Introduction

Announced back in July 2008 the LG KS360 was code named the LG Tribe and in fact still retains that name on the TIM Italy network. Not by any means the first QWERTY handset by LG but certainly the first handset by LG that was designed with typical phone users in mind and the first to come in an array of bright but very simplistic colours.

This phone holds a bag of surprises and given that "again" the phone was in Pink we gave it straight to Lynne to play with.

Lynne (up until this handset) was a Sony Ericsson fan and was using the W850i for about 2 years because she just could not find a phone that suited her like that but this handset changed that opinion and we will go a little deeper into why during the review (which Lynne wrote herself….. So proud!).

LG KS360

The 10 second review:
Device: LG KS360
Cost: £88.09 on Orange PAYG
Available to order from: Argos (Go and buy one from here)
Summary: A very nice phone with a great QWERTY keyboard and a simple menu layout.
Best of: QWERTY Keyboard, Music Player, Design & Style 
Worst of: No WiFi, No Flash for the camera

What’s in the box?

• Handset
• Battery
• Wired Headset
• Data Cable
• Travel Charger
• User Manual
• Software Disc

LG KS360 Specification:

• GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
• Dimensions: 101.5 x 51 x 16.8 mm
• Weight: 108 g
• Display Type?: TFT, 256K colours
• Size: 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches
• Touch Screen Dialling
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Vibration
• microSD (TransFlash) up to 4GB
• 15 MB shared memory
• GPRS
• EDGE
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• USB v2.0
• SMS, MMS, Email, IM
• WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
• Colours: Black and red, Black and silver, White and soft pink, Titanium and bright blue
• Camera: 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels, video
• Java MIDP 2.0
• MP3 player
• MPEG-4 player
• FM radio
• Photo/video editor
• Built-in handsfree
• Voice memo
• Standard battery, Li-Ion 800 mAh
• Stand-by Up to 430 h
• Talk time Up to 5 h

General

To keep with the site format we will now take a look around the phone from top to bottom , left to right and front to back but in a more simple than normal format.

Top: Release catch for back cover

Bottom: Microphone

Left: Volume Rocker Button and Camera Hotkey

Left hand side view

Right: At the top there is the charger port which doubles as a headphone socket

Right hand side view

Front: The top has the speaker grill with the 2.4 inch screen just below. There are also several keys on the front of the phone namely (from left to right and top to bottom), hot selection key, call start key, left direction key, phonepad key, up selection key, ok button, down selection key, right selection key, cancel button, hot key, and call end.

Keyboard Open: Full backlit QWERTY keyboard with an SMS hot key.

Keyboard Open and Slanted View

Back: Loudspeaker Grill, Self Potrait Mirror and 2MP Camera Lens.

Highlights and Lowlights

+ Comes in an Array of colours to suit individual taste.

+ The music player is far superior to that of the Sony Ericsson W850i which was Lynne’s last handset.

+ The QWERTY keyboard when in use for SMS (Landscape Mode) allows a clearer view of the screen.

– No WiFi

– Sensitive Touch Screen

– No Camera Flash

Review

LG KS360 in Pink and White

I am not a fan of fancy phones and to be honest I never really wanted to try another handset but as Matt said that I would love this little pink phone I decided to give it a go.

My initial reaction to the phone was "excellent it’s pink" but we all know that colour doesn’t really make a phone and in this case it just helped it out a little.

Setup was easy, I had a lot of files on my old phone and to get them over to the LG I decided to use Bluetooth which proved to be a wise move as the transfer rate between the phones was great. I moved onto the contacts next and decided the easiest way to do this would be to stick all my phone contacts onto the simcard then when I put the simcard into the LG I could just copy the sim contacts to the phone which was my biggest pain point. For some unknown reason the phone imported the contacts from the sim in last name first name style which meant I had to edit every contact one by one to get them right as there was no option to fix this on the phone itself.

On my next step to making the phone my own I decided to go through the menu system one option at a time to see what was there and to make sure the settings within the options were exactly how I wanted / needed them. To say I found this easy would be an understatement, the menu system was easy to navigate, had everything in the right place and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what each option / setting did. I particularly loved the animated desktop graphics when I first used them, they were fun and very unusual to see.

Like I mentioned above, I’m no techy when it comes to phone and when John explained that the SMS messages would need to be typed using the QWERTY and the phone numbers dialled using the touchscreen I thought, forget it, I’ll never get my head round this but I was very surprised at just how quickly I learned how to use these and how easy to use they were. After a few hours I thought to myself "I don’t know how I managed without a keyboard before".

