The
geniuses who name products at LG have not
exercised their creativity on the KF510.
Therefore, it does not carry silly monikers such
as a rather contrived fusion of the words view
and beauty, as a stable mate does. Neither is it
named after a planet, nor is it a secret.
At first glance, it looks a sleek, stylish
technological tour de force that perhaps Captain
Kirk would use to say: "Beam me up Scotty".
Sleek and stylish it surely is, but a
technological wonder it is not. It has a good
deal more show to it than go.
The two available colours – a burnished,
metallic grey and a deep maroonish red – are
graduated from deeper to lighter shades, top to
bottom. Even with one of the glossiest of glossy
casings, the surface does not smudge as easily
as most other gadgets flaunting similar
exteriors.
Its slim 110 gramme body is a pleasure to hold
and fits most palms in a very comfortable way.
The slider action, which reveals the keypad
underneath, has a quality feel to it, as if you
could play slide and seek all weekend and it
would still open and close with the same
reassuring click. But while the appearance is a
joy to behold, the keypad is a let down. It felt
cheap and tacky for such a good-looking gadget.
Texting could have been a whole a lot easier
with a more ergonomic design and tactile keys,
as well as without the top-heavy feel with the
slider open.
LG's standout feature in this phone – the touch
sensitive navigation pad – ends up standing out
for all the wrong reasons. Flashing different
light patterns depending on how you're
scrolling, the pad allows you to flick up and
down and left and right, just like a trackpad on
a laptop. Sounds cool on paper but use for a bit
and it starts to get frustrating. The
touch-sensitive keys, which vibrate when you tap
them, were slow and unresponsive. Despite being
fun to flick, for greater practicality we would
have preferred a mechanical navigation pad.
In fact, this one feature was so irritating that
the 3Mp camera and the superb MP3 player all
failed to compensate. That coupled with only a
16Mb internal memory – expandable via micro SD –
and lack of 3G and wifi, means a limited
capability for business applications.
To sum up, this is a good looking everyday phone
with no exceptional features with a touch pad
and slider that makes you feel like a real dandy
when using it. Before it frustrates you, that
is.
