Matt mentioned that LG seem to be coming up with some popular touchscreen handsets. Well it seems that LG have created a much more affordable touchscreen handset with the LG Cookie KP500. The Cookie comes in a range of colours and has a fair amount of features.

A lower price raises questions though. The main one being, “Has quality been compromised?”.

Hopefully through this review any questions you may have will be answered and we’ll see if the LG Cookie is worth considering.

The LG Cookie (LG KP500)

What’s in the box?

• LG Cookie KP500 handset
• Battery
• USB cable
• Mains charger
• User guide
• CD rom
• Screen protector

More information can be found in Matt’s LG Cookie unboxing video

LG Cookie specification:

• Dimensions: 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm
• Weight: 89g
• Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Display: Colour TFT 3" touchscreen, 240 x 400 pixels
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• Memory:  48MB internal
• MicroSD slot (up to 8GB)
• Camera: 3 megapixel
• Multimedia: MPEG4/3gp video player
• MP3/WMA/AAC player
• FM Radio with RDS
• Stereo Bluetooth 2.1
• USB 2.0
• MicroSD card slot up to16gb
• Document Viewer (MS Office, Doc, PDF)

General:

Front – Colour TFT 3" touchscreen, call, menu and end button (the end button is also the power button). The speaker at the top is of course for calls but also doubles up as the loudspeaker (for speakerphone, music, etc.)

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – front view

Right – To the left of the picture you can see the stylus which slides in along the bottom of the phone. next is the dedicated camera button, then the screen lock/unlock button, and lastly the microSD card compartment.

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – right view

Left – The LG proprietary connection is located here. This is used for charging the phone and is also where the earphones/handsfree is plugged in. The other thing that can be seen here is the up/down rocker button for the volume (and zoom for the camera)

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – left view

Bottom – With this view of the bottom of the handset you can see the stylus in more detail. Matt mentioned on the unboxing video how it is different from most handsets as it fits in across the width of the phone.  The only other thing on the bottom of the phone is the microphone hole.

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – bottom view

Back – The back of the phone is quite plain. You can see the 3MP camera here but unfortunately there is no flash.

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – back view

Battery compartment – With the back cover off you can see the battery compartment and see where the sim card is situated.

LG Cookie (LG KP500) – battery view

Highlights:

• Slim design
• Large 3″ screen
• Quite lightweight
• Handwriting recognition

Lowlights:

• Slower texting with the touch screen keypad
• No flash
• No Autofocus
• No 3G
• No WIFI

Review:

The LG Cookie KP500 is a nice size and weight, and its slim design makes the phone look and feel more expensive than it actually is. The screen is quite impressive and the display is sharp, clear and bright. If you’re not used to LG’s operating system, navigating through the menus can take a bit of getting used to. The LP500 offers two ‘home screens’, one where you can place widgets such as a sticky notes, or mini music player, and the other where you can place shortcuts to your most used contacts. You just need to slide your finger or the stylus across the screen to get to each ‘home screen’.

LG Cookie (LG KP500)

The touchscreen itself great to use. It responds well and has haptic feedback through vibration and beeps (which you can switch off if needed). There is a built-in accelerometer which rotates the display according to which way up the phone is held. Unfortunately I sometimes found the accelerometer a bit slow to catch up after I had rotated the phone.

I’ve read quite a few consumer reviews of this handset and it seems that quite a few people find texting a absolute nightmare. I wouldn’t completely agree with them but I can definitely see their point. When the phone is held up in portrait mode it offers a T9 phone keypad but you can also choose from other input modes such as multitap and handwriting recognition. I found the handwriting recognition very impressive.Of course, to use this you need to use the stylus which is not everybody’s cup of tea. The T9 keypad is ok but it takes longer to text than using a phone with buttons. If you try to type too fast you end up typing a load of rubbish!

When the phone is in landscape mode you are presented with a full QWERTY keypad but the letters are tiny and the stylus is a must! ‘Big thumb syndrome’ kicks in when you try and use your fingers!

The sound quality during calls is good and making calls is simple. As mentioned earlier, the second home screen features shortcuts to your most used contacts (you can customise this). When a contact is selected small shortcut icons appear giving you options of calling, texting, etc., which is quite a handy feature really.

You may notice that there is no front-facing camera (so no video calls). This is due to the fact that the Cookie does not support 3G. It is a quad-band GSM handset with GPRS and EDGE only. 

Whilst on the subject on connectivity, as well as no 3G the Cookie does not have WIFI. So browsing the web can be a bit tedious with the slower speed.

The sound quality through the loudspeaker during music playback is average for a mobile phone. I would assume that this handset would normally come with stereo earphones/handsfree but this review model didn’t seem to have any with it. So, unfortunately I can’t comment on earphone sound quality.

Something to point out to the music lovers out there – The Cookie also only has a proprietary plug for headphones and not a standard 3.5mm socket so no opportunity of using your own earphones.

The music player it easy to use, and with the widget you can place on the home screen it is easily accessible without having to scroll though menus. There is also an inbuilt FM radio which may appeal to some of you. Again, I unfortunately couldn’t test it out as no headphones came with this review model. As you may know that with many phones the packages headphones act as the FM antenna as well so without them the radio is obsolete.

The picture viewer and video player show off the great quality of the display that the LG Cookie has. Just a shame that the slow to catch up accelerometer let the handset down here as waiting for the orientation of a picture to change after rotating the handset got a bit frustrating. But just keep in mind that this is just my personal experience and I may just have been unlucky with the handset provided.

The 3MP camera is a bit disappointing. Photos taken in good light seem to give a pretty good quality picture. The same goes for video capture – the light needs to be good. But with the absence of a light or flash. well you probably get the picture (no pun intended!). With such a nice 3″ screen it seems a shame that the view finder for picture taking doesn’t make the most of it. Instead is is cropped into a smaller section. The other annoying thing that I noticed was an unfortunate lag time between pressing the shutter/camera button and the picture actually being taken. Took a few shots of the floor before getting the hang of the lag time as I moved the camera away too soon! So, definitely no scope to catch anything in motion because more than likely by the time the picture actually takes you’ll just get a picture of where that moving subject was 2-3 seconds ago!

There are a fair amount of things you can do with a picture after taking it such as applying different effects like blurring, cartoon and mosaic, and also adding text, stamps, and frames. It’s just a shame that you won’t get that many good pictures to play about with!

The internal memory is only 48MB which is really not much at all. The memory is expandable though through the use of a MicroSD card. The official specifications show that the handset will support a memory card up to 8GB, but if you have had a look and listen to Matt’s unboxing video you will know that it does actually support up to 16GB.

Conclusion:

The LG Cookie (LG KP500) has been a strange handset to review. Reading through my review again I seem to have been really negative about most aspects of this phone! I feel that cutting the price here has compromised the quality of the features. But just to confuse matters, I actually liked the LG Cookie for some reason. I’ll try and sum this up some how!

If you are a gadget lover, need 3G, WIFI, or want a good camera phone then you may want to take a rain check on the Cookie.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for an affordable touchscreen phone to use mainly for calls and aren’t bothered about gadgets and fancy features, then this may be the phone for you. Making/receiving calls is easy and the sound quality is clear and loud enough. The Cookie looks and feels great. It has a clear and bright display and a pretty good touch screen.

Reviewed by: Emma