After getting off to a flying start in both sales and reviews the Arena certainly looks like the next big thing from LG. In these tough economic times no company can afford too many blunders so it better live up to those high expectations.

    
LG KM900 Arena official photos

Key features:

• 3″ 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• S-Class Touch UI
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
• Wi-Fi and GPS receiver with A-GPS
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, LED flash, geotagging
• D1 (720×480 pixels)@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA fast-motion video and QVGA slo-mo video
• 8GB built-in storage
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack and TV out
• USB Mass Storage
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
• Multi-touch input
• 3D hardware accelerator
• DivX and XviD support
• Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement
• FM radio with FM transmitter
• Office document viewer
• Smart dialing

Main disadvantages:

• Poor sunlight legibility
• Inadequate flash performance
• No voice-guided GPS navigation software available
• No standard USB port
• Records video in 3GP file format
• Maximum email attachment size is 1MB only (both ways)
• Limited DivX/XviD video support

The LG KM900 Arena is the pioneer of the new UI designed by the South Korean company, boldly named S-class. Promising fluidity never seen before and uncompromising looks and functionality, it is starting to take the world by storm. We doubt that it will be of a measure equal to the hurricane created by the iPhone’s UI but the whole package might well surprise us.

    
We enjoy having the LG KM900 Arena back on board in a retail outfit

Mainly because the LG KM900 Arena has none of the (absurd) limitations of the original iPhone – no proper Bluetooth functionality, no FM radio, lack of file manager and so on. Instead the Arena comes as a exceptionally well equipped phone with almost every feature in the book included. From 3G with HSDPA, through Wi-Fi and GPS to FM transmitter – the LG KM900 has it all.

    
The Arena is ready to take on the iPhone – and most other full touch phones for that matter

Let’s now check if there are any gaps in its performance that avoided our watchful eye in the preview. We will get to the unboxing this multimedia beast after the jump.

Modest retail package

If you expected the box of the new multimedia flagship of the company to be stuffed with accessories then you are in for a major disappointment.

LG adopted a completely different approach with the KM900 Arena and tried to bring the price down as much as possible. That approach however left only the essentials inside the box.

   
There isn’t much stuff in the box

The LG KM900 Arena comes with the mandatory charger and a one-piece handsfree with a nifty little one-button remote. You also get a USB cable, a mini CD with the software required for PC synchronization, a manual and that’s that.

There is no memory card in the box but considering the generous 8GB of internal memory on the handset itself it won’t be missed too badly.

Design and construction

The LG KM900 Arena has a pleasant design with a metallic frame on the front and a relatively plain aluminum cover at the back. It’s hardly imaginative but then again fully-touch operated handsets rarely are.

    
The LG KM900 Arena has a pretty nice design

We have to admit that we like the T-Mobile exclusive Titan Black trim better, but the standard light-colored aluminum one isn’t too shabby either.

The front panel of the LG KM900 Arena is all about the 3″ 16M color capacitive touchscreen display. Even though it uses the TFT technology as opposed to the OLED one on latest Samsung handsets, it still provides excellent picture quality. The brightness and contrast levels are top-notch, comparable to the best examples in the class.

  
The display picture quality is great indoors

Probably part of the explanation for this is the fact that the LG KM900 Arena has one of the most pixel-dense screens on the market (along with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 and Toshiba G900). The resolution of 800 x 480 pixels crammed into the 3″ screen results in more pixels per inch than any directly competing handset can offer.

The capacitive touchscreen technology makes sure that the KM900 Arena only needs a slight touch to register a click. On the negative side, it cannot work with a stylus making features like handwriting almost impossible to implement.

The increased sensitivity of the screen however combines brilliantly with the powerful hardware under the hood, resulting in excellent responsiveness of both the screen and interface. The integrated 3D graphics accelerator and the obviously powerful CPU make sure that your click is registered at the moment your finger makes contact to the screen.

Occasional delays are experienced now and then but the reason behind them is different and not really a topic to discuss now. The UI performance will be explored in full later in the review.

Unfortunately, the LG Arena sunlight screen legibility is pretty poor, much like most other LG handsets. Under direct sunlight it is quite hard to find a proper angle for working with the phone, let alone enjoying its functionality completely.

