LG KG130 / LG Jaguar

Available now
24th October 2007

We will get straight to the point  -the LG KG130 (also known as the LG Jaguar) has all the charm of an East German sink plunger factory. The KG130 seems to be a grim parody of the awful Nokia 6610i from 2004, which leads us to wonder what exactly the point of this handset is.

We're not being snobbish - we love inexpensive and well-designed phones, but you have to look pretty hard to find anything to love with the LG Jaguar / KG130. Really, what it boils down to is cost, and this is where it gets a bit confusing - the prices we've seen in the UK vary between around £50 (€75) SIM free, or even more (some retailers have it for £60 / €90 for a prepay version which is stupidly expensive).

So what do you get for your money? The LG KG130 / Jaguar has a cheap 128 x 128 pixel CSTN display in 65,000 colours, a VGA resolution (0.3 megapixel) camera and that's about it. No MP3 player, no Bluetooth.. and the KG130 doesn't support USB, so if you want to connect it to a PC you'll need to use an old style serial port. Does you PC have a serial port? Many modern PCs don't, so you'll be stuck.

There are a couple of good points - the camera is multishot capable, so it can take six photos in quick succession. It's also pretty lightweight, coming in at just 76 grams. The KG130 Jaguar has GPRS and a WAP 2.0 browser too.

The LG KG130 / LG Jaguar doesn't even score in the looks department - in black it looks pretty depressing and funereal.. worse still is a pink version which is frankly just a bit tragic.

What's baffling is the fact that the LG KG130 is currently one of the UK's biggest selling handsets. Unless retailers are shifting them at £25 a pop or less, we can't quite see who would want them.

LG have some great handsets at the moment, but the LG KG130 / Jaguar isn't one of them.. unless you want to feel like you've travelled back in time a few years, that is. When you consider that £80 can get you a pay-as-you-go LG Chocolate, then we'd advise that you save up for something better.