| LG KG320 |
| General |
| Network | Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 / Gsm 1900 |
| Announced | 2006, March |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 96 X 46 X 9.9 Mm |
| Weight | 70 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft, 256k Colors |
| Size | 176 X 220 Pixels |
| | - Downloadable Wallpapers |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic (64 Channels) |
| Customization | Download |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | 1000 Entries |
| Call Records | 10 Dialed, 10 Received, 10 Missed Calls |
| Card Slot | No |
| | - 128 Mb Shared Memory |
| Data |
| Gprs | Yes |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | No |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | Yes |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | Yes |
| Features |
| Messaging | Sms, Ems, Mms, Email |
| Browser | Wap 2.0/xhtml |
| Games | Yes, |
| Colors | Black |
| Camera | 1.3 Mp, 1280x960 Pixels, Video, Flash |
| | - Java Midp 2.0
- Mp3 Player
- T9
- Organiser
|
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery, Li-ion |
|
LG - KG320Skinny and Smooth LG KG320 Fashion Phone
The LG KG320 forms the bar-style entry into LG's Black Label series of slim and sleek mobile phones. Measuring only 9.9mm (0.39") thick, the KG320 certainly looks the part, and with a casing made out of a mix of stainless steel and plastic, the phone oozes class and quality. This candy bar style phone is equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera, along with 128MB of onboard memory, making it a real beauty with brains. The KG320 is a triband (GSM 900/1800/1900MHz) phone, and features GPRS connectivity.
MobileBurn would like to thank LG Malaysia for loaning us a pre-production unit for review.
Physical Aspects
Our review unit looked battered - it had scratches, and even a dent on the battery cover. However, the phone was still pretty solid, and did not exhibit any squeaks or creaks. The battery cover is latched on securely, and the chrome release button works well when removing the cover. In my hand, the KG320 felt comfortable to hold, and was just the right weight. Although the phone might look a wee bit like a calculator at first glance, the design is really eye catching, and will certainly turn heads - especially when you realize it is actually a phone despite such thinness.
The white backlit keypad takes up almost half of the real estate on the front of the phone, with the 5-way navigational keypad, flanked by the right and left soft keys along with the call and end keys, situated just below the screen. The numerical keypad is large and very easy to press. When the phone is in its power saver mode, the keypad light will not come on at all, which proved to be pretty annoying, as there is no way to turn on the keypad backlight in this mode. This made the power saver mode pretty worthless, since you can't use it in the dark.
On the right of the handset, you can find the multimedia/camera shutter key. The position of this key is awkward, as it is located pretty close to the middle of the phone when it is used in landscape mode. It would have been better if it was positioned lower down, as this would simulate a real camera shutter key, giving better handling and ergonomics when using the KG320 as a camera in landscape mode. On the left of the device there is an eyelet for attaching your favorite lanyard or wrist strap, and the universal connector for the charger and handsfree kit can also be found here. On the back of the LG KG320, the 1.3 megapixel camera is well protected by a sliding cover, similar to the one found on the Sony Ericsson K800. I really like this design, as it makes the KG320 look very much like a regular digital camera. The camera lens is located next to the LED flash light and self-portrait mirror.
Measuring just 96mm x 45.5mm x 9.9mm (3.78" x 1.79" x 0.39") and weighing only 73.6g (2.6oz), the LG KG320 is definitely very compact, and lightweight enough for you to forget it is in your pocket. Fashion aficionados who dislike the glossy, fingerprint magnet finish of the Chocolate series phones may prefer this slim and sleek black beauty from LG.
Multimedia
The 262k color display on the KG320 has a resolution of 176x220 pixels. It is adequately bright and readable under sunlight. Nothing to shout or complain about here.
The LG KG320's 1.3 megapixel camera is capable of capturing images in five different resolutions - 72x72, 220x176, 320x240, 640x480, and 1280x960. The KG320 provides quite an impressive range of settings for you to tweak with. Brightness can be adjusted to one of five settings, white balance can be set to auto, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent, or daylight, and a 4x digital zoom is provided. In order to zoom, however, you need to change the resolution of the picture first. Changing it to 640x480 will allow you to zoom 2x, and changing it to 320x240 will allow you to zoom up to the maximum 4x. This was extremely cumbersome, since it involved so many steps just to get a zoom. Additional effects such as sepia, black and white, and negative color tones are also available. A big letdown here is the time the camera takes to activate - the user is left waiting for three seconds before the camera starts, and shutter lag is an agonizing three seconds on top of that.
The KG320 is also capable of recording video clips, but I was not able to test this feature, as somehow our review unit just did not respond when I tried to change the camera mode from Still Shot to Video. I suspect this is firmware related and should be fixed in the official production unit.