The touchscreen vibrated on the touch of every button which was a tad weird at first and the over sensitive screen meant that I quite often hit the wrong button but again after a few hours I had it sussed and away I went with my new mobile.

I made a call to my mum cause I really wanted to see what the call quality was like (not that I would know much of a difference). There was not a single glitch or blank during my 20 minute conversation and my mum could here me very well too which was a great change as my W850i had a terrible habit of dropping speech during calls when we were on the move.

The easiest thing about this phone is the SMS, it’s quick, simple and fun to use which makes it an excellent phone for me as it’s the main thing I do with my phone. The QWERTY keyboard slide mechanism is smooth and doesn’t just throw itself out now does it crawl out making it seamless to use.

Conclusion

Keyboard Open in Landscape Mode

I can’t believe I never moved phones before now, this is by far the best phone I have had and yes I know it has no WiFi or Flash for the camera but trust me, you really don’t need it. I can honestly that everything I need this phone to do, it does it and then some.

A cheerful phone which I would fully recommend to anyone. If I were to mark it out of 10 then I would break it down into the following:

Looks: 10

Design: 10

Features: 8.5

Ease of use: 9

Call Quality: 10

Easy Setup: 8

Overall: 9.5

I hope this was useful to you all and since I will now have this as my own phone I would be happy to answer any questions that you have about it.

Posted by: John

Review by: Lynne

As regular visitors to T&M will know Matt had a mini play with the HTC S740 couple of months ago, and his video preview can be seen here.

In a detachment from the normal review I think that in lots of ways I totally agree with Matt’s views. This time I will concentrate on my opinion of the mobile, in agreement with Matt’s comments, some of which I have replicated.

The HTC S740 (aka HTC Rose)

What’s in the box?

• HTC S740 smartphone with Windows mobile 6.1 standard
• Stereo Headset with miniUSB connection
• AC plug with interchangeable heads for specific countries which connects to the USB cable (insert pic?)
• Soft slip on carry case, with no clips or connections
• USB to miniUSB connector

Point of note here is that this is, once again, a test device, so although it appears to be the final version, the contents and finished article may differ slightly.

HTC S740 Specification:

• Windows Mobile® 6.1 Standard
• 116.3 mm (L) X 43.4 mm (W) X 16.3 mm (T)
• 140g with battery
• Qualcomm® MSM7225™, 528MHz
• RAM: 256MB SDRAM
• ROM: 256MB
• 2.4 inch TFT-LCD and QVGA resolution screen
• HSDPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz for Europe.
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
• 802.11 b/g WiFi
• Bluetooth® 2.0
• 3.2 megapixel colour camera with fixed focus
• 1000 mAh Rechargeable Lithium-ion polymer battery
• Battery Standby: Up to 280 hours
• Battery Talk Time: Up to 380 minutes 
• HTC ExtUSB™
• GPS / AGPS
• microSD

Highlights

• Sharp clear screen
• Great design
• Build quality
• Usability
• Battery life
• Hey, what the heck, sexiness!

Lowlights

• 4 row keyboard
• Chunkiness
• Poor camera

General

The top houses the power on/off button

HTC S740 Top View

The left has only the separate volume up and down buttons.

HTC S740 Left Side

The bottom of the device finds the miniUSB connection socket, for charging, headphones, sync etc.

HTC S740 bottom view

The right hand side has a dedicated camera button.

HTC S740 right side

So as you can tell fairly straightforward and uncomplicated thus far.

On the rear is the now expected ‘diamond faceted’ back cover which as usual is a little annoying as it rocks and is unstable when you place it down and try to type etc. Also here is the 3.2 megapixel colour camera with fixed focus, which I will mention later.

HTC S740 back view

The phones’ front holds the sharp and clear 2.4” QVGA screen, left and right soft keys, a home key for returning to the ‘Today’ screen as well a back key. Embedded within these you can see a raised Send and End key, which I have heard people describe as useless, but for me they make perfect sense, easy to locate, especially without having to look, and means you can quickly and easily answer and end your calls.

HTC S740 front view

In the middle of all these button there is the non- scrolling directional wheel, for up/down/left/right navigation, with a central enter button. Below all of these buttons is the tactile and very usable 12 button keypad.

