In the recent trend of cell phone market, producing smartphones that have been equipped with touch screen technology is absolutely a MUST for cell phone companies in order to survive and gain steady market share in this fierce competitive industry (actually, all technology or gadget industries are fierce and competitive). That becomes the reason why the one called LG KP500 Cookies is deployed to the market

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Usually, most touch screen phones around the market use Android, Windows Phone, Bada, Symbian or iOS to operate the whole functionality of the phones. However, I’ve seen many touch screen phones also utilize proprietary OS (e.g., Sony Ericsson W105i or Yendo, Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman, Samsung Champ GT-c3303K, etc). And honestly, most of them suck, especially in term of User Interface and performance. Unfortunately, this phone looks running in this kind of platform, which means it’s gonna have slow and laggy user interface just like the other proprietary-based cell phones

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As I’ve explored more about how the users feel about this phone, apparently, they have the same exact opinions with me. This phone has a lame and slow user interface.

Interface and Functionality

Despite the fact that this phone has a decent quality of touch screen, with the supports of 256K color display and 240 by 400 pixel resolution, it still doesn’t elevate the whole quality of its user interface. I mean, most people who want to buy touch screen phones will obviously look for a fast and fluid user interface in the first place.

So that’s why, I think it’s pretty useless if cell phone vendors decide to produce touch screen phones under proprietary-based or Java platform, instead of Android or Windows Phone OS (iOS is ignored because this operating system is only used for Apple’s products).

The user interface of this phone kind of reminds me with the one on Android phones out there, where you can add widgets on the given homescreen. Interestingly, the user interface of this phone also looks more like the interface of Windows-based PC or laptop, specifically Windows Vista OS. So you can add giant clock widget, photo slideshow widget or any other widgets on the homescreen or desktop.

On thing that I really like on its flash-based user interface is the use of animation effect when transforming from one window to another window. It’s also interesting to see that touching or tapping the screen, although it’s still pretty laggy, can deliver such a quick response, in phone dial mode or in text messaging editor.

Auto-rotate and Stylus Pen

I also like to see when positioning this phone in landscape mode with the auto-rotate functionality. The virtual QWERTY keyboard on this landscape view is still responsive with finger touch. And if you are bored to operate the touch screen with your fingers, you still have a stylus pen as another weapon, which can be really handy when using handwriting recognition utility in text messaging editor.

Features

LG KP500 Cookies comes with 48MB internal memory on board, with the support of expandable microSD card for up to 16GB. This phone also has been equipped with Bluetooth, USB, 3MP camera, stereo FM radio, Java MIDP 2.0 and many more.

The other let downs that being brought on this phone are the absences of 3G network, WiFi, GPS, LED flash and auto-focus on camera.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, when releasing LG KP500 Cookies to the market, the vendor already knew that touch screen market was fully crowded with vast majority of Android phones. So the task will become harder for this phone to enter and make sales in this competitive market.

And the task will be so much harder when the likes of Sony Ericsson Xperia X8, Xperia Mini or Xperia X10 Mini (and PRO) have entered to the low-end market (anytime soon). This means, this phone doesn’t stand a chance to beat the whole aspect of those Android phones above.

Check out LG KP500 Cookies at Amazon where it's on special for $80. 

Phone Specifications

• 2G Network
• Released December 2008
• 3.0 inches
• 240 x 400 pixels
• TFT resistive touchscreen
• 256K colors
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• Flash UI
• Java MIDP 2.0
• Handwriting recognition
• Internal 48 MB
• microSD up to 16GB
• No 3G
• No Wifi
• Bluetooth
• USB
• 3.15 MP Camera
• No LED flash
• No Auto-focus
• Stereo FM radio
• No GPS
• Battery Li-Ion 900 mAh
• Up to 350 hours in Stand-by