The other functional elements on the front panel of the LG Arena are the earpiece and the video-call camera at the top as well as the three touch sensitive buttons at the bottom.

 
The video-call camera and the earpiece are on top

Those buttons include a shortcut to the cube interface and the two standard call operating keys – Call and End. Having the same feedback as the screen makes it easier to transition from one to the other. It’s quite obvious that a lot of effort and research has been dedicated to making this feedback consistent across the phone and it pays off with a much improved user experience.

  
The three keys at the bottom

The left side of LG KM900 Arena features the USB port. It’s hidden under a nice sliding lid that should prevent it from getting filled with dirt and grime.

Unfortunately, LG are still using their proprietary connectivity port for the Arena and not a more standard solution – microUSB or miniUSB. We certainly hope that the microUSB standard will find its way on more and more handsets from various manufacturers until eventually you will only need one cable no matter how many different phones you possess.

  
LG chose to stick to their proprietary USB port for the Arena

On the right-hand side of the Arena are the volume rocker and the camera keys. Those keys are definitely too thin for our taste they are obviously designed with looks rather than usability in mind. And great looks they are, blending seamlessly in with the sides of the handset. Using them however is a whole other story and involves quite a period of adjustment.

   
The volume rocker and the camera key aren’t the most comfortable controls around

The bottom part of the LG Arena is perfectly plain, featuring no controls whatsoever.

 
There is nothing at the bottom

The top hosts the 3.5mm standard audio jack, the power key and the back panel release button. The audio jack hasn’t received the same treatment as the USB port and isn’t covered at all. This will probably make it easier to access and use, but it will eventually fill up with dirt and grime.

The power key is again a bit too small, but this time it isn’t a big problem as it slightly juts out.

  
The 3.5mm jack is on top, along with the tiny power key

The back side of the LG KM900 Arena hosts the 5 megapixel camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics and the LED flash. There is no protection for the lenses meaning that scratches are pretty much guaranteed in the long run.

  
The 5 megapixel camera lenses are prone to scratches as there is no protective cover

The single other thing on the back that might be of interest is the second microphone pinhole at the bottom. That second microphone is used for recording sound during video capture.

 
The second microphone is used when capturing video

We can’t talk about the Arena’s design without mentioning that the back panel looks quite similar to the one on the first-gen Apple iPhone – the matte surface, the camera location and shape as well as the cut-off bottom section – they all add up for an eerie iPhonish look.

The 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery is located under the aluminum battery cover. It is quoted at 300 hours of stand-by, 3 hours and 50 minutes of talk time or 30 hours of music playback. In reality it can last for about two days under some pretty extensive usage and to be honest we expected less. The huge number of pixels to be refreshed and the other power consuming features such as GPS and Wi-Fi are known to usually drain this kind of battery in a day.

 
The 1000 mAh battery performs pretty decently

The microSD card slot is also located under the battery cover but luckily it is hot-swappable. As we managed to confirm the LG KM900 Arena can easily handle a 16GB microSD card, which is the largest capacity currently available on the market. LG also promise that the Arena will be able to accommodate the 32GB cards once they become available.

The general build quality of the KM900 Arena is of a high quality and the materials used seem pretty durable. The positive initial impression left by its compact size never left us throughout the reviewing week.

  
LG KM900 Arena feels nicely in hand

Cube-spinning top-of-the-class interface

A well designed and smooth running user interface is among the most important features of a phone these days and the iPhone and its amazing market success is the quintessential example of this. LG have equipped the Arena with their spanking new S-Class UI and clearly have Apple’s game-changing interface in their sights.

The capacitive touchscreen is quite sensitive and haptic feedback has always been on the LG feature list. The hardware graphic acceleration is essential: everything from homescreen to dropdown menus roll, sweep in, unfold and revolve extra smoothly.

The S-Class builds upon the previous UIs of the LG range and thus still feels familiar despite the enormous amount of upgrades.

This time around, there are four homescreens and they break down the homescreen UI into four easily manageable chunks: widgets, contacts, shortcuts and multimedia.

A new and eye catching addition to the interface is the Cube interface – the four homescreens are placed on the sides of a cube that you roll by finger sweeps. You can zoom out by pressing the center Home key and roll the cube to select a homescreen.

