LG cookie...as sweet as it suggests? (LG Cookie KP500)

Member Name: miss_tassker

Product:	LG Cookie KP500
Date:	27/10/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: touchscreen, nice design, small and light, great battery life

Disadvantages: touchscreen, need to be aan exceptional to text on the move, boring features .

When someone mentions the word cookie, i'm still likely to consider it moreso a bakery product than a mobile phone, maybe an strange inuendo at a push but not generally a phone. So it was a little suprising when lg announced the nickname to their KP500 touch screen phone, however a name isn't eveything. So will this phone live up to maryland standard? or will it just end up sitting with the tesco value? (ok, i'll stop with the cookie stuff now, maybe).

The first thing that strikes you when you first see the cookie is that how much it just wants you to think it's an iphone, but then you realise that infact lg has made some nice changes to the design to make it in fact better than the behemoth of overpriced phones. The surface is a slight rubbery texture, meaning it will stay put in your hand and also reduce the amount of fingermarks left all over it. The extra buttons on either side of the iphone-esque button are welcome additions, if a bit unused most of the time (they only really help in phone call situations). But the best part is that it just feels solid, robust and strong enough to actually survive the trauma of a saturday night out in your back pocket, a must for phones even if most don't seem to achieve such a simple aim. Another plus is that it is small and light, about 20% smaller than the iphone and only weighing in at 89g, included in this size is the stylus housing at the bottom of the phone, so overall it is a very compact piece of phony-ness. Reception is great
rarely dipping below 5/5 bars, the battery life is very good too, lasting about 4 days on a full charge with a decent amount of texting going on and occasional music.
Now, most people will be attracted to the cookie due to it's touchscreen, and at £99 for one who wouldn't be? well, the people who are looking for a responsive touch phone won't be disappointed, so far the cookie has blitzed the iphone for responsiveness (even with the protective cover on the screen), and also utilises a very welcome vibrate response so you know when it has been pressed properley (a great thing you you first have it). the screen is also pretty good in itself, being bright and colourful, and even suitable for some video if you're in a tight spot for anything else to play it on.

The 'operating system' on the cookie is decent, it does what it needs to. Unfortunatley it lacks much support for customisation, so no downloadable themes are available as of time of writing. one nice feature is the widgets on the main screen, which provide some nice features, if a little limited. You have your standard vista-esque clock (no pink fluffy monsters though i'm afraid), an extension for the media player and a picture gallary. It does have a few niggles from time to time, such as when the balance appears after a text it can hang, vibrating like a overly excited gerbil for a few seconds before going to the home page again. there is also one major niggle for those who like to game on their phone, if you want mobile phone gaming, i would walk right past the cookie. Although it can put up a little control bar at the bottom to use, it is useless for most games, and also the java subsytem doesn't seem as refined as some others, meaning you can't play game boy emulators on this phone at any decent speed (even thought he processor itself is quite good). The other major thing i will say about the os is that the camera and gallery argue a lot, if you use the photo gallery via the main phone menu and then exit it in a way the phone deems 'wrong' you will not be able to use the camera until you reopen the gallery and close it again.
Lack of gaming aside, the cookie has the standard array of multimedia. wap/gprs (no 3G or wifi unfortunatley), camera and video camera. The camera is an ok 3.2MP with decent picture quality. it won't stand up to anything nearing 2MP on a nokia, but it'll do it's job for most phone users, the video is also of a decent quality, it's nothing special, it just does it ok. If you want a better camera, you may be better off getting the viewty since it is aboutthe same price (but is about 3 times the thickness of the cookie). Of course to utilise the camera you will need a decent amount of memory,a nd the built in memory of the cookie is quite bad, standing at a mere 48MB. However you can upgrade the camera with up to 8GB of extra memory via a microSD card.

the other main multimedia feature is the omnipresent mp3 player/ radio functionality, the player is ok again, nothing amazing or special, but it again does it's job adequately with little fuss, the radio is also much of a muchness too. Annoyingly, as is increasingly the way with mobiles, the headphone jack is a special socket for lg's, and even more annoyingly you can only use the provided earphones (unlike the sony erricson or nokia breakaway type cables) which are pretty naff but are usuable, coupled with the usual 'tinnier than a tin full o' tins' phone speakers, the sound experience isn't amazing.
Since most of us text a lot with our mobiles, i'll quickly go over the whole experience with the cookie. The predictive text is good and is generally quite accurate should you choose to use it. Aside from the standard option of bringing up a 12 key numberpad on the screen like a normal phone, there are two other ways to 'type' your texts, unfortunatley you will end up only using them occasionally due to their utter difficulty of use. The first option is to turn the phone sideways (well, keep turning it over until it wants to do it) to bring up a QWERTY keyboard, which is fantastic, until you inevitably want to move and type. Unless you possess the worlds smallest fingers you will have to use the stylus, and even then you need the dexterity of a ninja spider to press the right 'buttons' on screen, and even IF you concentrated enough to actually do it right you will have already walked into several lamposts and been run over for not paying attention to anything else! the other, far more useless option is handwriting recognition. unless you can write letters perfectly in arial font, the software will most likely get it wrong. and just to add further annoyance, you can't add punctuation via the handwriting anyway, so you still need to navigate the menus. Basically, everyone ends up with the old school numberpad most of the time, which then begs the question: 'why did i bother getting a touchscreen?'.

On that question i think it's a good time to start summing up the review and a general statement about touchscreens. Yes, they are pretty, yes they are cool, but they are in no way practical for texting on the move or any kind of gaming. Both of which you will find better on a cheaper sony ericsson and you'll get better sound to boot. It's not that the lg is bad in any way, it's just average, run of the mill, mundane. The only thing going for it really is the touchscreen, and until someone makes them bigger, texting in a way other than using an on screen numberpad is too difficult and time consuming. If i could go back and pick a phone again i would save my self about £50 and buy a nice standard nokia or sony ericsson, it gets the job done better, it just won't have a touchscreen. But i won't tell you not to buy this phone if you really want a touchscreen,since as far as they go, it's a good phone and fantastic value for money. Unfortunatley when you add in 'old school' phones with normal keypads into the equation, it just can't really hold it's own. The lg as a general phone is like a maryland packet half filled with tesco value biscuits, sure it looks nice and it does have some genuinley decent features, but too much is just mundane and average to really recommend spending £100 on. if it came down to £50, snap it up.

Summary: goof for price

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