The full
LG KG810 Chocolate
review
The LG KG800 Chocolate phone was the LG's springboard into the mainstream mobile market: a minimalist, touch-sensitive slider with red-hot illuminating buttons that captured the public's imagination and sold milliosn worldwide. A couple of colourful versions followed, but the KG810 clamshell is the first real new Chocolate phone to hit the street.
So is it as desirable as our Fashion Phone of the Year? Sadly it can't emulate the KG800's tantalising design but then that's a very big ask.
Shortcuts
Lying dormant, it commands a hint of the minimalist mystery but the spell is broken by silver trim around the phone and on the lip. Unlike the slider form, there are limitations with the clamshell, the signature front LED touch keys are confined to three music player controls, and it definitely loses impact compared to its more illuminating comrade.
The phone itself is very svelte and trim with a glossy fascia that is prey to mucky finger marks. Flip it open and a rather appealing chequered keypad introduces itself. It's not touch-sensitive but nicely bevelled, and fantastic to use, with the keys and navigation pad generously sized and responsive. LG likes to offer clearly defined shortcuts galore on its keypads and the KG810 is no exception.
MP3 music player
Anyone already familiar with LG will find nothing new on the user interface and icon-driven menu, and newcomers won't take long to master its ways. The UI is pretty intuitive and straightforward. Also, for a 220x176-pixel resolution display, it's remarkably sharp and vibrant.
The KG810 Chocolate has a digital music player and 128MB of memory. This is substantial for internal memory but when there's no card slot for expansion, the built-in music player becomes a little superfluous. You can still fit on a few good-quality tracks but it won't become your primary portable music player.
The music player itself isn't half bad. You get equalizer options to enhance the sound and we found Bass or Rock to adeptly handle most genres of music. The supplied earphones made our tunes sound harsh and distorted, but once we plugged our quality Sennheiser PX200 headphones into the supplied 3.5mm remote control jack adapter, the audio became more meaty and dynamic.
1.3-megapixel camera
The KG810 Chocolate's 1.3-megapixel camera can be fired up from the dedicated camera keys on the navigation pad or on side of the handset. It's very easy to operate and modify while in capture mode. It will let you change the brightness, white balance, picture effects and shot sequence but there is no LED flash. Photo quality is pretty adequate at this level, despite being prone to over-exposure. Similarly, the QCIF-quality video recordings are negligible.
The KG800 Chocolate is a hard act to follow and this version doesn't do the job. But compared to other mid-range clamshells on the market, it's still a very elegant phone.