 
The sides of the cube are the homescreens

The Shortcut homescreen is well known from the LG Cookie and LG Prada2. The empty space can be populated by various shortcuts for different apps. But given the wonderful main menu, we are not sure this screen is entirely necessary.

The Widget homescreen offers a bunch of widgets we’ve seen before in previous LG or Samsung handsets – we have the analog clock, calendar, world time, WeatherBug, games shortcut, FM radio widget, memo, cellular info and a calculator.

The messaging one you see on the top of the widget screen is the new addition. It gives you quick access to the voice, text or email messages and your missed calls, as well as showing the number of new events in any of the mentioned sections.

The third Cube wall contains the Contact homescreen, where you can assign photos to various contacts for quick access to their numbers and SMS/call options. They are displayed on a rotating reel, similar to the way that the fourth multimedia homescreen is filled with pictures and songs. All those reels are touch-optimized and on some occasions are very useful and time saving. Most of all though, these 3D effects throughout the interface are just there for the sake of prettiness than for any practical purpose.

    
The four homescreens – Shortcuts, Widgets, Contacts and Multimedia

No matter which homescreen you choose, the UI never skimps on eye candy – smooth animations, reflections, 3D spatial effects, motion blurring – it’s all there for your viewing pleasure. And better still – the 3″ WVGA screen ensures that the image quality is exceptional.

It kind of reminded us of the day that the Apple iPhone arrived in our office and how amazed we felt back then. However, the iPhone has been out almost two years now and yet it’s still the standard by which other UIs are judged. The LG S-class is the first UI that really grabs a nice bite of that Apple.

Welcome home

The LG Arena main menu is accessible via the dedicated shortcut on the home screen. The new thing about it is the layout. Instead of using four icons in a vertical column, LG now have opted for a layout of four rows of menu items that are scrollable horizontally. In this way almost all menu items are accessible simultaneously without jumping from tab to tab.

Even better, if you turn the phone sideways, the menu items are all visualized with smaller icons fitting the screen perfectly with no need for scrolling (but with no text labels either).

  
Main menu in portrait and landscape mode

LG Arena again has a multitasking menu (a basic task manager), which is launched upon a press-and-hold of the center key. This is another way to access the most common features, not just switch between the active ones. The active apps are signified by the respective icon bouncing up and down in a smooth animation.

 
Pressing and holding the center key launches the multitasking menu

Multitasking is limited – only two applications can run at a time and Java apps interfere with other apps. For example, with a Java app running in the background you won’t be able to turn the Radio on.

Tapping the Status bar at the top of the screen launches a semitransparent menu that can be used to toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off, change profiles and view recent events.

 
Easy access to common settings

Unfortunately, this connection manager menu is available only on the homescreen. It would have been handier if it was usable throughout the interface – the way it is in the Android OS.

By the way, to get a feel of the S-class interface by LG, you can also jump to the virtual emulator over at LG website.

Phonebook is just perfect

The LG Arena has one of the most attractive and best touch-optimized phonebooks we’ve seen so far on a mobile phone.

The Contact list has tiny separators with the corresponding alphabetical letter. While not expanded, every field has a picture icon, a name and a green call button for quick voice dial. Accessing the full info on a contact is made by tapping on it and its summary is expanded in a dropdown window directly between the other contacts. There you can also find the different buttons for calls, messages and editing organized in a scrollable row.

Like most of the interface on the KM900 Arena, the phonebook is highly touch-optimized too. Scrolling is as smooth as possible with no lag and this is the only phone currently on the market with the same fluid response as the iPhone. There is a scroll bar on the right side to allow movement through the phonebook.

    
Phonebook • editing a contact • contacts homescreen

Of course there is a search option and it’s available at the top of your contact list. The other way to access it is by the dedicated options button in the upper left corner. In the same two places you’ll also find the “New contact” buttons. The available fields are pretty standard and offer whatever you can think up.

Finally you can put a shortcut on the photo contact homescreen by selecting the small star button next to a contact. This contact then automatically appears in the appropriate place and you can edit the order type with tap-and-hold on the contact homescreen.