HTC S740 numeric keypad

Slide out the positive 4 line keyboard to find the Touch Pro like black and white keys. I think Matt summed this up expertly and also his comments about the SIM and microSD card operations, here is a review of what he said:

The QWERTY keyboard slides open from the back and is similar to that found on the HTC Touch Pro but the HTC S740 has only 4 rows of keys, mainly because the S740 is that much narrower than the Pro. Keys are nice and easy to type with though and there’s the standard Caps Lock and Function LED indicators.

HTC S740 with keyboard open

The worst thing about the HTC S740 in my opinion is the SIM and MicroSD card arrangement. Not only can you not hot-swap the MicroSD card, which I can just about accept, but you have to remove the SIM card to gain access to the MicroSD. Opening the cover over the SIM and MicroSD card slot kills the power to the device, this is annoying enough but removing the SIM card all the time is a pain. If you are a frequent memory card swapper then this probably going to get on your nerves and runs the risk of damaging the SIM card.

HTC S740 SIM and MicroSD card slots

People, who know me, are aware of my minimal use of a keyboard, and this device is no different in that respect, I did use it very occasionally, but found the keypad adequate for the majority of tasks. I would prefer a 5^th line to include a separate numbers line as in my job I complete a lot of figure templates etc..

With regard to Matt comments about the fitting of the SIM and microSD card, I concur, fiddly at best very annoying at worst.

Have a look at Matt’s HTC S740 video for a more detailed tour of the device.

Software

Not being a WM Standard user, I can’t really comment on the software included, I assume that it has pretty standard inclusions. The interface I used the most was the HTC Home screen and found this great to use and more than capable of completing pretty much all of the tasks that I had to do on a regular basis.

Included in the menus over and above normal are QuickGPS, RSS Hub, Adobe Reader LE, Audio manager and booster, FM radio, eJava, and a folder called HTC Debug Tools which holds a plethora of extras such as a couple of register editors, Wireless LAN loggers, Uni AT’s, Battery specs, Bluetooth testers etc. A lot of these I have never seen before and what’s more I don’t understand what they do, maybe because this is a Test unit, I am not sure.

Review

My first impression was that I don’t do ‘smartphones’ (Windows Mobile Standard) and never have; I have only ever used ‘ordinary’ or touchscreen. When Matt asked me to review this, I thoughts where, ‘ho-hum, great a smartphone, nothing here for me, get the review over with and get back to my Ingito’, a proper phone.

Out of the box it didn’t get any better, looking at the device and picking it up I thought ‘it’s a Bang and Olufsun TV remote’, ‘ Matt’s put his remote in the Box!’. This was actually a compliment in disguise, the feel and quality of the HTC Rose is superb. It is very solid, slightly heavy but in a good way. As I mentioned, very tactile, friends and colleagues have all commented how good the HTC looks and feels.

My small gripes include, the print on the keypad could be a little more prominent, as it is difficult to read in bright light or low light, another line on the keyboard would have been a bonus, but I suppose at the cost of a wider chunkier unit.

The camera, I have to say, for me was rubbish, the fixed focus, no flash, and quality of the pictures where very disappointing, not even adequate, poor. A step back in this day and age of huge advances in the camera/phone devices available today.

I really surprised myself with this mobile, I found myself leaving my Ignito at home, and using it as my sole device. I was recently up in Scotland for a few days, and it took awhile to realise that from Tuesday through to Friday, with low to moderate use, I had not charged the phone at all, a real benefit for a diamond user! The battery seems last forever.

I find that the HTC S740 does the simple things in life like texting and calling people very efficiently, and I really like the ease of use, again a refreshing change, from the often over complicated devices around. (That, as a gadget freak, was not something I thought I would appreciate!)

Conclusion

What a cracking little phone! It is well designed, great to use and very easy to live with.

I would be really impressed if HTC could bring out a derivative without the keyboard, a la diamond, that would be good in my opinion.

I do miss the touchscreen for certain operations, but I have come to realise it is not the end of the world not to have one.

The sound quality, signal strength and ability to hold it where absolutely fine. (I have added as I know this was asked in the previous review.)

If only it could change channels and operate my sky+ it would be the best smartphone ever!

I do know that some people who have already taken delivery of their HTC S740 are already singing its praises and rightly so.

Go, buy it, it’s great. And I don’t very often say that! I’ll wait for the keyboard less model.

Review by: Steve

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