In touch with the LG Cookie

The new phone that came in a box just before Christmas is called Cookie. It was the latest of LG’s phones with a cutesy name: the others being Chocolate, Shine and Secret.

Ah, the things they name the phones nowadays. It is not enough to get to know it by brand, it is important for a phone to have a name. If there is one thing that the geeks have learned about a tech product being sold to the mass consumer market, it is the simple fact that the product should not be identified as letters and numbers. Few would remember it in a sea of other phones with alphanumeric names.

Now here’s the LG Cookie or if you are a numbers person, the LG KP500.

According to the LG Philippines website, the LG Cookie is “a full touch-screen phone with auto rotate sensor and Active Screen UI. This phone also features a motion sensor gaming for ultimate game satisfaction.”

Simply put, the mobile device is a touch-screen phone, one of the most affordable handsets in this category in the local market for the emerging “touch” generation.

While not necessarily an entry-level phone, the LG Cookie is a good replacement phone for those who have yet to experience the power and convenience of “touch.” A slight brush of the fingers with the screen or a light caress, the phone responds. Such is the beauty of “touch.”

There are no more hard keyboards or protruding keypads. All the phone’s controls are on the screen, which is bigger than most phones at three inches, giving wide room for maneuverability. The big screen is also helpful for viewing photos and videos, either in portrait or landscape mode, and even for sending text message or e-mail as the phone’s touch-screen keypad can be used in vertical or horizontal mode. A stylus pen is provided for those who find it cumbersome to use the fingers. A handwriting screen comes in as bonus.

The stylus is, however, tricky as one can easily misplace it as I did within days of using the phone.

During the launch of the LG Cookie in November, Jeff Hong, president and CEO of LG Electronics Philippines, said in a press statement that there are more people who wish to try the latest touch-screen phones.

“We want to reach out to this group and the LG KP500 is our answer to deliver a high-quality, full touch-screen phone that is easy to use and much easier to afford.

Joy of touch screen

Within reach of many consumers, we hope that more people will experience the joy of using the latest touch-screen technology with LG KP500,” he said.

For newbies in touch-screen technology, a touch-screen phone is usually slim, stylish and lightweight. This is the main advantage of utilizing the phone’s LCD screen for navigation and control; you do away with excess phone “fat” and design takes primacy.

Most touch-screen phones can also pass up as fashion phones such as the LG Cookie, which comes in a combination of black and maroon, fitting a corporate or casual attire easily.

The LG KP500 is a GSM phone that can operate in four frequency bands, giving it a far-reaching reception range, and upon its global release, the LG KP500 can be used in 39 languages, LG said.

The phone made available for review, however, did not have provision for Filipino but one can try Español for a change.

From this user’s experience, what makes the LG Cookie outstanding is the user interface. It has vivid icons for the main menus — address book, messaging, camera, contacts, e-mail, tools, calendar, FM radio, games and applications, and call history that one can use the phone even without reading the manual. Even if one switches the phone’s language to Spanish, the menus and instructions are quite understandable because of the use of icons that are recognized by phone users all over the world.

The icon for Nuevo Mensaje or New Message, for example, is a paper and pencil, which suggests “writing” text. Contactos or contacts has an address book and phone icon, Nuevo E-mail or New Email has a paper and the @ sign as graphics.  

The onscreen widgets for frequently used features such as music player, contacts, photo gallery, calendar, FM radio and alarms are very handy as they can also be dragged around or changed as often as one would like to.

Intuitive UI

LG call this unique user interface as “intuitive.”

“We optimized the user interface to keep the tactile operations smooth and simple which is necessary when you’re opening up a new technology to a wide group of people,” said Hong.  

For those using a multimedia phone for the first time, the QWERTY onscreen keyboard is very useful for faster messaging. The default font size and type are big enough for convenience. For advanced users, however, there is no Wi-Fi or wireless connectivity, which is a standard feature in high-end phones.

However, being a mid-level phone and a touch-screen one at that, the phone is perfect for its category. The phone comes with a three-megapixel camera, a video recorder and an audio recorder as well. The key point, however, is affordability. With a retail price of around P12,000, the touch-screen phone is a good buy and promises a good user experience.