A strange decision is the required photo resolution – 480×480. There is no application on the phone which requires a picture of this size, but a smaller size is still not acceptable.

Excellent telephony as usual

The LG Arena handles phone calls flawlessly, as you have every right to expect. The phone dialer works with an on-screen numeric keypad – the QWERTY one is naturally not available.

  
Phone dialer with smart dial • Making a call

As with any LG handset – the green receiver key takes you to the list of all calls. You can access them from the main menu too, but unlike the previous LG handsets, you won’t find call time counters and the web data counter here. Instead, those are moved to the Call settings menu.

Smart dial is also onboard. As usual you can type any numbers and you’ll receive some suggestions immediately. They’ll be organized in a dropdown window in the same way as the contact’s summary.

Call history is accessed by the green hardware button below the screen and it reminds us of the phonebook with its dropdown effects. But of course, the information you get here is the call’s duration, time and type.

  
Call history

Guess what? Messaging is… great

There are only two options in the main menu – Messaging and Email. The LG Arena supports sending and receiving SMS, MMS, and email messages. Much like the Renoir and Viewty, SMS and MMS share the same editor.

 
SMS, MMS and Email sender

The messages are easily organized in a standard list view and sorted by date. You can choose a filter – SMS, MMS or notifications. Naturally the Inbox is the default location when you enter the Messaging, but you can change it to Outbox, Sent, Drafts or My Folders. There is also an option for a threaded view.

  
Messages inbox

For typing you can use either the multi-tap alphanumeric keyboard, or you can rotate the Arena and go for the landscape QWERTY one. There is touch feedback either way, and typing is very accurate even if the QWERTY keyboard buttons are a bit small. Either way, thanks to the capacitive screen both produce no lag and are as responsive as the iPhone QWERTY.

  
The alphanumeric and QWERTY keyboards

When it comes to emails, set up on the LG Arena is as hassle-free as its predecessors. Adding an email account is a breeze thanks to the clever setup scheme. For a Gmail account for example, all we had to do was fill in the account and password fields – the connection settings were retrieved automatically.

    
Setting email is easy • Email settings

In case you have to setup your email account manually, there is a host of settings that you need to enter. Both POP3 and IMAP4 protocols are supported and you can set the handset to auto retrieve new mail at a preset interval with a dedicated setting for roaming. The email client supports SSL too.

  
The Email section

Maximum attachment size for both outgoing and incoming mail is 1MB. This is not quite enough for a 5 megapixel photo, a shame really given that this is the maximum image size on the phone’s camera. A 3.2 MP snap or a small video will do the job, while attachments such as documents or presentations should not be a problem. The LG Renoir for example had a 2MB limit, which is still restricting, but more adequate.

Quite naturally, archive files such as ZIP or RAR are not among the supported file types for attachments, but still you can save those to the phone memory when you receive them. MS Office and PDF files can be opened and viewed directly inside the email client.

Once you’ve downloaded your messages, you can use the search feature to find specific emails or you can sort them by various filters such as date, sender, priority, read/unread, subject, size, etc. There is also an option for setting multiple emails as “Read”.

The multimedia performance is great

The LG Arena comes with 8GB of internal memory and of course it’s expandable via the microSD memory card slot. Hot-swapping a memory card is easy, but the slot is under the battery cover. We can also confirm that 8GB and 16GB microSD cards worked fine on our unit.

The LG KM900 Arena file manager appears as the My Stuff item in the menu. It includes separate factory-preset folders, but you may put various content in them.

File browsing is generally fast even when your memory card has a lot of images on it (800+ in our case). The files on the main storage and the external memory can’t be browsed together as you could on some previous LG handsets. And that’s a good thing, because it eliminates the problem of always seeing the files from the microSD before all others.

  
The file manager

A gallery as a model

LG Arena offers two gallery modes depending on the handset’s orientation. In portrait mode images and videos are displayed in a grid sorted by date, type or name, while in landscape mode one image is displayed in the center and two more by its side in an impressive 3D spatial view.

Did somebody say Cover Flow? Yes, the layout is quite similar to the Apple iPhone Cover Flow album art browsing, but let us remind you that the iPhone only offers that view mode in its iPod music player.

