After recently successful sales in Chocolate (KG800), LG announce the sequel to it, KG810. Not really a successor, but rather a different handphone design.

Packing and bundle
LG810 is packed in a very nice black and hard cupboard box. It is just like to open up a jewellery box - Luxury and beautiful. How about the content inside? Stay tuned to let us have a look what is hiding inside this box.

Bundle is the user manual, a charger, a stereo headset, a stereo jack adaptor, USB cable. Pretty standard nowadays. Oh ya, there is the free LG handphone strap as well as the CD bundle. What inside the CD is the very nice macro flash presentation and introduction of the KG810. 3 main software LG Mobile Agent (used for synchronization of Contact, Calendar, Task), LG Image Editor, LG Internet Cube (used for modem)

Physic and Keypad
KG810 is flip type handphone as compare to slide phone in KG800, the original chocolate. The answer from LG to those who like flip type of handphone, the popular demands in South East Asia market. I like the crystal look in the front look of the LG810 body. But there is the disadvantage of it - the finger print easily found all over it. While I found it is quite resistant to the scratch, but do keep it in your small handphone bag, it should be taken care well. :) At the back is the camera lens and battery compartment and it looks simple.

Most of the body of KG810 is make used of hard plastic, with the crystal like main body in front, and plastic at the back. The whole phone is in black colour. Open up the flip, you will notice the keypad is in colour like a chocolate bar, that's why it is called chocolate. In fact while it is switched on, every time you open or close the flip, there will be the human voice say My Chocolate Yoo... and it sound like Korean too :) very soft voice.

KG810 has a very thin body, in fact quite a lot of my friend who really love it's thickness; merely in 0.7" thickness. It has 2" internal screen, very bright indeed. External screen measure in 1.2".

The numeric keypad just look like a chocolate bar, nice to press also. The offset of the key though is not that big, but still it is OK for me to press. For your information, I have quite big fingers but I still find myself pleasant to press with the keypad. In order to prevent miss press of the center d-pad key, the distance for up/down/left/right is quite far, and time is needed in order to get used to it. I hope that the up/down/left/right button could be larger.

There are the mp3 and camera shourtcut key. You could define the favourite key which is the Up button at d-pad for fast access menu. A plus f this. Other short cut key include the message, profile and contact button.

Why people so like chocolate? What is so special about KG800? LG continue the uniqueness from KG800 and apply to KG810, which is the touch sensitive button located outside the crystal screen. When you press two time the up/down volume button while the flip close, 3 red colour "button" will light up just below the external screen. What you can do is just press it, it is touch sensitive (heat sensor). Sensitivity is OK, you just need to make sure that you press firmly to it.

Menu and User-friendliness
Menu at KG810 is the standard grid form 9 icons. Chocolate make use a lot of dark colour theme menu, and looking at it with the high contrast screen, I really feel like it is OLED screen. Of course KG810 still using normal LCD screen.

Messaging
The messaging in KG810 is quite similar to other LG handphone, and more like monochrome type of Nokia phone. That's is, using 0 as spacing compare to Sony Ericsson using #. Symbol is located at *. As the offset of the keypad is not that big, the feedback of the key press is weak, time is needed in order to have faster message typing.

Application and Games
There are 2 bundle games, Zoo Zoo Club and Sudoku, though not much but just fun for us to kill time. Java application can be downloaded through internet. Tools like calendar, unit converter, calculator, stop watch, world time are all build in, making KG810 the handy tools for nowaday usage.

Multimedia and Camera
KG810 has 128MB memory for multimedia storage, you can use it to store mp3, ring tone, video, photo. It is kind of weird that LG forget to give it the microSD/miniSD/SD support. As it is very common in a decent handphone like this nowadays. Hence you got to bear with the 128MB that can store merely 30 mp3 songs in 128kbs quality. As for the mp3 player, it is quite similar to the previous LG handphone that I had reviewed. Bundle USB can use to transfer the mp3 into KG810.

As for the camera, KG810 come with the 1.3Mega Pixels camera. There are some basic photo effect like Color/Sepia/Mono/Negation effect to play around with the photo. 4 Shutter sound to be selected and it can be turn off as well. 5 different resolution can be selected, ranging from the smallest that fit the outer LCD screen to 1.3Megapixel. Photo quality can be set at Super Fine/Fine and Normal. White Balance can be set at automatic/DayLight/Incandescent/Cloudy/Fluorescent. Multishot of the photo is possible which is useful to capture the important moment like during birthday time when people want to blow the candle light. A total of 9 photo can be captured continuously.

The good thing at KG810 is that the video can share the same setting as in camera mode, except the resolution part. Meaning that you can have those Colour/Sepia/Mono/Negative effect, night mode, white balance control, DayLight/Fluorescent/etc mode to tune with the video that you going to shoot. File is stored in mp4 format. Duration of the video can be 1min/5min/30min/90min or unlimited which is limited to 128MB of internal memory.

As for the quality of the photo, 1.3MegaPixel is kind of weak feature of chocolate, as most other competitor start offering 2Mega or even 3.2Mega with auto focus. Quality of the photo is one of the best in its class but inferior to K750i.

Voice quality and Ring tone
I have no signal problem with KG810. Voice listen thru the speaker is clear. But the volume is a bit weak. Microphone sensitivity is OK if not the best. The mp3 player in KG810 offer better feature compare to previous model. Sound quality coming out from build in speaker is OK, but not at the maximum volume. Though the loudness is lose to K750i, but still loud enough, in fact quite loud. Sound quality thru the headset is good in mid range to high frequency. But it is not the case in bass. You better get off with the bundle headset and buy the other more quality headset to attach with it if quality is what you are more concern.

Connectivity
LG KG810 has Bluetooth build in, hence useful for those who have bluetooth headset. By using the USB cable, you can store file inside the KG810 as well. Infra-red and external storage is not supported, too bad for this. Especially the external storage, kind of weird that LG didn't consider to implement on it.

Battery
KG810 bundle with 700mAh capacity battery. Not a large one, average 30minutes calling, 10message daily should able to last us for 2 days. In order to reduce the thickness, no larger capacity battery is offered. It spend me nearly 2 hour to fully charge KG810.

Pros:
1. Decent outlook and thickness,
2. Nice crystal body.
3. Heat sensitive button

Cons:
1. No external storage
2. Only 1.3mega pixels camera

• Tags : LG KG810