LG KF600 Venus

From Chocolate to Shine and to Prada and Viewty, in the last year LG’s been on style-over-substance overdrive, churning out phones that look terrific, but can’t match Nokia for multimedia, Sony Ericsson for music or cameras and – as the Venus amply demonstrates – Apple for interfaces.
Your heart leaps when you first clap eyes on the Venus’s huge touchscreen. Then you realize only the bottom 1.5-inch is touch responsive.
LG describe it as an InteractPad, with controls changing depending on the phone function being used. However, this proves as hit and miss as a fairground rifle range. You can customize six buttons on the main menu, so key features are a press away. However, more often all you get is a four-way controller, and an unresponsive one at that – certainly no match for dedicated buttons.

While it’s a little poor when you’re browsing, swap it into camera or music mode and the controls are far more intuitive, skipping you through tracks or scrolling around photos with ease.

touchy subject
With its slimline, glass-fronted panache and funky, Keith Haring-style menu graphics, the KF600 is a real looker. The screen is excellent – very sharp – and with a smooth interface, EQ controls and a 3.5mm adapter, the music player isn’t bad either. Using it as an MP3 player and phone, we eked out a day and a half of juice, which isn’t exactly award-winning, but we can live with it. We have plug sockets.
The KF600’s camera is one of the few on a phone to include autofocus, but it’s so slow, you’ll wonder why LG bothered. Picture quality isn’t bad, but no match for the Samsung Armani phone, let alone something like the N95 or K850i.
Beneath the sexy styling and hyped-up InteractPad, the Venus is an average handset. If the context-sensitive touchpad was bigger (and developed further as a concept), the camera improved and connectivity enhanced with 3G, LG would have something truly appealing. At the moment, it’s attractive.

Love The InteractPad is an excellent idea. Funky menu themes. You can use your own earphones.
Hate The InteractPad doesn’t actually work terribly well. Nasty shutter lag on the camera.
We say Nice try, but back to the drawing board.

3 stars

Screen 3.5-inch (1.5-inch of it touch-sensitive)
Connectivity Tri-band. Bluetooth
Camera 3 megapixels
Storage 40MB + microSD card
Battery 2.5 hours talk/200 standby