The KG320 includes a music player compatible with MP3 files. With the 128MB of on board memory, you should be able to fit about 20 odd songs or so onto the phone. Having expandable memory would have been much better, however. The MP3 player application that comes with the phone is pretty much the same as the one found on the KG800 Chocolate phone. It still can't support playlists or ID3 tags, and worst of all, the music player can't work in the background; this is an area that LG must look into and improve on. Basic equalizer settings are available to the user in the application, and three funky visualizations are provided for kicks. Listening with the provided ear buds, the KG320 sounded tinny and lacked bass.
Though the KG320 does not have an external memory card slot, as previously mentioned, it provides 128MB of on board memory, which is ample for most considering the low resolution of the camera, and provided the user does not want to store his/her whole music collection on the device. USB 1.1 Mass Storage support is included, though this has quite a slow transfer rate, so transferring large amounts of data might prove to be quite a task.
User Interface
The KG320's UI is somewhat similar to the one found in the KG800 Chocolate phone. There are one or two minor improvements though. For starters, there is now a Contacts menu item in the main menu, which is displayed as a 3x4 grid. The 12 icons are linked to all the keys in the keypad, including the *, 0, and # keys.
In standby mode, the left and right soft keys will launch the main menu and phonebook respectively. Unfortunately, you cannot personalize these two soft keys to any other shortcuts. The directions of the d-pad are used to launch various applications, but again are non-customizable. This is definitely something that LG should look into, as personalization of soft keys and buttons is vital to improve user friendliness of a UI.
Theme support in the KG320 allows you to change the backgrounds and color schemes of the phone. The phone comes with three themes (oddly named as Menu Colors) - Clean, Oriental, Dazzling City, and Chameleon Walls. You can also choose to insert a personalized text on the standby screen where the operator name would normally be.
Phone Functionality
The KG320 had no problems at all in terms of reception. I experienced no dropped calls at all. Audio quality over the ear piece lacked bass, but was still acceptable. The KG320 worked well in both the GSM 900MHz and 1800MHz bands.
There are five profiles, out of which three are completely customizable. The two fixed profiles are vibrate only and silent. The customizable profiles are where you can set different ringtones, incoming ringtone volume, different message alerts, message alert volume, different key tones, keypad volume, turn on or off warning tones, and also set vibration alert on or off for each. There are no timed profiles available, and you cannot add on personalized profiles.
The phone can hold up to 1000 contacts in its internal memory. Speed dial can be done by first assigning a number button to a contact, then simply pressing and holding the number button from the stand by screen. Unfortunately, voice dial and voice command are not supported.
Battery life was average, with the KG320 lasting just three days with average use. This included exactly 30 minutes of calls each day and frequent SMS messaging, surfing via GPRS, and taking pictures.
Connectivity
Setting up the KG320 for GPRS connectivity was a breeze, and within seconds I was online with the phone. The included browser supports WAP 2.0 compliant pages, but with the low-resolution screen, browsing is quite limited, and you will probably do best to stick to your carrier's portal.
There is no Infrared port on the KG320, but it does offer Bluetooth connectivity. However, transferring files over to my desktop PC from the phone proved to be an arduous task. If I wanted to transfer a whole batch of pictures over to my desktop, the phone would ask me to authorize each and every transfer. Imagine if I had over a 100 pictures to transfer! Pairing the KG320 with my Motorola H3 was easy, and the range was fair, achieving about five meters between the headset and phone before distortions were heard. Other than that, the Bluetooth system worked as expected, and users also have the choice of using a USB cable to transfer their files.
Messaging
The SMS and MMS system worked well. However, it was not fast enough to keep up with my typing, though new words can be added to the built-in T9 dictionary. Punctuation is handled with the 1 key, case and input modes with the # key, word alternatives with the d-pad, and spaces inputted using the 0 key. There are no email capabilities at all. This isn't surprising, as the KG320 was designed as a fashion phone, not a business device.
Applications
Just like the KG800 Chocolate phone, the KG320 only comes with the most essential PIM functions, such as a memo pad, voice memo recorder, and calendar. You may choose to switch between weekly or monthly views for the calendar, and you can synchronize all PIM applications with your computer. Other programs included are an alarm clock (with up to five alarms), world timer, calculator, and unit converter.
Java MIDP 2.0 is supported, and the KG320 comes equipped with two games - Sudoku and Spaceball. Sudoku is self explanatory, being the most popular puzzle game of the moment, whereas Spaceball is a Snake-like game where you collect colored balls in groups of three to eliminate them. Something like a cross between Puzzle Bobble and Snake, I suppose.
Conclusion
The KG320 is a pretty capable phone. For its looks alone, I am very tempted to give it a Highly Recommended rating. However, LG's user interface still needs a lot of work, and the lag in the camera menu, along with the shutter lag, really need to be improved on. If you can live with these minor niggles, the KG320 could be the phone for you, especially with its attractive form factor, but can only manage a Recommended rating from us. |
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