This phone reminds me of how Aladdin's Genie described his situation once he had been released from his prison - "All that power locked up into a teeny, weenie little space! Gives you SUCH a crick in the neck!"
The crick in the neck with the LG KM900 Arena is that it is slow. That said, we are not all hyped-up yuppies requiring instant responses from the electronic equipment we have in our hands, and if speed does not really bother you and you have a much more relaxed attitude toward life when it comes to texting and other functions, then this phone may be just the thing for you.
The handset will cost you between £270 and £350 (SIM-free), depending on where you shop - with Amazon being the most expensive we found. On a pay monthly deal it can cost you as little as £5 per month, or on pay as you go from £300.
In terms of features, the Arena knocks the spots off iPhone, however in pure functionality - it fails to hit the spot - touchscreen phones are generally slow, often sluggish in their responses, and the Arena is no different. While the new S-class interface speeds things up a little, the phone is still lethargic and will frustrate the person who requires a more instant response from their connectivity-mate.
Speed aside, the tech-spec for the LG KM900 Arena is impressive indeed. This quadband phone functions on both 2G and 3G. GSM bands include 850, 900, 1800 and 1900. 3G HSDPA 2100 is available to the UK version, with the American dedicated edition working on HSDPA 850 and 1900.
Released in February 2009, the Arena weighs in at a mere 105g, and measures a shade under 106 x 55.5 x 12mm.
The 3.0 inch capacitive S-class Touch UI screen is capable of showing 480 x 800 pixels in 16M colours. It supports Multi-touch input and has an Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate when viewing landscape or portrait pictures simply by revolving the phone.
For the music fan, the Arena has both a 3.5mm audio jack for speakerphone plus the added bonus of Dolby Mobile sound enhancement.
To run all this, the internal memory is large at 8GB, and can be boosted to 32GB by means of microSD (TransFlash) card. Photocall is available, and call records are bumped to 40 dialed, 40 received and 40 missed calls.
For data handling, the LG KM900 Arena comes with Class 12 GPRS at 32-48 kbps (high speed) and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, capable of running 10/54 Mb. Class 10 Edge at 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps, USB and Bluetooth at v2.0 complete the package. The phone does not support HSCSD.
For those who like to record their social events, the phone contains a 5 megapixel camera, with the max picture size of 2592 x 1944 pixels being made possible by the Schneider-Kreuznach optics, autofocus and LED flash. It also features Geo-tagging and image stabilisation.
Video at 720x 480 pixels at 30fps is possible, as is VGA at 30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-motion video recording. A secondary camera allows videocall.
If the list above is not enough, add on the rest of the features included in this whopping handset.
Messaging capabilities are SMS with threaded view, MMS, EMAIL. It has a WAP 2.0 browser, able to display xHTML and HTML. The radio has not been forgotten, FM is taken care of, with a bonus of an FM transmitter.
For the person who likes to relax with a few games, the LG KM900 Arena handset caters for them too. Java is supported (MIDP 2.0), as is GPS with A-GPS support and Google Maps.
Other features include TV-out, MP3/AAC/AAC+/WMA music player, Div/X/XviD/MP4 player, an organiser, Document viewer which caters for doc, xls, ppt and pdf, Voice memo and the all-important texter's friend - T9 text input - probably very helpful considering the slow touch screen response times.
The battery included is a standard Li-ion cell with a capacity of 1000 mAh and allows for standby time of up to 300 hours, talk time of up to 3 hours 50 mins and music play time of up to 30 hours max.
Before buying a mobilephone, especially a new release, you should wait a bit and read mobilephone reviews - customer reviews, expert reviews and even cheap mobilephone cashback offers. It's best to be informed and avoid regrets like frustratingly stuck with a 12 months T-mobile free line rental contract deal on a phone that you'd come to hate later.
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