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LG KF750 Secret
Price: From free on contract www.lge.com
Secret service The LG KF750 Secret is the most exciting phone to land so far this year. It looks dreamy, it’s loaded with features and it’s as tough as a honey badger
IKE boxers and prop a luxury handset – i.e heavy Instead, to navigate most of the and settings include brightness, forwards, tough phones are enough to feel expensive, and it phone’s functions, you must get white balance, ISO, timer, L not meant to be good manages to wear its robust used to a combination of continuous shot and panoramic. looking. However, the LG KF750 characteristics with real panache. haptic (vibrating) virtual keys and The shutter speed is quick and Secret is not any old mobile. As we’ve already mentioned, the mechanical keys. the shots appear clear, even Comprising of a carbon fibre rear tempered glass screen is You have to hand it to LG, they indoors. Our only niggle concerned and a tempered glass fascia, the promoted as being scratch proof. know how to make virtual haptic the touch-sensitive controls, which Secret is one of the toughest And we’d like to say that we gave it keys sexy. Every time you press are a little fiddly while navigating phones around and it’s almost a beating, but the phone is just too one, as well as feeling a small settings. impossible to mark. pretty, so we had to make do with vibration, you’ll see a ripple effect of There are also a couple of editing To be fair, Mobile Choice has jabbing it with our house keys a blue neon light, which looks very ‘cheats’ if your photography skills racked up some impressive few times. pretty. are not quite up to scratch. credentials in the tough-phone However, while it seems immune To enjoy the touch-screen Morphing lets you edit a subject’s testing department recently. When to key scratches it does attract experience on a mobile like the face (stretching noses and padding putting the JCB Toughphone fingerprint smudges, so regular Secret, you need to trust the lips, etc), and SmartLight auto- through its paces, we showered polishing is required. technology. Because a touch-screen adjusts the picture’s light settings. with it, dropped it from the top As for the rest of the device, the initially appears less responsive window of a block of flats and top is encased in toughened than mechanical keys, there is a Videocam and video drove over it. plastic, the back is carbon fibre tendency to double press or to call However, we didn’t mind being and the sides and base have a press more firmly to get a As with most handsets offering 3G mean to the JCB phone because rubberised feel. All of the materials response. However, as any lothario and HSDPA, the LG Secret lets you it’s a bruiser that looks as though feel tough, sleek and expensive, will tell you, a gentle but assured make video calls and the handset it’s built for a building site. which is some feat. touch is the path to true tactile features a second camera lens on The LG Secret, on the other happiness. the front of the device. There are hand, is as smooth as a seal’s The touch-screen two ways of activating a video call. belly and looks as though it should The KF750 is not a full touch- The five-megapixel When dialling a number, you can only be used on special occasions. screen phone in the mould of the camera choose ‘option’ then ‘video call’, or LG has constructed the Secret in the Apple iPhone or the LG Viewty The LG Secret has grabbed you can choose ‘calling’ from the such a way that, even when because you don’t really use the headlines for being the world’s main menu and then the video call carried regularly in a pocket with display for touch-screen navigation. slimmest mobile to carry a five- option. keys and change, it should look Instead, the handset offers six megapixel camera, and the design Either way, you dial as you would just as good in six months’ time as touch-sensitive keys which sit just team really has worked wonders. a regular phone call and that’s it. it does when you buy it. beneath the display, as well as four But there’s no point in breaking The thing to note with video calling Now, how many phones can you mechanical soft keys. records if the camera is no good. is that the call quality is dependent say that about? When menu options appear on To be honest, there’s such a on the spec of both handsets. You placement of screen, your instinct is to press demand for more megapixels that may have a LG Secret with HSDPA the lens, it’s a job to prevent one of However, the LG Secret manages The Secret’s look the screen to interact with them most consumers will be happy just data speeds and a great video call your left hand’s fingers wandering to take gaming to a whole new level and feel as you can with the LG Viewty, to have the five-megapixel box camera, but your contact might be into view as you shoot your home with its ingenious accelerometer. Thankfully, tempered glass, KF700 or the Apple iPhone. ticked; however, reassuringly, LG stuck with a bog standard 3G movies, but it’s still a very decent As the techies amongst you may toughened plastic, carbon fibre That’s not to say that the