KG920 review

The days when camera phones were low quality seem to be well and truly over, as LG has just launched its KG920 handset, which comes with a 5-megapixel camera.

If you imagine a world where you can ditch your digital camera and just carry your phone around with you, think again. Taking photos with this phone is a very hit-and-miss affair. It has an autofocus, but after getting a focus lock it takes a long time to take a picture. So long, in fact, that your subject is likely to have moved by the time the camera is ready to go.

It's a shame, because the phone has some nice features that should make taking photos a pleasure. It has a proper flash, rather than the LED lamp other phones use. The KG920 also rotates in the middle so you can take a self-portrait or get a clear view when shooting over people's heads. If you can coax a decent shot out of the camera, the image quality is superb; we found that the photos we took were sharp, with good contrast and hardly any noise.

The KG920 looks like an early 90s dictaphone. Its design is incredibly fussy, but may appeal to those who like their gadgets to look like gadgets. The keypad layout is especially strange. Instead of being in the middle, the directional keypad is squashed to the side and uncomfortable to use. There are three soft keys between the call answer and end buttons, but no dedicated back button, so to go back one step you often have to use the call end key to go all the way back to the home screen. The numeric keypad is poor, with tiny unresponsive keys that make rapid texting impossible. The phone's operating system runs slowly, so most of the time the texting application is struggling to keep up with the speed of your typing.

The KG920 has an excellent screen, however. Its resolution of 320x240 pixels is huge for the screen's 2" size and the animated menus look fantastic. Aside from the lack of a back key, the phone is easy to use. The main menu's icons are arranged in a grid and the submenus in numbered lists, so it's easy to jump to the function you want. All the usual features are there, including a calendar and a simple web browser. The phone can play MP3, WMA and AAC files from a mini-SD card and the supplied headphones sound clear but have distorted bass.

Unfortunately, LG's KG920 is a huge disappointment. The design is a mess, the operating system runs slowly and getting a good shot with the camera is a question of chance. It's also horribly expensive, even if you get one on contract.

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