   
The gallery

As the LG KM900 Arena supports multi-touch you can zoom in on images with the pinching gesture made famous by the iPhone.

Apart from the standard options such as rename, delete, print, send and info, there is also a slideshow mode. You can choose the time interval and the display order (shuffle or not). The nice transition effects are random, though we couldn’t find an option just for them.

Finally the “star” button is also here for creating picture shortcuts on the multimedia homescreen.

Dolby Mobile makes a difference

The LG KM900 Arena music player is accessible both from the Cube interface as well as from the main menu. The Cube-accessed music player is rather basic but it does offer quick access to your tunes.

The individual music tracks are displayed on a rotating reel and get visualized with their album artwork “printed” on virtual vinyl records.

   
One of the two music players aboard

The full-featured music player sits in the main menu. You can sort tracks by artist, album, genre and rating. The current track’s artwork, name, album and artist are displayed in the screen’s center while the next and previous tracks are visible at the top and bottom of the screen.

    
The main music player is just great

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, the music player automatically switches its orientation from/to landscape mode when you rotate the phone.

  
The main music player in portrait and landscape mode

A very useful feature is the Search option. However, if you have applied some kind of sorting such as album view, for instance, you can only search the album names and not the actual tracks.

There are tons of equalizer presets (all non-customizable, though) and among them two managed to impress us. The first is the highly advertised Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement.

With Dolby Mobile the sound is richer and more spacious. Bobcat Mobile was also a really nice preset which is best suited for techno tracks. However with all the presets available we’re sure you’ll find one to suit your tastes.

 
There are tons of equalizer presets, all non-customizable, though

FM radio and FM transmitter

The Arena comes with FM radio and you can use it either through headphones or through the loudspeaker. In either case you’ve got to have the headphones plugged in as they serve as an antenna.

The radio stores up to 50 stations and there is support for receiving two-line radio station info over RDS. Scrolling through stations is very easy and intuitive – you have quick access through the two rows of buttons below the main window.

Much like the music player, when the FM radio is running in the background you can control it using the home screen widget.

Another nice addition to the LG Arena feature list is the in-built FM transmitter, allowing you to stream wirelessly the currently playing track to any standard FM radio receiver (e.g. car audio or home multimedia system).

  
The FM radio and the FM transmitter

Naturally a Bluetooth headset is also supported, allowing you to listen to music via stereo Bluetooth earphones. If you don’t like the headset that comes in the retail package, you can easily change it for another thanks to the standard 3.5mm audio jack.

Nicely tuned audio

The LG KM900 Arena has pretty decent audio quality, achieving noteworthy scores on some of the readings in our traditional audio quality test. The handset even manages to slightly outdo the Apple iPod 2G on some criterias and that definetely means something.

The only notable problem with the Arena audio output is that it has cut-off bass frequencies, probably due to some kind of high-pass filter meant to improve sound on small size headphones.

On the positive side the LG KM900 Arena has decent intermodulation distortion and oustanding dynamic range, noise level and low stereo crosstalk readings. The total harmonic distortion extremely low value is also commendable achievement.

Video player does its job

The LG Arena comes with a relatively large touch screen (especially for a device of that size) measuring 3″. That, along with the DivX/XviD support turns it into a potentially excellent portable video player. The LG Renoir for example managed to play every desktop XViD/DivX video we threw at it. Unfortunately, we had issues with DivX/XviD support in our pre-production unit, which also persist in the retail version. The only DivX videos we managed to play where those converted through the DivX converter on the supplied CD.

To switch the video player to full screen mode you only need to rotate the phone to landscape position. A tap on the touch screen reveals the onscreen overlay controls. Alongside the standard controls (such as play/pause, volume, etc.) you can also change playing speed to 2x or 4x and to zoom in or out.

 
The video player

Unlike the LG Renoir, the Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement can be turned on during video playback on the LG Arena. Of course, that enhancement is put to best use with headphones.

Online video with no Wi-Fi streaming

The Arena comes with YouTube integration and you can upload videos to YouTube directly from the handset. Bear in mind that the option is available only in the video player and not in the file manager.

Unfortunately, the LG Arena web browser doesn’t have Flash support, so watching YouTube videos from the desktop version of the web site is a no-go. The only way to watch your favorite videos is via the mobile version of YouTube.com.

