LG KF700 review: A touch of slide, a touch of scroll

The LG KF700 (codenamed Virgo) is among the latest LG full touch handsets. Besides being one of the most affordable one among those, it stands out with multiple control-and-navigation methods. LG KF700 puts together a 3" touchscreen display, a slide-out standard keypad and a side mounted scroll wheel with an adjacent OK key. The neat and solid KF700 blends together elegance and great web surfing to broaden its appeal beyond the fashion-savvy.

With 3.5G aboard a sharp and nifty touch UI, we waste no time to fire it up and see it perform. Stay with us for more of LG KF700.

LG KF700 official photos

Key features

• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE plus HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• 3 megapixel autofocus camera
• Secondary camera for video calls
• 3" 262K-color TFT touchscreen display with a 240x480 pixel resolution
• Touch feedback (haptics)
• FM radio
• Stereo Bluetooth
• 176MB internal memory, microSD card slot (hot-swap)
• Sliding hardware keypad
• Side scroll wheel with an OK key
• Retail headset has a standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Office document viewer
• Multi-tasking support with a task manager
• Pleasing touch-optimized web browser
• Google Maps pre-installed

Main disadvantages

• The side scroll wheel seems redundant
• Image quality is only average
• Video recording maxes out at QVGA@15fps
• FM radio has no RDS
• Music player lacks equalizer settings
• Web browser doesn't have flash support
• No screen auto rotation

The LG KF700 was announced back in February 2008 and this review is not our first encounter with it - you may remember we did a quick and dirty preview of a pre-release sample back in May. Now that we have a retail KF700 unit, we decided to upgrade our preview to a full-featured review, covering all the ins and outs of this affordable touch phone.

LG KF700 has a remarkably responsive user interface, fashionable looks and strives to deliver most of the multimedia applications you might want in a mobile phone. The three input methods are diverse enough for you to find your preference. However, all the three types are rather fused - the only one you could go without is the scroll wheel. The touchscreen display does the job for most tasks, but you need the keypad to enter text. The keypad is useless on its own too, because it has no D-pad. So in the end, you are bound to use at least two of the input methods described.

LG KF700 live images

Combining all three navigation modes more or less puts the KF700 in a class of its own, but you may still find a few alternatives worth considering.

LG KF700 is currently selling at about 230 euro (or 340 US dollars), which basically is a really competitive price - you would be hard pressed to find a sleek touch phone for less, unless of course you go for an at least year-old UIQ or Windows Mobile device.

Still, for a little extra cash (about 50 euro or 75 US dollars more) you will have a much wider choice with some excellent contenders for your money.

Both the LG Viewty and the Samsung F480 Tocco are some great devices that deserve your attention. Just in case you really need that hardware keypad, you might also consider the LG KF750 Secret, which offers some touchscreen functionality too - not throughout the whole interface but it covers all the basics.

That LG KF700 was thrown directly against Samsung F700 is a tempting assumption to make (how about model designation too). Take the QWERTY away and you got two handsets that are as good as twins.

Ok, there must be a bunch of WinMo phones out there too, but LG KF700 doesn't seem willing to compete with smartphones. Anyway, let's waste no more time and see what the LG KF700 has in store for us. Take the jump for more on construction and ergonomics.