LG KT610 review

LG is seems always produce stylish and good looking design handset. Indeed, LG’s phones quite impressive in term of designation and the touchscreen handset is the most frequently we see at the LG’s smartphones production line. However, the LG KT610 is different from the other LG’s smartphones. You will not see large touchscreen on it. Instead, the full QWERTY keyboard is made in LG KT610, which is rarely seen on the LG smartphone. Apparently the QWERTY keypad is not something new for LG (example LG KS360, LG Voyager, LG Rumor and etc), so let take a look what lies beneath this communicator-style phone.

Design
Obviously, The LG KT610 is hardly considered as a good looking phone. With the dimension of 108.9 x 53.9 x 17.2mm and the weight of 125.5 grams, KT 610 is hard to sneak into your tide jeans pocket. When closed, you will see a giant keypad and controls keys at the front, and a tiny 1.45″ 262K-color screen is located above the keypad. Frankly, it’s somewhere looks like a calculator. But when you open it up, you will see a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.4″ 262K-color QVGA at folding top. It makes the phone look like a tiny laptop. However, the screen is too small at the folding top. It would be better if the screen is wider.

Software and Massaging.
The KT610 runs on Symbian OS v9.2 and S60 3rd Edition Feature pack 1, which is the operating system that mainly use in Nokia smart phones. The benefit of this OS is you can install gallons of cool third-party apps. And as a communicator handset with the large and comfortable full QWERTY keyboard, the LG KT610 is one of the best texting devices around. The software layout is almost perfect and completely on par with the great ergonomics of the keyboard. You can easily create or edit a SMS or MMS and Email with it. The email client even can be set to automatically check mail at a preset interval and the number of maximum retrieved messages can also be configured. Overall, LG KT610 really does its job as a communicator device.

Music and Video
The music experience is good, the LG KT610 music player looks exactly like on any other S60 3rd edition device and it is supports a huge number of audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. And the Video player is the Real player that preinstalled. The videos can be displayed in fullscreen to make better use of the display. However, due to the 2.4″ screen you can’t help for wider display.

Camera
The 2 megapixel camera is very status quo, with little options and not even a flash. The resulting pictures aren’t bad, for a 2 megapixel camera. But that’s it. In term of snapping picture, The camera on KT610 however is really hard to operate. The outside screen is comfortable to use when shooting like you would with a regular bar phone. However the small external display shows only a part of the frame to be captured. It cuts about 2/3 of the frame and only displays its central area. Also worth pointing out is that you can’t capture videos using the external display as a viewfinder. For the video recording it can record at a frame rate of 10fps and are saved in 3gp format. Also LG KT610 is able to manage CIF resolution but that all what it got in video recording feature. The camera is probably a downside for the phone.

Connectivity
The phone is shame on lack of Wi-Fi connectivity. The Wi-Fi connection is already in use in many other smartphone, I wonder why LG did not include this specs in KT610. Except of that, the type of connectivity is ok. You can connect with your PC through USB connection. Beside of that, there is card slot is also an option with the good transfer rates card readers can offer. And the Bluetooth v2.0 enable you to connect to other device wirelessly. The network connectivity is also at the expected high level with GPRS, EDGE and 3G all covered. HSDPA is also on board to take network data transfers to top speed.

Conclusion
Overall, LG KT610 is a pretty good communicator handset. It got what it takes to play the rule. However, it is not the top in the market. There are a lot similar phones out there. Frankly, there unfortunately that’s the only thing that really a stand out on this phone is the big and easy-type QWERTY keyboard. I wonder how many people will attracted by that.