Strange as it may seem, the LG Arena allows you to watch streaming media (of any type) only over the EDGE or UMTS connection, so in essence – you cannot watch the streaming mobile YouTube videos over Wi-Fi. A real bummer, we know. The same strange issue is found on the Prada 2 and the Renoir.

And since a lot of users don’t seem aware of this fact, here’s a tip for you – to watch streaming videos (such as YouTube) you first need to set up the dedicated streaming settings of the phone to use the same internet profile as your mobile web browser. The place you do that is on Settings row>Connectivity> Streaming settings.

The 5 megapixel camera is good enough to please you all

After our disappointment with the image quality of the camera on the pre-release unit, it’s time for some good news. As you already know the LG KM900 Arena takes photos at 2592õ1944 pixels and has Schneider-Kreuznach optics.

The pictures taken with it revealed a more than capable camera. The picture quality is good enough and will keep most users happy. The colors on the sample images are very lively and accurate. The automatic ISO is also appropriate and the picture detail is decent enough.

Of course nothing is perfect in life, and so is the case with the Arena’s camera. The full-res samples below reveal over-sharpening on some edges, but we don’t think that’s a big issue. Also there are clear signs of more aggressive noise reduction traces in the shadows or the clear blue sky.

Besides the aggressive noise reduction there is not much else to complain about.

The LED flash – as you have may already guessed – does not help at all. Maybe in some low light conditions it will give you some extra illumination at close range, but it won’t guarantee you a great picture and there’s likely to be some blurring.

Here are several camera samples to check for yourselves:

The viewfinder is not typical for LG. Access to all the camera settings is via the left taskbar in the viewfinder. There you get virtual buttons for settings, flash, focus mode (auto/macro) and exposure.

This left task bar auto hides and is brought back as an overlay when you tap on the screen. On the right hand-side of the screen is another bar with a virtual shutter key, exit and gallery buttons. It’s fixed and is actually not part of the viewfinder – that’s the way to get around the wide aspect ratio of the LG Arena screen. The benefit of this is that the Arena doesn’t crop part of the scene like the LG Renoir does.

The actual Settings menu is a clever rotating dial with the available options for each setting displayed as a list. The interface is very handy, neat and usable, and geotagging and image stabilization are among the nice extras.

  
  
The camera interface

The LG KM900 Arena is capable of capturing video of up to D1 (720×480) resolution at 30 fps. Overall video recording quality in all modes is relatively nice. The level of detail could have been a touch better, but seems sufficient and the colors are lively with an extra notch of saturation added by the camera.

A fact worth mentioning is that in the first seconds of each video recording there are minor issues with duplicated frames that can be perceived as video stutter. The outdated 3GP video format the LG Arena uses also didn’t earn our appreciation. The LG Renoir for example used the superior AVI file format with DivX encoding.

Slow-motion QVGA clips shot at 120 fps can also be captured by the LG Arena and the device much like the LG Secret, takes the extra step of adding Fast videos. This is the time-lapse video capture seen in some dedicated digicams.

With the right subjects those shoot modes can be quite fun. Unfortunately, the output videos are still limited to QVGA resolution. The Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH for example already shoots fast motion videos at VGA resolution with enviable quality. And as we see it, those videos don’t require additional processing power than the already existing one.

  
Camcorder options

The flash can be turned on to act as a video light. Quite naturally, you can also record sound with videos, except in the fast/slow-mo modes of course. As we already pointed out, the dedicated video recording microphone is on the back of the phone. Videos are encoded in MP4 but are saved in 3GP format.

Rich connectivity options

Wireless connectivity support is abundant in the LG Arena. Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE is on board and so is the HSDPA 7.2 Mbps.

The phone also supports the two local connectivity standards – Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The Bluetooth version is 2.1 with A2DP support for stereo streaming and 802.11b/g for Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi options have a simple interface – you choose the desired network, type the pass key and voila – you’re connected. Of course there are plenty of advanced options available for the geeks out there. The last and most important thing is that every installed Java application which requires internet access prompts you to choose between UMTS and Wi-Fi, which is great option.

