LG KF700 review: A touch of slide, a touch of scroll

The LG KF700 (codenamed Virgo) is among the latest LG full touch handsets. Besides being one of the most affordable one among those, it stands out with multiple control-and-navigation methods. LG KF700 puts together a 3" touchscreen display, a slide-out standard keypad and a side mounted scroll wheel with an adjacent OK key. The neat and solid KF700 blends together elegance and great web surfing to broaden its appeal beyond the fashion-savvy.

With 3.5G aboard a sharp and nifty touch UI, we waste no time to fire it up and see it perform. Stay with us for more of LG KF700.

   
Key features
Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE plus HSDPA 7.2Mbps 
3 megapixel autofocus camera 
Secondary camera for video calls 
3" 262K-color TFT touchscreen display with a 240x480 pixel resolution 
Touch feedback (haptics) 
FM radio 
Stereo Bluetooth 
176MB internal memory, microSD card slot (hot-swap) 
Sliding hardware keypad 
Side scroll wheel with an OK key 
Retail headset has a standard 3.5mm audio jack 
Office document viewer 
Multi-tasking support with a task manager 
Pleasing touch-optimized web browser 
Google Maps pre-installed 
Main disadvantages
The side scroll wheel seems redundant 
Image quality is only average 
Video recording maxes out at QVGA@15fps 
FM radio has no RDS 
Music player lacks equalizer settings 
Web browser doesn't have flash support 
No screen auto rotation 

The LG KF700 was announced back in February 2008 and this review is not our first encounter with it - you may remember we did a quick and dirty preview of a pre-release sample back in May. Now that we have a retail KF700 unit, we decided to upgrade our preview to a full-featured review, covering all the ins and outs of this affordable touch phone.

LG KF700 has a remarkably responsive user interface, fashionable looks and strives to deliver most of the multimedia applications you might want in a mobile phone. The three input methods are diverse enough for you to find your preference. However, all the three types are rather fused - the only one you could go without is the scroll wheel. The touchscreen display does the job for most tasks, but you need the keypad to enter text. The keypad is useless on its own too, because it has no D-pad. So in the end, you are bound to use at least two of the input methods described.