LG KG800 "Chocolate" Phone
Discontinued 24th March 2006 (updated 30th April 2006)
LG have announced a European version
of their popular Korean "chocolate" handset
- a smooth looking slider based on a popular Korean
CDMA handset which has sold 300,000 units in Korea alone
since its launch last November.
The LG KG800 weighs just 83 grams, and
has a 176x220 pixel display, Bluetooth, 128Mb of internal
memory, a 1.3 megapixel camera plus an MP3 player.
The "chocolate" phone gets
its name because of its most popular colour, but another
neat trick is that there are "hidden" touch-sensitive
that light up only under certain circumstances. This
gives the LG KG800 a very distinctive and sleek look
when closed, which certainly makes the KG800 look different
from anything else on the market.
LG brought the KG800 to market within
a month of the original announcement, because
the company are very keen to produce distinctive products
in Europe, but reportedly they are also anxious to get
the KG800 out before someone else copies it. At launch,
the KG800 is available through the Carphone Warehouse/Phone
House and subsidiaries in Europe, and there are
rumours of a US version too.
We think the "copying" concern
is ironic, since the LG
S5200 is one of the most derivative handsets that
we've ever seen, and even devices such as the rather
nice LG P7200 are
clearly "inspired" by other handsets. Still,
we must admit that the LG KG800 "Chocolate" is
ceratinly different from other sliders, and the expected feature set, smooth
looks and light weight will potentially give it a bit
of a unique selling proposition. LG's claim that the
"chocolate" phone has a 7% market share in
Korea, so presumably it must be pretty good.
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LG
KG800 at a glance
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Available:
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Now
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Network:
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GSM 900/1800/1900
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Data:
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GPRS
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Screen:
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176x220
pixels, 262K colours
|
Camera:
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1.3
megapixels
|
Size:
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Lightweight
slider 95x48x15mm
/ 83 grams
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Bluetooth:
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Yes
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Infra-red:
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Yes
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Polyphonic:
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Yes
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Java:
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Yes
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Battery
life:
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3.5 hours talk / 8 days standby
|
|
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