LG KF510 | REvIEw

With the grace that they have always provided in their designs, LG introduces the KF510 that adds a few novel touches to its existing line of phones. The upper portion of phone contains the screen and a touch sensitive surface, while the lower portion slides out to reveals an array of regular buttons to make dialing easy. One can clearly tell that LG has focused more on good looks rather than features in the case of the KF510.

FEATURES: The LG KF510 is all about owning a glamorous phone, but it doesn’t really give a true geek the satisfaction of really good features. The screen is a 2.2 inch TFT with support for just 256K colors—not too impressive. What is nice though is the touch sensitive portion below the screen that has four directional arrows and a select button in between. As you turn the phone on, a display of diamonds spiraling across the display screen fall and make their way to the touch sensitive pad so that it looks like a single screen. The idea is innovative and adds a good deal of glitter to the startup. 

The KF510 has 16 MB internal memory and a microSD card slot for memory scaling. The camera is just fine with a 3.0 megapixel sensor, autofocus, image stabilization and a flash. Captured videos are satisfactory and clear even in motion. It provides support for most media formats and has an FM radio too.  

A major letdown in the phone is the lack of data communication features. Though it supports GPRS and EDGE there is no support for either 3G or Wireless LAN, something that is a most sought after attribute in phones these days. Other than that it has Bluetooth (with A2DP) and USB 2.0 support but no Infrared. Connecting the phone via USB was a major hurdle because of poor supporting software and other glitches. Even using Bluetooth on this phone wasn’t that pleasant an experience.

The glamorous five way navigation touchpad is too sensitive and this feather touch caused quite a few problems while navigating. The 800 mAh Li-ion battery has enough juice to last a day at work.

BUILD QUALITY: The build quality matters when you talk of a slider with a touch sensitive pad on it and the KF510 is perfectly made for its use. The slider is firm and doesn’t wobble when moved. The camera is well placed for better focus and so is the capture button. The keypad is great to use. The idea of a little slider that has to be pressed down to turn the phone off or on is fascinating rather than a button that can get pressed accidentally causing unwanted shut down and loss of data.

VERDICT: This is basically a good looking phone that doesn’t really have a lot to flaunt as far as functionality is concerned. There are better phones available for the same price that offer more features. If you are looking for a phone that can astonish people just by its looks then the LG KF510 is a good choice since it has all the basic features as well.