  
The Wi-Fi manager

The proprietary universal connectivity port has a lot of work to do. You use it to connect the charger or a USB cable. Speaking of USB, Mass storage mode is also supported so you can use the phone as portable memory storage.

   
Connectivity menu • USB settings • TV-out options

Quite uncommonly for LG, the internal memory (all the 8 gigs of it) gets listed as a second removable drive along with the memory card contents. We were also impressed that the Arena can even receive calls when in this mode.

Synchronizing PIM details is done through the LG PC Suite that comes on the bundled CD.

The provided headset is stylish and uses the standard 3.5mm audio jack but you can also opt to plug in your favorite pair of headphones but you’ll lose the mic, which is embedded on the original pair.

An optional TV-out cable can also be plugged into the connectivity port as the Arena supports the feature. PAL and NTSC are supported, so it should work on most TV sets.

Multi-touch web browser, but still no Flash

The browser is decent, almost identical to the one on the Renoir and Prada 2. Unfortunately, scrolling and panning is a bit jerky and not really that fluid. Thanks to the multi-touch implementation however, the Arena delivers where other browsers fail – the legendary ‘pinch’ zoom the iPhone made popular.

Loading speeds are not admirable as well. On Wi-Fi the LG Arena browser takes a bit more time to fully load a page than the iPhone’s and you can’t really pan around while the page is still loading.

   
Entering a web address

The multi-touch zooming has been tweaked from the latest LG Prada phone and the pre-release unit we had and now it takes less time than before. There still is an annoying lag but at least the actual zooming is more accurate and does not interpret the gestures wrong. It’s not as fluid as the iPhone but still does an ok job.

  
Browsing GSMArena on the LG Arena

The controls don’t auto-hide and the only option to make them disappear is to turn on the full screen view from the browser menu or rotate the phone to landscape. There the accelerometer comes into play and does its job pretty well.

A useful feature is that you can have two pages open at the same time in tabs and switch back and forth between them. Saving pages for offline viewing is another thing that you’ll probably use quite often.

   
Full-screen view • the browser visual history

Another handy browser skill is searching web pages for specific words – the first match gets highlighted and the total number of matches is displayed with up and down buttons for switching between them.

A visual enhancement of the plain browsing history list is the option to view snapshots of the pages you’ve visited. You can flick between the pages and tap to open the one you are looking for.

Unfortunately, desktop YouTube watching is a no-go, as the browser lacks full Flash support. But, as we already pointed out in the video section of this review, you can go for the mobile version of YouTube found at m.youtube.com once you setup your streaming settings.

Organize your life

Keeping a schedule is an important part of the LG Arena and it has several applications to help you. The nice Organizer combines a calendar with monthly and weekly views and a task list. Event alarms can be set to go off up to a week earlier to give you enough time to prepare.

    
Organizer • Different views

The ability to choose whether Monday or Sunday is the first day of the week is also included. There’s even an option to mark some days as holidays and set the Alarm not to ring on those days. ‘Holidays’ are not repeated annually so it’s more useful to mark your vacation with them rather than national holidays.

   
Options • New task • Orgaznier settings

A To-Do application lets you keep a list of tasks sorted by their importance. If those reminders aren’t enough you can always jot down a Memo.

  
The Memo

The LG KM900 Arena can store up to 500 calendar events, 500 To-Do notes and 100 memos and making a back up to external memory is just a few clicks away.

   
Tasks view • New shedule • Organizer memory

Another option in the Organizer menu is the Date Finder. It is useful if you need to know what day of the week it will be… let’s say… five days from now.

Another visually-impressive option is selecting a month through the main calendar view. It opens a nice spinning wheel with two parts where you can choose the appropriate month and year by rotating the wheels. That can’t help but ring our iPhone-copycat bell.

 
Selecting a month

The alarm functions have been completely revised for the better. Forget the ugly old settings used on the previous LG flagship phones. Apart from the default widget alarm you can create as many alarms as you want. This gives you access to another eye-catching interface – an analog clock where you set the hand at the desired time. Of course there is a digital one for those who prefer it. The other available settings are alarm tone, vibration type and availability, while the snooze option makes sure you are not late for work.

