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TagsVarious mobile phone manufacturers have tried to play catch up with the Apple iPhone. But of course, every time someone gets near, the Cupertino company seems to put its foot down and head off into the distance. LG is one such vendor, but will its Cookie touchscreen phone take the biscuit?
The Cookie, also known as the KP500, is a medium-priced mobile designed to suit most people. The touchscreen handset is lightweight and thin, measuring 11.9mm deep by 55.4mm wide by 106.5mm long. It weighs in at a size zero 89g.
There are four available colour options ranging from black and brown to gold and silver.
It is no surprise that the design of the phone takes its cue from the LG KC910 Renoir. But feature-wise, it is a different beast.
The screen is surprisingly large (240 by 400 resolution - 3-inch TFT 262k colour touchscreen) and takes up virtually all of the front panel. Of course, it sports three physical buttons on the front. The screen also rotates to landscape view when tilted, using the accelerometer.{mospagebreak}For some reason, the handset also comes with a stylus, if you can't be bothered to use your fingers. The reason for the inclusion is that the phone features handwriting recognition.
A modern phone would not be complete with some mp3 player and it does not disappoint with a media player that supports a wide range of audio and video playback formats (which include MP3, WMA and AAC but oddly not Divx or Xvid). Organising files on the phone is relatively easy and quite intuitive for transferring files between phone and computer using the connectivity options available. It also features an FM radio should you get bored of what is on your phone. That side with 8GB of storage, it is more for playing your fave tunes when working out at the gym rather than being able to carry all your music wherever you are. It lacks a standard 3.5mm jack which can be annoying if you have a really good set of earphones you want to use with the phone - instead you have to use the proprietary earphones.
The 3.2-megapixel camera is workmanlike but hardly breath-taking. That side, it is better than Apple's efforts in this department.
The phone has handy call features for managing contacts and its call logging is on par with the best on the market. Otherwise call quality was good.{mospagebreak}The hands-free feature sounds crisp when in use, but as with most phones, using this will eat up more juice than when in normal mode.
It can accept up to 8GB in storage with a MicroSD card. There is 48MB of onboard storage, which we felt could have been more.
It has Bluetooth and A2DP for connecting to Bluetooth headsets and other devices.
The phone can handle POP3 email accounts, which is good for Gmail and other webmail services. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support Microsoft Exchange, so might be limited to consumers rather than business. This is a shame as the device could with a handy document viewer.
What is rather a let down is the mobile web browser. It doesn't render web pages properly. And we thought Mobile Internet Explorer 6 was bad.
While the Cookie comes in as a cheap touchscreen phone, it misses so many of the features that a touchscreen smartphone should have or at least should have if wanting to be considered an iPhone killer.That said as a basic phone, it's OK.
Rating: 6.5/10
Features and pictures on next page...{mospagebreak}Key Features
3-inch TFT 262k colour touchscreen (240 by 400 resolution)
Touchscreen handwriting recognition
Bluetooth Technology
48MB expandable to 8GB MicroSD memory card
FM Radio with RDS
3.2-megapixel camera with video support
