LG KS360 review: Of teens and twitters

We don't mind the 2 megapixel snapper

The LG KS360 has a regular 2 megapixel fixed focus camera. You can't be expecting much from it really, but it's nice to have it anyway. Plus it seems way better than the iPhone 3G camera for example.

The camera is capable of producing images with a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. There is no LED flash, only a self-portrait mirror right next to the lens. Snapping and saving is extra fast, so shooting is a breeze.

The camera features include self timer, multi shot (3, 6, 9 images), white balance setting, some color effects (sepia, negative, black and white) and finally, exposure compensation. The shutter sound cannot be turned off, but that usually is a market-specific option.

Camera user interface

The images produced by the camera turn out just fine for a 2 megapixel snapper. The contrast is nice, detail level is just as expected, there is no excessive noise and the color rendering is spot on. The only issue with the camera photos seems to be the wee bit of oversharpening, but that won't bother you if you don't intend to edit your images.

Here are several camera samples produced by the LG KS360:

The LG KS360 is able to shoot video in QVGA resolution in 3GP video format. The frame rate is rather low (below 15fps) so we don't find that usable. We guess the video would be only good for MMS. That's why we won't be publishing a video sample.

The video camera user interface is the same as the one of the still camera and offers settings for video mode (general and MMS), white balance, color effects and exposure compensation.

The video mode of the camera user interface

Connectivity on average

The connectivity options are obviously not among the strongest points of LG KS360. It has tri-band GSM support only and you'd have to rely on GPRS and EDGE for wireless data transfers, as there is no UMTS support.

However the LG KS360 packs stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) and USB support. The good news in the connectivity department is that - quite unusual for an LG phone - upon connecting it to a PC both the internal and external memory (card slot) are accessible as removable drives.

In pretty much every other LG handset, you only have access to the external memory when connected through USB and you need the LG PC Suite to access the internal memory.

Browser is a disappointment

For a web-pitched handset, the LG KS360 web browser is remarkably disappointing. It loads pages slowly (compared to other EDGE phones), the rendering is bad (no desktop mode) and panning is painfully slow.

It seems that the web browsing is one of the places where you can really tell the LG KS360 is a lower midrange handset.

The KS360 browser is a real disappointment

But of course, if you are not happy with the default browser, you can always take advantage of a third-party Java browser, like the excellent Opera Mini or Bolt browser for example. And by the way, you can easily install Java applications off the memory card as an alternative to accessing the installation files online through the browser.