    
Alarms

Naturally, you also get Calculator with a new touch-optimized interface and a wide array of functions (basic and advanced mathematical functions), a Unit Converter, a World Clock and a Voice recorder. The Voice recorder does not have a limit for the maximum length of a voice note and once you are done recording them you can send them via MMS, email or Bluetooth.

    
Calculator • Voice recorder • World Clock

GPS enabled

Google Maps is the most popular electronic map software for mobile phones. It comes preinstalled on the LG Arena and makes use of its built-in GPS receiver. Still the Java-powered version of the app wasn’t meant for this screen resolution (480×800) and looks awkward on the phone.

    
Google Maps • the GPS settings screen

Overall, the fact that the LG Arena is not a smartphone will be quite limiting when it comes to picking GPS voice-guided navigation software (or any third-party software for that matter) and the choice will be quite limited (if there are any options available at all).

Games & Apps

The preinstalled Picsel viewer handles Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. Zooming in and out is done by – you guessed it – pinching.

There is a useful option to fit the contents in a single column but it only seems to work for doc files. The viewer makes full use of the accelerometer and auto rotates to take advantage of the wide screen.

    
Office documents and PDF are supported

The preinstalled games on the LG Arena are all motion-based – Flying Dices, Wheel Mania and Tepong.

Flying dices lets you pick a board template and play with another player. You take turns to roll two dice (by shaking the phone of course) and then release them on the table. You move round the board and can either land on a good or a bad square. Landing on a bad square means you get beaten on the head.

Wheel Mania also allows you to choose a template – cards, foods, drinks, activities, cars and more. Then you spin the wheel and wait to see where it stops. This simple game is designed to help you make decisions in various challenging life situations.

The third game is a ping-pong one and we spent most of the time on it. It’s also simple – you must hit with increasing power a ping-pong ball with a virtual racket and score more and more…until you hit an airplane.

   
Wheel Mania • Flying Dices • Tepong

If those aren’t enough (and they really aren’t if you are the type to play games on a mobile phone), you can install Java MIDP 2.0 games and applications.

An application you might like but won’t find preinstalled on the LG Arena is Opera Mini. This nifty little browser is quite good at what it does and as it has full touch support you might find it more pleasant to work with at times than the standard built-in web browser. Unfortunately, there is still no WVGA resolution support.

Final words

It’s not every day that we come across a handset which consistently meets our expectations for a high-end phone. The LG Arena is a wonderful multimedia device that has taken great strides in many areas – interface, touch technology, music and entertainment. If you take into account all this great stuff, add the novelty factor, the price tag of 350 euro (around 450 US dollars) seems reasonable.

We’re sure the Apple iPhone is lingering in the back of many people’s minds. Both sport the full range of connectivity options, huge internal memory and big screens with multi-touch support. The Arena has greater screen resolution, a microSD slot and a far superior camera with excellent video recording options and even a removable battery.

The LG S-class interface is sometimes better than the iPhone Mac OS, sometimes not, sometimes slower, sometimes not. The iPhone advantage is the smartphone capabilities. However, the already available features on the Arena leave little to be desired (even copy/paste functionality). Its competitive price is going to get even sweeter in near future once the dust of the grand market release settles.

 
Apple iPhone 3G

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is close in price to the LG Arena and has smartphone capabilities as the iPhone. Of course, the Symbian interface lacks the considerable visual appeal of the Arena’s S-Class UI or the iPhone’s Mac OS. The camera and build quality of the 5800 are not up to the Arena capabilities as well, and the same goes for the touch-screen sensitivity. However, the lower price, the extended GPS functionality and the ability to add new applications, which will be available by the hundreds really soon, may make the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic a more attractive option for some users.

 
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH is also an excellent touch handset that has a superior 8 megapixel camera – plus it makes typing easy with the hardware keypad. A GPS receiver is also on board but the lack of Wi-Fi and the somewhat slow touch interface are things that may turn down many potential customers. Currently, it’s priced a bit less than the Arena, so it might find its way to the users hearts as well.

 
Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH

To sum it up, we were impressed by almost all aspects of the LG Arena. If you are on the hunt for a touch-based multimedia device at a reasonable price, the Arena is definitely a handset to consider and the S-class UI by LG without a doubt will be a trend setter throughout the year.

[by gsm arena]