Big shoes to fill, really. A few years ago, the ‘touchscreen phone’ branding would sell just about anything. These days, if you’re in the market to produce a touchscreen handset with a really flashy UI, there had better be a decent set of features under the hood. Ask anyone in the long line of iPhone killers — once the novelty wore off, there were pretty much basic phones. With the KM900 ‘Arena’, will LG managed to shake off the ‘iPhone clone’ tag and shine?

Now now, you must think the ‘iPhone clone’ label is too harsh for the newest steed from LG’s stables. Trust me, it isn’t. Pull it out of the box, and it looks very much like a smaller, slightly chubby first generation iPhone, even more so when you turn it around. Switch it on, and the main menu pays due homage to the iPhone’s menu icons — a familiar black background with a 4x4 grid of colourful icons. Too close for comfort, I say…

To its credit, the Arena blows the iPhone out of the water in terms of features (most current smart phones do!). It seems to have almost everything going, including all you’ve ever missed in the iPhone: copy/ paste, MMS, FM radio, a landscape Qwerty keypad, proper Bluetooth — you name it.

The build quality is excellent, though to be honest, the use of superlight (titanium?) metallic elements leaves it feeling a bit cheaper than it really is. Buttons are almost non-existent on the Arena, with only a single camera button and a volume rocker on the right side, and touch-responsive Call, End/back buttons and a button that calls up the phone’s USP (more on that later).

Neat touch — the mains power connector is protected by a sliding cover, which I really like since it guards against dust and grime when you’re not charging the phone — definitely stuff others can copy! Also useful is the 3.5mm headset connector on the top edge.

Now, if the grey titanium backplate and sides don’t grab enough attention, the glorious 800 x 480 WVGA resolution on the 3-in screen will do the job, with colour support upto 262,000 colours. The big draw for this phone is the S-Class 3D user interface, and for a change, it takes it premium moniker seriously and delivers.

The main highlight is the cube interface — the four homescreens are placed on the sides of a cube that you roll by finger sweeps (much like the HTC TouchFlo, only smoother). Select the main menu through a dedicated shortcut on the home screen, and you’re presented with the iPhone-esque interface, with a small difference. Instead of using the four tabs in a vertical column, LG has now opted for a layout of four rows of menu items, which are scrollable horizontally. That way almost all menu items are accessible simultaneously without jumping from tab to tab.

Now here’s the really good news — even though I am spoilt with the iPhone user interface experience, I’d say that the Arena delivers admirably on this count. There are enough animations and visual effects to really enjoy using this phone, nay even watching it being used!

And it all works smoothly too thanks to the hardware acceleration being used. Also, the capacitive touchscreen is quite sensitive and the vibration feedback always helps know you’ve made the selection when you touch the screen. The accelerometer is a little slow to respond, but I’ve made my peace with that.

Under the hood, the LG Arena is impressive, with a cracking 5.0-megapixel auto focus camera with flash and a media player capable of playing DivX. The Arena comes with a built-in FM transmitter, so that you can wirelessly connect it to your car radio, for example. It also has TV-out for watching your mobile content on a big screen. Hardware-wise, the battery is a mild let down, needing a charge almost every day with moderate use.

Where it fails for me is where the iPhone has succeeded — applications. The limited set available on the Arena will get almost all your jobs done, but the gear envy will soon follow when you see the unimaginable limits to which current iPhone applications have taken the platform. The Arena is a snappy challenger, but maybe a little too late? The next iPhone is but a few months away… so you’d be better off waiting and watching this space!

Quick Specs:

• Networks: GPRS/EDGE(850/900/1800/1900)
• Display: TFT Capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours, 3in WVGA (800x480 pixels) with 3D, S-Class user interface
• Connnectivity: GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi, Assisted/standalone GPS, USB 2.0, WAP 2.0, BlueTooth 2.1 + EDR
• Memory: 1000 (22 fields), 8 GB internal memory with expansion via MicroSD to upto 32GB
• Camera: 5.0 megapixel CMOS with image stabilisation, geo tagging and LED flash, secondary VGA camera
• Audio: MP3 player with equaliser, Dolby sound, 3.5mm jack, FM radio
• Other Features: TV-out, USB charging, document viewer (doc, xls, ppt, pdf), Anti-theft Mobile Tracker, Google (Maps, Search, Mail, YouTube, Blogger), Motion Sensor games (Tepong, Wheel mania, Flying dices), Application lock
• Battery: Li-Ion 1000mAh
• Dimensions (W x H x D): 105.8x 55.3 x11.95mm
• Weight: 105g
• Rating: 8/10
• Price: R 24,990
• URL: http://arena.lgmobile.com/in/

Right ho Jeeves!

Finally an alarm clock you can actually like. The Infallibly Polite Speaking Alarm Clock supposedly “reproduces the subtle wit employed by P. G. Wodehouse’s most famous character, the valet Reginald Jeeves.” I quite like this one — “Excuse me sir, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but it appears to be morning... very inconvenient, I agree... I believe it is the rotation of the Earth that is to blame, sir.” Cheap luxury — oxymoron or reality?

• URL: http://www.hammacher.com/publish/76635.asp
• Price: $99.95

Cool drive

Transformers fans, come out of the closet and revel! The cult series is now immortalised in … a flash drive! Ravage, a.k.a Tripredacus Agent, has outlived the age of the cassette and is now a flash drive that actually transforms! It can only store up to 2GB of your most valuable data, but even if they’d packed a miserable 512 MB in this bad boy, it’d still be worth the buy for any loyal fan!

• URL: http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product.aspx?
product=TAK10927&mode=retail&picture=out
• Price: $42.99