It's smaller than an iPhone, although quite heavy and chunky, with a thickness of 17mm. But that's because the phone has a full slide-out QWERTY keypad. If you like texting, then you're going to love this phone! Full QWERTY keypads normally come with business phones like BlackBerries, or the virtual touchscreens on high-end phones like the iPhone. But here it is on a budget PAYG phone - it's what keen texters have been waiting for! The KS360 has plenty of features tailored to texting in fact. The threaded SMS feature is a neat way of having text conversations. There's also a full range of emoticons to liven up your texts. As well as texting, the QWERTY keypad makes this a good platform for mobile email. Although the LG mail tool lacks the power and flexibility of a BlackBerry, it's easy to set up and use for personal email.
Like most LG phones, the KS360 has a touchscreen user interface, so you can dial directly from the touchscreen without needing to open up the slide. In fact the slide is really only used when texting or sending emails, so most of the time you can use it with the slide closed, just like a normal phone. In addition to the touchscreen, there's a full range of "normal" buttons for navigation, calling, ending calls, etc, so if you don't get on with touchscreens there's no need to worry.
In fact, this is such a great phone for texting and calling, and so cheap, we weren't expecting it to have any other features. But it does. It has a digital camera with video recording capabilities. The camera's about average for this price range, although it lacks a flash, so can only be used in good lighting conditions. The large 2.4 inch screen has one of the highest resolutions available, and is excellent. The phone has a built-in music player that supports MP3 and AAC formats. And an FM radio too. The built-in memory is not overly generous at 15 Mbytes, but you can add a microSD memory card up to 4 GB. This is enough to store around 1,000 MP3 tracks.
Connectivity appears to be via Bluetooth only, but the battery life is very good. The phone doesn't support 3G, but it does have triband GSM coverage.
To be honest, we're quite blown away by this little baby. We were expecting it to be a bit tacky, but it's really impressed us. The keypad is a big bonus for anyone who sends a lot of texts, and LG have been generous with the amount of stuff that's included in the phone. At this price, we think you'll be impressed too. And it's available in Blue or Pink, depending on which gender stereotyping appeals to you :) Some of our users have reported software glitches with this phone, but most seem happy and for the money it offers outstanding performance.
The new LG GW520 has a similar design with upgraded features.
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Features of the LG KS360 include:
* Camera: 2 megapixels
* Video camera
* Display: 262,000 colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.4 inches)
* Music player: MP3/ AAC/ AAC+/eAAC+ formats
* FM radio
* 64-voice polyphonic ringtones
* Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, instant messaging, email
* Java games
* Memory: 15 Mbytes plus microSD memory card (expandable to 4GB)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth
* Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE
* Vibration alert
* Triband
* Size: 102 X 51 X 17 mm
* Weight: 112g
* Talktime: 5 hours
* Battery standby: 444 hours
