phone that runs lg’s proprietary s-class UI which is not bad at all since it has some of the best visualizations i’ve seen so far on a touch screen ui.. another great contender is the upcoming lg gd9000 (transparent keypad pphone)..
My tito from the US got this phone there as a free unit sa Plan subscription nya. This phone is cool! I seriously love this more kesa iPhone 3G ko (although LG’s touch screen isn’t as superb as my iPhone’s, but close). Supports and plays DivX videos (no need for conversion), cam images are super clear, SECONDARY CAMERA FOR VIDEO CALLS (iPhone 3G and even 3G S lack this) and faceplate is made up of metal rather than plastic. One thing I hate is the phone’s YouTube app. You can’t watch YouTube videos via Wi-Fi, only by connecting through 3G/HSDPA (I can’t connect because the unit’s sim-locked). Sana in the near future may ma-develop na app for this.
Yuga, would you recommend this as an iPhone 3G alternative? Looks much better kasi sa OS ng iPhone 3G based on the videos I’ve watched on youtube
is this good for texting??
i bought this phone last month and i was satisfied with it.
anyways, has anyone know how to reformat or restore the original phone setting of LG arena?
*Justin:
About the texting features, do the LG Arena carry the alphanumeric typing other than the Full Qwerty?
thanks
hello guys, Ive been using this LG KM900 for almost 3 mos. I bought here in UAE. Well, its very easy to use, even sa texting, calling, music, video & camera.. very handy pa sya.. so far.. no negative feedbacks on this phone.
wala ba tong windows mobile? or ung type na i can create, edit and view word documents and excel? yun kasi ang gustong kong feature sa isang phone. i need it for work and school. any feedbacks? thank u.
QWERTY texting? :/
@Josh: I think there is.
Look what I found:
http://arena.lgmobile.com/ph/
Nice!
@linalyn tried the lg arena emulator. tried messaging and its not in qwerty.
@Josh. it is capable of qwerty texting… but the phone has to be positioned horizontally.
do any of you know where can i download free applications and games for lg arena?
thanks
iam a cellphone addict and just last month the news about lg arena km900 was declared in the internet and i think ineed to buy some lg arena in august 16 i just bought my lg arena and it was fantastic bye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
how much for this phone??
too bad this is not a smart phone, it’s a dumbphone. it runs a propreitary operating system…no software = yuck.
sir hindi po ako masyadong mahilig magbasa eh..
tanong ko lang kung anong magagandang touch screen phone from LG and Samsung?
salamat!!!
LG arena is an excellent phone. Screen is wonderful, very responsive to touch. The only problem is with the divx, since often it doesn’t work.
how can i edit a contact information
where can I get this phone?
saang mall ba mura?
question is, how long will it take you to get over a 24k php phone if you lost this in a public transport or stolen from your pocket/purse didto sa pinas? (rampant ang nakaw) See, if i had a LG Cookie instead (11k+ php) that wouldn’t hurt so bad. any thoughts?
its the bist phone i ever had, way better than iphone except the size, mahirap lang ngang hawakan, yong sa akin lumangoy na sa pail at nahulog narin ng ilang beses pero buhay parin. its sturdy. bale 32 gig ang memory nya all together itong sa akin.
the screen is scratch proof.
mahirap lang nga hanapan ng games.
mahirap configure ang agps nya.
maganda lang sa camera nya, its capable of geo tagging.
and also capable of video editing mapa divx man sya.
sounds…dolby mobile…its good if you’re using
a regular earphone, mas lalong maganda kung bluetooth stereo headphone.
to wrap it up….maganda sya.
and one more thing, the casing is 80 percent metal, aluminum and stainless steel to be exact.
sa samsung ang magandang phone is samsung omnia (os…windows mobile 6.0)
sa lg is lg arena or chocolate
try vuclip, vuclip is as good as youtube….its a java application for mobile phones.
mag hang up occasionally, cannot use the phone until you have to off manually, then e retart mo.
Any help?
i am craving for this phone and wished this as my christmas gift from mom, but i dunno if she’ll give this “expensive” phone since i always lose things. hahaha! but i think this one’s really great.prng iphone ndin
kakatapos ko lan magupgrade ng firmware ng cp ko and happy ko sa results.. may additional fonts na nadagdag.. not to mention i was able to watch youtube in it.. i love this phone…kaya lan naiinis lan ko sa globe kasi dko makapagsend ng mms.. grrr.. buti pa smart..
@snarf20: ano po ng firmware ginamit nyo? and la ba bugs? gusto ko na rin kasi iupdate firmware ko e, kaso bka may masira ako hehe, tnx