main has jemmied in a very decent phone. As a result, some of our camcorder. know, an accelerometer is a and a few flashes of chrome display is not touch-sensitive at all. snapper. video calls were clear and true movement sensor which allows you combine to make for a great- Under the multimedia menu, you The camera functions in the while others were a little pixellated Gaming and the to control what you see on the looking phone, which looks can find a Touch media option that same way as other recent LG with a slight delay. accelerometer sensor phone’s display by moving the fashionable but without any of the activates the display’s touch-screen phones, with a series of on-screen The video camcorder, on the Mobile gaming has been given a handset rather than pressing the quirky swirls, patterns and function, but you’ll only be able to settings and commands, which can other hand, utilises the LG Secret’s real shot in the arm with the launch keys. In the LG Secret’s case, it can flourishes you see on cheaper use it for music, photos, games, be navigated with the virtual four- main lens on the rear of the phone, of the Nokia N-Gage games be employed to change your view handsets. documents and radio, and it’s way joypad. and it offers virtually the same platform, but phones offering games from portrait to landscape when The LG Secret feels as good as novel without being a real user Functions include macro and a functions, settings and control of with rich graphics and addictive it looks. It’s perfectly weighted for benefit. flash that can be set to automatic, the main camera. Due to the gameplay are still in the minority. Continued overleaf >>
10 Issue 148 Issue 148 11 Review Samsung F490 continued
LG KF750 Secret Size 102.8x50.8x11.8mm Weight 116g Display 262,000 colours Resolution 240x320 pixels Camera Five megapixels Video recording/playback/ streaming Yes/yes/yes Video calling Yes Audio playback MP3/WMA/ AAC/AAC+ Ringtones Polyphonic, MP3 operating the phone’s camera, or The same can be said for the FM radio Yes it can be used to play the phone’s baseball game − Homerun Derby, Connectivity Bluetooth, USB, fabulous games. which requires you to flick your A2DP All of the phone’s accelerometer- wrist to swing the bat. Again, this Internal memory 100MB based games can be found under is hard to put down and our Memory card slot microSD the M-Toy sub-menu. Click on the record to date is six home runs on Messaging SMS, MMS, IM M-Toy option and you can choose the bounce. Internet browser WAP/ from six games which all employ Other ‘accelerometer’ games xHTML/HTML the phone’s accelerometer or include Magic Ball (a fortune Email client POP3, SMTP, movement sensor. For example, if teller’s ball rather than a game), IMAP4 you’re playing the darts game, you Maze (great fun), Fishing (ditto) Java Yes aim the dart by tilting the and Hammer, which is a lot more Games Yes, with accelerometer phone gently from left to right and, fun to play than to watch on the Data speed HSDPA once you feel you have the perfect telly. All of the games employ Frequency Quad-band trajectory, you simply throw the similar gameplay principles – plenty Talktime 240 minutes dart by flicking the wrist. Flick it of twisting and flicking of wrists − Standby 260 hours too softly and you’ll aim low, flick it and all work brilliantly. too hard and you’ll aim high. It’s In fact, the games are so Features simple to grasp, tough to master, impressive that you can’t help Five-megapixel camera and works perfectly on a mobile feeling that this, rather than N- HSDPA data speeds phone. It’s also addictive and our Gage, could be the future of DivX video on demand top score is 140. mobile gaming. Touch-sensitive controls Music, TV, battery life and more As with many premium-end Also consider phones, there’s so much that you Nokia N96 can say about the LG Secret that The forthcoming Nokia N96 could give the we have only really scratched the surface here. The phone has a Secret a run for its money. very reasonable music player, and there’s an FM radio on board – although we could only pick up three stations with the channel auto scan. You also get access to DivX video on demand – a digital video Pros delivery service that lets you rent Combines a fabulous feature set with slim good looks and a or purchase DivX quality movies solid build. from a range of licensed partners. You simply download the movies to your phone from your PC via a Cons USB cable, and you’re free to The battery life will frustrate some users. watch them on the move or by connecting your phone to the TV via the TV Out facility. As you may have gathered, this is some phone and there’s very little to complain about. If there is a weakness, it’s the battery, which ran low after a full day of testing the Secret’s full functionality. However, we were testing it fairly Verdict The LG Secret is a Look and feel wonderful all-rounder. intensively and it does fare better Ease of use when you’re just making calls and sending texts. Features Even allowing for the lack of juice, this really is some phone. Performance
Battery life Huw Morgan [email protected]
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