LG KM900 Arena review: A touch of class

One of the most exciting handsets the season - the LG KM900 Arena - returns to our office and this time it is going to stay a bit longer. After getting off to a flying start in both sales and reviews the Arena certainly looks like the next big thing from LG. In these tough economic times no company can afford too many blunders so it better live up to those high expectations.

The LG KM900 Arena grabbed our attention for the first time back in February at the MWC and even more so last month when we previewed it. Let's see if it's third time lucky and if it will be able to completely sweep us off our feet in a full review.

   
LG KM900 Arena official photos
Key features:
3" 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels) 
S-Class Touch UI 
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support 
3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) 
Wi-Fi and GPS receiver with A-GPS 
5 megapixel autofocus camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, LED flash, geotagging 
D1 (720x480 pixels)@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA fast-motion video and QVGA slo-mo video 
8GB built-in storage 
Hot-swappable microSD card slot 
Standard 3.5mm audio jack and TV out 
USB Mass Storage 
Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP 
Accelerometer for screen auto rotate 
Multi-touch input 
3D hardware accelerator 
DivX and XviD support 
Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement 
FM radio with FM transmitter 
Office document viewer 
Smart dialing 
Main disadvantages:
Poor sunlight legibility 
Inadequate flash performance 
No voice-guided GPS navigation software available 
No standard USB port 
Records video in 3GP file format 
Maximum email attachment size is 1MB only (both ways) 
Limited DivX/XviD video support 

The LG KM900 Arena is the pioneer of the new UI designed by the South Korean company, boldly named S-class. Promising fluidity never seen before and uncompromising looks and functionality, it is starting to take the world by storm. We doubt that it will be of a measure equal to the hurricane created by the iPhone's UI but the whole package might well surprise us.